CNNdotCOM Tools: E-tailer customer service

From James Hattori
CNNdotCOM Correspondent

(CNN) -- Last holiday season's e-shopping was punctuated by frustration, and on many Web sites, it's not about to let up.

"I think companies really want to take advantage of the immediacy and the convenience of handling customer service queries over the Web," said Aoife McEvoy, senior associate editor at PC World. "But they still have to live up to delivering on them."

It makes good business sense for online customer service to develop. Having customers help themselves cuts costs on phone representatives and long distance phone calls. But many sites take days rather than hours to respond to customer service e-mails.

RESOURCES Top E-tailers    VIDEO CNNDotcom Tools looks at customer service online Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     QUICKVOTE Do you plan to shop online this holiday season? Yes No View Results

"One study told us that about 42 percent of companies either didn't respond to customer queries by e-mail at all, or took longer than five days to answer them, or didn't offer that option whatsoever," McEvoy said.

To save time, McEvoy recommends checking an e-tailer's FAQ section for payment, shipping, returns and cancellation options. Good customer service can be found at Amazon.com, because it makes this kind of information more readily available. If you scroll down to the bottom of Amazon.com's home page, you can find its shipping rates and policies immediately.

"A lot of customers get really annoyed when you go through the (purchase) process only to find the shipping charges when you're about to whisk off your credit card number," McEvoy said.

Barnes & Noble.com, on the other hand, displays this information on its help page rather than its home page.

Some e-tailers, like Lands' End, take it one step further by letting you chat live with a customer service agent through your Web browser. Since many sites are trying to steer customers away from the expense of live conversations, they don't offer this service. But McEvoy doesn't see phone customer service disappearing any time soon.

"I think the phone will never go away," McEvoy said. "As long as customers have all those kinds of options to choose from, companies will definitely keep their businesses thriving."

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Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble.com
Lands' End

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