Page 153 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Services Management

Notes but on Amazon you can sell only those goods which are already available otherwise
recommendation is needed from Amazon. There are listing fees on EBay but no listing fees on
Amazon, so you have to pay lesser on Amazon. So in other words, one may say that if you want
a hassle free deal prefer Amazon and Flipkart, but if you are willing to pick up a good deal, EBay
is the appropriate place. About the speculation that Amazon, largest online retailer in the world,
may be looking at buying Flipkart, Bansal says, “Talk of any future acquisition will be speculation
and we would not like to comment. We would like to work on our strengths and address the
challenges this market is facing. All of this will require a lot of time and investment and selling
our business does not feature in our plans. We intend to establish Flipkart as the largest retailer
in the country.”
The Real Issues: The Indian retail industry has always thrived on personalization. The grocer,
tailor or even the mom n shop apparel store owner knows the preferences, remembers customer’s
taste, budget and previous purchases. They sense the customer’s mood too – which no CRM
software can claim to do.
Trying to personalise each customers experience – might be one way to grow. The Indian
consumer is still very need oriented, not very impulse or deal oriented like the American
counterparts. Hence it might make sense to create real consumer centric promotions constantly
that provide real value to the Indian consumer. Slowly but surely this is happening in India.

There have been horror stories about receipt of bad or wrong goods, delayed deliveries, no
response from the company – which adds up to not trusting the online retailers. Through this
changing – albeit slowly, thanks to automation and technical integration.
Touch points to focus on:
1. Customer is the King: A good 24/7 customer service through email, chat and toll free
phone is what the E-tailers are providing. Customer complaint resolution – whether,
delayed delivery, product quality, wrong product delivered will certainly work towards
long term customer relationship, retention and acquisition.
2. Supply Chain: Most customer complaints and delivery returns can be traced to the
supply chain vendors or merchants. They are in fact the most important internal customers.
It is important to have the supply chain vendors or merchants well integrated into the
system – both technically and strategically.

3. New Business Models: E-tailers always search new and innovative business models. Case
in point being US based Power Reviews – where it provides free review technology to E-
tailers and all it asks in return is that the reviews collected on the retailer’s web site are
syndicated, which is then aggregated on the Buzzillions.com, its sister website. Some
Indian sites simply collect orders over a period of time say a week, order in bulk from the
vendor and finally ship it to customer at a discounted rate. The customer is told beforehand
about the delivery date, of course.
4. Comparison Shopping and Customer Reviews: All the E-tailers are present on comparison
shopping sites is of paramount importance – especially since people now visit these sites
before they place the order. Being present on well known sites such as compareindia.com
and wize.com is a very good idea. Also they encourage customer to write the product
reviews – nothing authenticates their offering to an undecided customers like a good
product review.

7.2 Role of Internet in Services

With the popularity of the Internet ever increasing, it has now become one of the most common
ways of doing business: e-commerce. Although e-commerce was often associated more with the

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