Cyber Monday Scores High With Customers
With all the doom and gloom of the economy, it surprises me that Cyber Monday's customer satisfaction levels remain almost as high as 2007 levels. ForeSee Results reported that satisfaction dropped only less than a point, which may indicate that companies are still investing in service and a quality online shopping experience.
ForeSee Results' survey of more than 250,000 people who shopped online between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, revealed that online shopping is not as bad as one might think. The surprise is that retailers are actually meeting customer expectations. ForeSee Results measures online customer satisfaction using the methodology of the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index, which predicts purchase intent (both online and offline) as well as loyalty and recommendations.
In previous years, dips in customer satisfaction on Cyber Monday have been attributed to the strain on systems due to higher volumes and unfamiliarity of new shoppers drawn to the site for the first time by a sale. Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, said the rise this year may indicate that ecommerce sites are starting to overcome these challenges successfully. "These figures demonstrate the extraordinary power of online customer satisfaction throughout a retail organization, especially in a down economy."
Yesterday I spoke to Pete Olson, vice president of product management at Amadesa, about the company's new Product Recommendation Engine for ecommerce. He echoed Freed's sentiment. He said that in the product testing and recommendation space, 2009 will be drastically different than previous years in terms of defining the right content. "As we talk to our retailers, it's clearly back to the basics," he said. "It's understanding the metrics they have and understanding the core products."
Despite these core efforts, Freed said that he still expects a flurry of bankruptcies and acquisitions in January, based in large part on performance during the holiday season. "E-retailers who are taking stock of their customers well enough to know what they want and need, will be well poised to capture available market share."
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I definitely took advantage of many of the Cyber Monday deals. I also looked a lot at online retailers that included user reviews of the products they sold. This helped me get a sense of what I was buying without having to bounce around from site to site.