Amazon has topped the charts in customer service in India, beating its rivals Flipkart and Myntra, according to the Forrester’s Customer experience Index 2016.
The e-commerce giant made a late entry into India in February 2012 when online shopping had already made a head start in the nation. Flipkart, which started off as an online book store, had quickly built a loyal customer base by the time Amazon came in.
But Amazon lost no time in catching up. Backed by its global might and streamlined delivery and logistics systems, Amazon has been able to fight its way to a large chunk of the online pie.
E-tailers, according to the research firm, have realized that it is customer experience (CX) which brings repeat sales and builds base rather than deeper discounts.
Amit Bhatia, senior analyst at Forrester, said, “In general, digital-only retailers are realizing that deep discounting as a customer acquisition strategy leads to a downward spiral.”
The main reason he says is, “With no profits to show, increasingly impatient investors, and the threat of foreign entrants with even deeper pockets looming large, many digital retailers have now begun to publicly claim to focus on delivering a differentiated CX instead.”
Chasing company growth instead of improving customer retention and services has caused the downfall of many new companies. Rollbacks occur when customers stop coming to the sites due to bad customer experiences, inability to meet customer requirements and no quality check or control. This, in turn, leads to insufficient number of orders to sustain the company.
Online retailers in India have improved their service report card from ‘poor’ last year to ‘OK’ this year, still the segment lags behind counterparts in the U.S. and China. They have scored better on response time, flexible return policies and have moved on to offline strategies to improve their baseline.
Amazon has increased its focus on customer retention, Net Promoter Score (a measure that indicates the loyalty of a firm’s customers and the overall quality of its service) and high quality logistics. The analysts suggest that the most profitable target for startups will be to build repeat customer base
