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Ecommerce is not about
selling
by Claudie Clot, CEO of advancis.com
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3. A giant step towards
profitability
Of course, in the end, the
ecommerce system you develop to satisfy the needs of your customers
must be profitable. The good news is that focusing on achieving
customer satisfaction and achieving profitability go hand in
hand (the former eventually leading to the latter).
Inevitably, satisfied customers
come back for more. If you have done your job very well, they
might even convince friends and family members to shop on your
site. This is exactly what made EarthLink/Mindspring one of the
largest ISPs in the World. The company makes an extraordinary
effort to achieve complete customer satisfaction. Remarkably,
a large portion of the business it gains comes from word of mouth.
A smart way to reduce acquisition costs.
But for this approach to produce
any significant results, there must be a sincere commitment from
everyone involved in your ecommerce effort to achieving customer
satisfaction. The dedication to achieving complete customer satisfaction
transpires throughout Mindspring's organization. From the company's
core values to ad campaigns, everything at Mindspring revolves
around making the customer happy or, as someone else might put
it, meeting the customer's needs before and after the sale. In
1999, Mindspring achieved the highest mark in all 7 categories
used to measure customer satisfaction in the ISP category. You
can do the same.
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