[tweetmeme]”Customer service” encompasses various elements from interaction with customers to provision of a convenient shopping environment. In a store, the quality of customer service can be seen in the way employees greet the customers, listen to what they need and want, handle customer complaints, among others.
On the Web, customer service can be gleaned from how the site is setup for ease of communication with visitors and customers, ample information about the products or services, and ease of site navigation.
Here are the customer service tools offered by most of the top online retailers today:
- Account status/history
- Estimated shipping date
- Express checkout
- Order confirmation
- Order status
- Real time inventory check
- Shipment cost calculator
- Shipment tracking
- Toll free number
- Live Chat/email
- Buy online/pickup in store
- Currency converter
For Account status/history what kind of software is out there?
Some of the order management software out there include Sterling Commerce (used by Staples), Oracle (used by Office Depot), SAP (used by HP Home) but many of the top ecommerce retailers use their inhouse software such as Amazon, Dell and Sears. Source: Internet Retailer Top 500