Keep up to date on On Line Trading and what’s around on the POS and Stock systems front. The Retailer does not sell websites or systems so our opinions are unbiased.
Microsoft Retail Systems.
The big name has done some updates and brought out a new version however some big holes remain. This system has proved to be one of the most robust and reliable around once established. We have helped install it in several small to medium retailers and so far it has been rock solid. There are a couple of areas you need to look out for. In head office the inter branch transfer area is les than user friendly and the reporting systems can be overcomplicated to matrix. It also does not have a comparative reporting system so if you want to compare this year’s sales with last, hard luck! An amasing exclusion. Some resellers have come up with patches to get over this however we don’t thing this should be necessary. Come on Microsoft catch up with the rest of the world.
The Image is all.
When it comes to on line trading one of the most important areas is photography and how you present the image of the item you are selling. However time and time again we see poor or inconsistent images. In the age of the cheap digital camera anyone can produce a reasonable image however the trick is to do this time and time again and get it on to the site in a format that is presentable. To assist our clients we are setting up a studio dedicated to producing top quality images for on line sales. You bring the product we supply one high resolution print plus one resized print on disc for your web site.
A third of UK retailers are losing revenue by completely ignoring incoming e-mails
38 per cent of major UK companies are ignoring e-mails from their customers, resulting in lost revenues. Two thirds of companies (67 per cent) fail to deliver an acceptable response to customer e-mails.
eGain's research revealed additional customer service weaknesses. Of those companies that did respond to customer service e-mails, only a third (36 per cent) responded within 24 hours and only 16 per cent within one hour. This is a downturn from similar research conducted by eGain in 2004, when almost half (48 per cent) responded within 24 hours. Additionally only 19 per cent of responding companies provided an accurate response to their customers' queries. Only 18 per cent of companies sent an automatic acknowledgement as an initial response to the customer's e-mail.
The retail sector was the best overall performer with a 70 per cent response rate, meaning that still one in three customer emails are being ignored. 49 per cent of the responses actually delivered, were of a good quality. However, only 10% of retailers managed to respond within one hour, which was the poorest performance amongst all sectors tested. 39% of retailers responded within 24 hours.
