Selling Online #38 : Send Out A Probe

This is another one of those months where you’re no doubt going to walk away after reading my humble little column and cry, “My God! This man’s a genius! Why have we never thought of this before?!” OK… Maybe not… But it’s still a pretty good idea.

This month I want to pass on a suggestion about how you can make sure that you have the best e-commerce and customer service operation out there: Go shopping!

I’m sure that somewhere in your list of goals and desires for your e-commerce operation that you want your customers’ experience with your shop to be as good as it possibly can be. Not just better than anyone else, but good in an absolute, C.S. Lewis-ish, sense as well. After all, just because everyone else is horrible is no reason for you to be horrible too, right?

So how are we going to do this? We’re going to pick five to seven other e-commerce sites and take them for a test ride. I suggest that you choose two to three of the big e-tailers and catalog sites (i.e. Motorcycle Superstore, Knee Draggers, Bike Bandit, or Dennis Kirk) and then choose three or four dealer-run sites that also sell to the same markets that you do.

Your goal is to probe and test their systems. Their online systems, as well as their human, customer service systems. You need to create a standard testing process or protocol for how you’re going to do the test, and then apply that same protocol to each shopping experience. You’ll then grade or judge each retailer to not only see how well they are doing, but to come up with ideas for how you can be doing things better. Find something that’s horrible? Make sure your systems are set up to avoid it! Find something that’s amazing? Make sure your systems are set up to include it!

After all, if you don’t do this, how in the world will you ever know how good you have to be to be great? Trust me, your customers most likely shop with companies other than you, and they know who’s naughty and who’s nice. If you don’t have the same sense for where you stack up, based on first-hand experience, I’m willing to be that you’re not doing things as good as you think you are.

So what kind of things do we need to test? I’m going to offer up a few suggestions for things that you can do to see how satisfying, helpful, flexible, easy, etc. the experiences with each retailer is. Remember, one of your goals is to break their systems. You’re trying, through somewhat reasonable, real-world inspired actions, to become a nightmare customer. You want to be reasonable about it, but (based on years and years of first hand experience) I can guarantee that regardless of how wacky, far-out, or unreasonable you are during this test, that there are real customers out there that are worse than anything you can think up. If you’re new to this, you’ll have to trust me on this. If you’ve been around a while, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

First, pick two to three products that everyone carries so you can shop for the same stuff with each retailer. I suggest that one of the items you pick is a product that you know is hard to get, is frequently out of stock, has a long lead-time from the supplier, etc.

Now on to a few suggested tests (remember, these are just suggestions to get the ideas flowing… Come up with your own, relevant tests):

• Go to each retailer and place your initial order. Use their site search to see how hard it is to find each product. can you find them by drilling into their categories? Are all of the attributes like color

• Give them the wrong address: Give them, say…, your personal address with you order online, then call up a few hours later and have them switch the address to your shop’s address. Wait and see where the products end up.

• Order a hard part that requires installation and once it arrives, call them and see how helpful they are at helping you install that part on your bike.

• Order something like a pair of riding boots or riding gloves (or underwear… Seriously… It’s happened… Yes. Gross.), wear them and use them to the point where it’s obvious that they’ve been used, and then try to return them. Does the retailer give you a hard time or do they accept the return gracefully?

• On those out of stock orders, call them up at least once a day to check status. Make note of how patient they are with your badgering. Also, make note if you get conflicting or otherwise funky promise dates. If every time you call up you get a different answer, or every time you call up you get told “two weeks”, regardless of how many weeks have passed, that usually indicates they are not really looking into it or telling you the truth.

• After you place your order online, call them to change something with the order. The size… The color… Add an item… Take an item off… Then call back later that day and make another change. Then wait to see if you get what you’re expecting to receive. If you don’t get what your expecting after making the changes, call them up and find out what happened. Ask if they have a record of your calls to make those changes. If they do, they are using a good CRM system. If not, then they’re flying blind.

Tags:Column, DealerNews, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, motorcycle, powersports, selling-online