Leader: Time to care for existing customers, not rely on new ones

7 January 2010 | By Justin Pearse

Have etailers been taking their customers for granted? Every aspect of online, from search to social networking to etail, has become accustomed to exponential growth, and managing this growth has often been as problematic as attracting customers or users. But with online becoming enmeshed in people’s daily lives, growth is reaching a plateau in terms of customer numbers. As the Government’s continued attempts to address the digital divide attest, we’re far from saturation point online. But for etailers especially, an online business can no longer rely on a constant stream of new customers.

As our latest online shopping survey finds, the growth in the proportion of people choosing the internet over the high street for their shopping has stalled. Of course, this in no way means the growth prospects for etailers are poor. People are spending more online and more regularly. But it’s crucial they now focus on loyalty and increasing the value of their existing customers.

This is nothing new, of course: eCRM has long been acknowledged as a core element of online operations. The problem is so many retailers online, perhaps used to the flood of new customers, still aren’t very good at it.

Our survey this week finds people think customer service online still lags behind the high street, with 68% believing it to be better in-store. It’s a problem we come up against with tiresome regularity in our weekly Fulfilment column on the back page. Lack of contact numbers, unanswered emails, poor product display, lack of stock information: the same problems crop up time and time again.

And these are only the basic plumbing issues of etail. Etailers then need to take better care of their customers, rather than viewing them simply as a one-off sale. I’ve lost count of the number of times sites with which I’m registered haven’t bothered to tempt me back when I’ve abandoned a purchase. This will come down to cleverer data mining, segmentation, tracking and targeting. It’s time to love your customers rather than relying on new ones to replace them.

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