TMCnet News
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[November 19, 2003] Ineffective Self-Service Leads to Lost Revenue for Retailers KANA, a provider of knowledge powered CRM applications, today announced that it has completed its annual consumer holiday survey, which revealed that effective self-service is becoming even more critical to retailers.The survey pointed out that customers would not hesitate to take their business to another Web retailer if they could not find answers to their questions quickly and easily online. Earlier studies around customer behavior revealed that customers in many cases would elevate their inquiry to a more costly customer service option such as phone, but as self-service becomes more effective, the KANA study showed that customers are now more likely to turn to a different retailer, resulting in lost revenue. With the holiday season being one of the busiest times of year for retailers, KANA said it is a necessity that online retailers provide their customers with the tools they need to make their online purchases and to provide answers regarding a range of pre-sales questions. The company said customers look to self-service applications because of the convenience factor they provide. With e-mail, FAQs, instant messaging and online search capabilities available for the online retail industry, KANA said the opportunities to keep consumers at one site are well within reach. Some of the key findings in this survey were: -- 65 percent of respondents said that they completed a significant amount of their holiday shopping online last year -- 55 percent of those that responded said that they communicated with customer service through self-service applications most frequently -- 50 percent said that if they could not find their answer online that they abandoned their search or went to a competitor's site |