Tealeaf: Experience Your Customers

Making Shopping Easier for Early Holiday Wins

by Julie Zisman, Director of Corporate Marketing —



As we edge closer to the holiday shopping season, now is the time retailers should be looking for struggle points or anomalies in their customers' online buying behaviors. When I'm out at events, people often ask me to share best practices regarding retail customer experience management. Here are a few places to begin:

Beyond Free Shipping…Why Online Retailers are #Winning

Before I boarded my flight this morning, I scrolled through my Twitter feed and came across a tweet by @ZDNet that said: "Why Amazon is winning online retail and should fold on this silly sales tax fight http://zd.net/p4R22J." Interesting! Okay, maybe I'm showing bias here. After all, we at Tealeaf have made our careers out of caring about which sites serve their customers the best, which are easiest to use, which cause their customers the least amount of struggle, and which are, in the end, winning at what they do. That said, I'm not really up on this whole sales tax issue. So I clicked on the link, only to be let down by the realization that the author of the post thinks that free and reduced shipping for Amazon Prime customers was the reason Amazon's winning online retail!

Now, I think free shipping is great and it definitely shows a dedication to customer service (e.g., Zappos), but aren't there other aspects of the online shopping experience that might factor into a retail site being proclaimed as the one that's winning online retail?

A few that come to mind include:

• Dedication to discovering and fixing all the little things than can cause customers to churn through the online shopping process
• Seamless communication between call center agents and the website
• Implementing a fully functional mobile site or smartphone app that works as well as the website
• And, most fundamental of all, taking a customer-centric view to all online channels—from site design to application flow to check-out process

There are a lot of sites that do these things really well and, to me, their dedication to customers goes well beyond free shipping. But perhaps I'm in the minority here. Tell me, what do you think?

A Whole New Generation: Marketing the Pepsi Way

Last week, a bunch of Tealeaf folks attended Econsultancy's Peer Summit in Chicago. I was particularly impressed with the PepsiCo keynote, presented by Senior Manager of Digital Communications Joshua Karpf. PepsiCo is truly making strides in understanding their market by interacting directly with their customers—a large part of which are the younger generations whose day-to-day lives are increasingly "digital." Because they've taken the time to understand this behavior, PepsiCo is able to impact the customer experience in real-time on mobile devices. Joshua described a use case where, by combining social media and the mobile channel, they are driving grocery store customer loyalty through Foursquare offers. Not only do shoppers get an initial offer upon check-in, they can also unlock additional discounts while at the register. Since the mobile Internet is thriving, all brands need to start thinking about the future of the mobile experience. Customer experience is no longer confined to a desktop and the new cross-channel experience is no longer limited to the web and contact center; it now includes mobile, social media and location-based services. Is your business ready for this new era of online experience?

Superbowl Shuffle

As one of the 111 million viewers on Sunday, I watched the Superbowl expecting to be thrilled and entertained by either the game or the commercials. Then I started wondering… what’s becoming of all the prospective customers viewing these commercials? Are they following up their Superbowl viewing experience online, through social media, in stores, in the call centers? Do the advertisers themselves invest as much in delivering a good multi-channel experience as they do in the ad production and air time? Many of these advertisers reference their commercials on their websites but don’t weave-in a real call to action or next steps. Many from these companies were tweeting in appreciating of their own commercials, but how many fans were monitoring twitter while watching the game in person or on TV?

Obviously, the consumer sites seeking direct shopper access got their target audience—after all, it was the most watched TV event in history—but what about some of the technology companies that advertised? Has the computer geek/athlete bridge officially been crossed? Who was the Chatter.com ad appealing to? Did the negative feedback regarding the Black Eyed Peas halftime performance affect their brand lift? Salesforce.com seems to be one of the few sites not cross-referencing their Superbowl ad today.

More than anything, of course, I wondered what would happen if the companies that took the Superbowl commercial plunge, instead applied those dollars toward ensuring their customers have a more positive experience across channels—web, mobile, call center, etc.? Perhaps instead of seeing brand lift they would achieve improved customer loyalty and increases in revenues. There’s just one Superbowl champion each year but when companies make customer experience a priority, everybody wins.

2010 Tealeaf Online Shopping Social Media Buzz Report

As you've all witnessed, 2010 has been the year that social networks and microblogging services have exploded on the scene (and not just the Silicon Valley scene) and become mainstream communication tools. This week, Twitter announced $200 million in new funding, boasted a $3.7 billion valuation and added two new board members to its already prestigious list of investors. So this year we decided to look a bit closer at some of the conversations being had on Twitter and do something a little different for our annual holiday season research project. We partnered with social media monitoring company Crimson Hexagon to analyze the sentiment around online shopping Twitter conversations. From this, the 2010 Online Shopping Social Media Buzz Report was born!

What did we find? Notably, we discovered that Twitter conversations about online shopping increased 256 percent on Black Friday and 202 percent on Cyber Monday, compared to a regular shopping day. Shoppers were not shy about sharing their victories and failures as they strove to beat the in-store crowds. While more than a third (38 percent) of online shoppers were delighted with their purchases, nearly a quarter (24 percent) complained their way through the process, as they wrestled with website errors and other classic customer struggles.

For a complete presentation on the Tealeaf Online Shopping Social Media Buzz Report and the methodology behind it, please click here.

Key findings:

1. Social Media buzz around online shopping skyrockets around Black Friday and Cyber Monday
2. Twitter conversations paint a different picture of retailers' "success" this holiday season, with nearly a quarter of tweeters dissatisfied and/or completely unable to complete purchases
3. Ratio of positive, negative and neutral conversations on Twitter remains nearly constant — meaning customer struggles happen even on a "light" shopping day
4. Retailers are missing a bigger opportunity to capture sales and create lasting customer relationships

We are still monitoring Twitter until the end of the year, so stay tuned for an update and wrap-up in the new year. Happy Holidays!

What does $44 billion look like to companies with an ecommerce channel?

That is the question we asked ourselves this summer after reviewing the results of the 2010 survey of Online Transactions commissioned with Harris Interactive. The answer to retailers depends on what they’re selling, but we decided to have some fun and create visual representations that both answer the big question and also illustrate the survey results. (See graphics at bottom of full post.)

2010 survey of Online Transactions Summary:

The survey found that retailers who operate in the online channel may have lost more than $44 billion dollars over this past year as a result of transaction problems on their websites.¹ Since an increasing number of consumers prefer to shop online rather than in brick-and-mortar establishments, the impact of lost revenue from poor online experiences directly impacts businesses’ bottom lines. The study found that more than one-fourth of online shoppers (27 percent) would turn to an online or offline competitor if they encountered an online transaction issue.