Holiday Season Marred for Online Vendors by Poor Customer Care

Holiday Season Marred for Online Vendors by Poor Customer Care

Scott Hornstein Sees Focus on Customer Management Instead of Fulfillment

NEW YORK, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- According to Scott Hornstein of Hornstein Associates, online vendors are losing out on valuable customers and revenue throughout the year, and especially this past holiday season, due to lack of personalized customer care.

Sighting recent research and case studies, including a Doubleclick survey which found that 50% of goods placed in online shopping carts are abandoned before checkout, Hornstein concludes that this loss stems from a focus on customer management instead of customer fulfillment.

"Tolerance of such high abandonment rates sends a clear message that marketers don't care about catering to the individual customer. They're banking on making it on volume," said Hornstein. "This deficit of attention translates to a loss of trust and respect among customers, leading to lost long term revenue potential."

The main reasons for the high customer dropout rate for online shoppers include surprise costs, such as high shipping and handling, requests for too much information from vendors and scarcity of information about the product with no easy way to get help.

"The Doubleclick study showed that e-marketers are letting the fruit rot on the vine. Throughout the year they are not paying attention to shopping cart abandon rates," Hornstein said. "And this has a major impact during the holiday season, when may retailers make the bulk of their yearly income."

Referring to a case study involving Franklin Covey from his recent book Opt-In Marketing: Increase Sales Exponentially with Consensual Marketing (McGraw-Hill, 2004), Hornstein sees personalized customer relationships as integral in saving these lost revenues.

Franklin Covey's Public Programs Group (PPG) found that 50% of seminar customers were dropping out of the shopping cart before they finalized their order. They decided to test customer-service-oriented outbound follow-up to the folks who dropped out of the shopping cart. PPG achieved a 60% conversion rate from those customers who had previously abandoned the shopping cart. The incremental revenue generated by these outbound calls increased monthly revenue by an additional 20% over objective, putting PPG 40% over objective for the year.

"Real-time customer service and support is mandatory," said Hornstein. "In the 'new' world of electronic business, the customer is king. Whoever best provides the customer with the right information at the right time, wins."

About Hornstein

Scott Hornstein has over 30 years experience working with Fortune 100 clients and mid-sized businesses in all phases of marketing strategy, research and implementation. Hornstein's proprietary methodology achieves stronger relationships between marketers and their customers to maximize customer satisfaction, retention and lifetime value. Clients include Microsoft, IBM, Franklin Covey, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Starwood Hotels and Resorts and Golden Rule Insurance.

Scott Hornstein lectures regularly at universities, associations and international conventions, and writes regularly for leading business and marketing publications. He is the co-author of Opt-In Marketing: Increase Sales Exponentially with Consensual Marketing (McGraw-Hill, 2004).

To learn more about Scott Hornstein and The Hornstein Method(TM), contact Hornstein Associates directly at:

Scott Hornstein
Hornstein Associates
84 Gallows Hill Road
Redding, CT 06896
(203) 938-8715
scott@hornsteinassociates.com


Source: Hornstein Associates

CONTACT: Darley Newman of The Weiser Group, +1-212-535-9678, or
dnewman@weisergroup.com, for Hornstein Associates

Web Site: http://www.hornsteinassociates.com/


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