The E-comm Big Three: Price, Selection, and Service

So I’ll admit it, I was eavesdropping the other night at dinner. I heard a man complaining to his wife about a poor experience he had shopping online (it didn’t hurt that the guy was one of those loud talkers). Anyway, he went on and on about some expensive tennis racquet he wanted to buy and how he didn’t really know which site to buy it from (apparently there were numerous online shops that carried the one he wanted).  He ultimately purchased from one of the sites and, of course, they sent him the wrong racquet! They made him pay for return shipping and apparently no one in the company’s customer service department could be bothered for the hassle it caused this guy. He was pissed. I, on the other hand, leaned back in my chair and smiled. I know, I know…not cool to take pleasure in stuff like this, but what a case study for STELLA!

Over the past couple of years my co-founder and I have had the opportunity to chat with some of brightest folks in e-commerce, and along the way we’ve realized that everyone (subconsciously or not) thinks about  online buying behavior in the same three buckets (what I like to call the “E-comm Big Three”): Price; Selection; and Service.

Thinking through this, we began to formulate an opinion that two of these Big Three (Price and Selection) we’re not sustainable differentiators for most of the e-commerce landscape. Consider this: I can visit TheFind.com, a popular shopping comparison engine claiming to have 400,000 Internet retailers in its database, and see over 200 results for the same “Spalding TF-100 Basketball”, sold for more or less the same price at each store. Should I buy at Sears.com, DicksSportingGoods.com, or Dazadi.com (Dazadi…huh?). STELLAService is our solution to this very problem. With price and product selection continuing to converge across most online categories, customer service has increasingly becoming the leading reason why shoppers select one shop over another. All else equal, why wouldn’t you want to do business with a company that focuses 110% on providing great service?

I should also mention that our team has been hard at work creating an enhanced version of STELLAService.com – it will hopefully go live in a matter of days. The new site will give shoppers a much more detailed look at the specific service features and elements of online retailers. No two shoppers are the same, and each values different service attributes differently. So we plan to share some key metrics with shoppers so they can see for themselves which stores deliver the kind of customer experience they’re really after. Stay tuned!