Continuing on my analysis a few weeks ago where I analysed the multichannel experience with Argos, I've now set my sights on M&S's customer service. This time I examined the ease and effectiveness of their review mechanism and the customer service via different channels.
M&S lets their
customers’ voices be heard by making the writing of reviews for products easy and
by filtering out offensive and discriminative reviews. By doing so, M&S is
able to maintain a high level of quality within their reviews, provide actually
useful reviews for customers in order to maximize sales and finally improve
their SEO with extended product description pages.
M&S’s customer service
is a mixed bag of traditional, mediocre customer service, and ninja-level
interaction through social media. The overall quality of service is up to a
level, which will increase M&S’s brand image, increase the lifetime value
of their customers and improve their long-term profitability.
The ease of using the
M&S review function is made slightly inconvenient with a compulsory
registration to the site. However, the process is compensated with cookie
tracking, which takes the customer automatically back to the product page after
the registration is complete.
Leaving reviews on the
M&S site is made relatively simple with their 5-star overall rating and
with four, more detailed, 5-dash ratings. The more detailed ratings change
according to the type of product being reviewed, providing relevant review
criteria.
The level of liquidity in
the M&S review system is high. Most of the products have been reviewed,
some over 20 times. There also doesn’t seem to be many products with only very
old reviews, but all have recent reviews as well.
Quick calculation shows that
the 1/9/90-rule applies to M&S reviews and this has not gone unnoticed by
the company The most active contributors get a “Top 25 Contributor” statement under their username, which is a way of rewarding the contributors
and at the same time giving others something to strive for.
Getting a review on to the
site can take up to 48 hours, while it is being checked by M&S, but as far
as can be told, they are not censoring out bad reviews. Maintaining a certain
level of quality and keeping spamming away from the reviews increases their
reliability, which means better customer satisfaction. Also, the high number of
reviews improves their SEO, as users provide more keywords with their reviews
and make the product pages’ details sections longer.
The M&S main website is
missing a “contact us” section, which makes sending them an email or filling
out a contact form difficult. Reason for this could be because M&S is well prepared for customer
questions with their extensive Help section and virtual assistant Hannah,
and try to drive traffic towards these services, instead of burdening call
centers.
The Contact Us
page on the M&S Money-page is well divided between different topics. This lowers the length of call
times and the number of personnel required to re-direct calls, resulting into
greater customer satisfaction and lowered costs.
Customer service to my
question was a mixed result of good and bad. Calling the call center took less
than 5 minutes thanks to a direct phone number provided in an email, which was
sent to me immediately after sending the question via contact form. The
customer service representative was able to provide me with a very detailed
answer. It took M&S 4 days to finally answer my question via email but on
day 2 they did sent an email, notifying me of a delay in response time. The
final response was adequate but lacked in personal touch and detail.
Using Facebook and Twitter to
contact M&S proved to be the best way to get their attention and a
response. Within 12-hours after posting the question to the M&S Facebook
page’s discussion forum, I had a complete answer and a phone number for more information.
M&S also replied to my tweet,
referring me to their answer on Facebook. This level of service was
exceptionally good and seems to be the standard that M&S wants to maintain.
Good service via email or on the phone should not be forgotten, but questions
asked in “public” spaces like Facebook and Twitter will leave behind a digital footprint
for everyone to see. The benefit of answering a single person in Facebook or
Twitter isn’t limited down to just that one person, but it can spread beyond them
and benefit the company much more.
Summa summarum
M&S review mechanism is
well executed and this shows on their website. The number of reviewed products,
the number of reviews per product and the activity of customers, are a
testament to a mechanism, which really helps customers and is bound increase
sales. The positive ripple effect created by the excellent service in Twitter
and Facebook is and will be a competitive advantage for M&S.
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