ETD: 708 If a customer is alone in the woods...; ID Theft is
simple; WiFi and public hotspots; RFID industry responds to privacy
concerns; Gameplan for CRM
E-Tailer's Digest
etd@gapent.com
Thu, 31 Jul 2003 06:42:21 -0400
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0708 July 31, 2003
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem@gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] If a customer is alone in the woods, is he still wrong?
[3] ID Theft is simple
[4] WiFi and public hotspots
[5] RFID industry responds to privacy concerns
[6] Gameplan for CRM
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
End of July. Where did this year go? Pretty soon we will be talking about
Christmas. How's the season going for you so far? And, on a similar note,
do you believe we have to discount now to bring customers into the store in
September-October? Or do we wait until before Christmas? Time to plan folks.
Today I'm starting a thread on customer service - "If a customer is alone
in the woods, is he still wrong?" Two personal experiences with poor
service and one great one. I'd like to hear your comments. Discounters
seem to be killing independents. Our last vestige may be customer
service. What do you think?
Read the followup to ID theft. Joe Rotello states some very poignant
issues. Scary stuff.
And, Ron Corti gives us some personal experience on WiFi. Anybody else
have WiFi experience?
Technology seems to be in the news quite a bit now. RFID is the top of the
list - lot's of opinions and interesting facts. I think it is the most
major advance in retailing since EDI or barcoding. And, has Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) reached it's level of maturity where it
actually lives up to its promise? What do you think?
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
Dr. George Matyjewicz
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem@gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] If a customer is alone in the woods...
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If a customer is alone in the woods, and nobody can hear him, is he still
wrong?
What’s wrong with retailers today? What happened to customer service? For
as long as I can remember my family has been loyal Sears
shoppers. Recently my wife and I made a large purchase and we told them
delivery can only be between 9:00 AM and 5:00PM due to building
restrictions. The sales person had that on the first receipt printed,
however, because of flaws in their credit process (don't get me started on
that issue), he had to void and produce another ticket. When doing so, he
stated “delivery before 5:00 PM due to building restrictions.” He admits
the error, and we do not fault him for it.
The day before delivery we called their delivery service and learned
delivery was scheduled for 7:30 AM to 9:30 AM! We told them they can't get
here before then, and the lady on the telephone arrogantly said “you
should have called us to tell them!” Can you imagine the stupidity of that
comment? She then told us to call the sales person to have him call
her. When I called back to see if he called, another person said even if
he did call, the schedule could not be changed.
I politely told him the problem, and he responded with “what do you want to
do? Reschedule or cancel the order?”
When I called the Assistant Store Manager, I was put on hold for a long
time because “he was counting money” and couldn't talk to me! Obviously
the tone at the top here seems to be lack of customer service!
In another case we purchased vertical blinds and one was slightly
long. They were kind enough to take them back for repair (at a charge,
which was OK). We dealt with the store manager, who said we would get them
back on Thursday (this was Saturday), and he had to call the plant on
Monday. If there were any problems he would call me. Sure enough, I call
on Thursday and they had no idea where they were. The sales manager said I
should have called him on Monday!
Business is very hard to come by now-a-days, especially in the NY metro
area. Looks like they're willing to lose a customer who shopped at their
stores for forty years! And, of course, not only do they lose my family,
but they will lose all those customers who I will also tell.
Folks, I hope your customer services isn't as bad as this. All it takes is
a little common sense, and customer followup. Call when you say you are
going to call.
OTOH, I had an experience with Microsoft yesterday, which, as always was
excellent. You call them and state the problem. They record the problem,
re-state it to you and ask if they solve this problem, will they have
satisfied you. They then go through the process to solve the problem,
verify that it worked to my satisfaction, then they send a followup note
which had all the steps we went through to solve the problem. And in two
days they will call or send me an e-mail to be sure it is still
working. That's customer service!
George
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[3] ID Theft is simple
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Not only is ID theft incredibly simple, when you are a victim of it, YOU
are usually the one that MUST do the following:
- You prove that you were indeed a victim
- You prove that you did not instigate any charges or debts, that this is a
real ID theft
- You do all the paperwork to contact billing agencies, banks, credit card
companies
- You create the proof's needed to convince credit reporting agencies, bill
collectors, other creditor's lawyers, and etc. of the first two items
listed above
- You suffer the rampant calls, threats, bad credit file entries, etc.,
that almost always happen as a result of ID theft
- You pay for very likely having to hire your own attorney when you find
out that your state consumer protection agency, the Federal Trade
Commission, and other state and federal agencies are remarkably impotent,
and that their most favored response is "We can help you, maybe, but you
have to do the following...", their second most favored response is
"There's little we can do, and you should refer this to your attorney..."
Agreed, not all ID theft victims will be treated to the above laundry list
that is set against them, but I and many other researchers, victims and
others involved in the process might well wager that the vast majority will be.
ID theft is very destructive. Even more so is the "assistance" (or lack of)
that you receive, and the sudden and prolonged feeling that it is YOU who
is somehow both the criminal AND the responsible party in this act that was
perpetrated against you.
Comments to the above are most welcomed.
Joe Rotello
WindowGroup
Kodak, TN
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[4] WiFi and public hotspots
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Tried Wi-Fi via T-Mobile at 3 Admirals clubs on recent trip. Worked great!
Can't remember if I had to load any software. It was too quick to be any
kind of an issue. All I had to do was log into T-Mobile with name and
password. For billing - I had signed up for 300 minutes for $50. My
operating system is Windows XP Prof.
Ron Corti
+++ [Moderator's Comments] +++
Thanks Ron. In Crain's this week, they reported that McDonalds is
launching WiFi service in 60 New York metro area restaurants. The service,
free for the month of August, will cost $3 a day.
Another 10 restaurants will be added to the roster soon.
In March, McDonalds ran a pilot of the program with 10 Manhattan-based
restaurants, using Cometa Networks-a joint venture formed by AT&T, Intel
and IBM.
McDonalds first introduced WiFi to its franchises in San Francisco. In New
York, Starbucks also offers paid wireless access.
http://crainsny.com/news.cms?newsId=6161
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[5] RFID industry responds to privacy concerns
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Item-level RFID tracking in retail is still probably a decade away, but
consumer privacy issues are already front and center for the developers of
the Electronic Product Code (EPC) network, which will use the technology to
track goods in the retail supply chain.
During the past few weeks, a group called Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) has issued a barrage of press
releases, accusing companies involved with the Auto-ID Center at MIT (which
developed the EPC concept) of spying on customers using RFID readers and
cameras, and warning consumers about possible privacy abuses once the
technology is ubiquitous.
The EPC network assigns unique serial numbers to consumer goods, which can
be tracked in real-time using RFID tags. For the time being, most companies
are focusing on using EPC technology for pallet and case tracking to
improve efficiency in the supply chain. Field trials have been under way
for several years.
Wal-Mart has delayed its plans for item-level EPC trials, as it plans to
ramp up 100 suppliers for RFID pallet tracking by 2005. Item-level field
trials (originally planned with The Gillette Company) won't take place
until 2007 or later, and the Auto-ID Center's work on unit tagging has
moved back into the lab for the time being, says Kevin Ashton, executive
director of the Center.
It is item-level tagging that has privacy advocates worried, though, and
the Center has already developed some initial recommendations for privacy
policies, as well as a feature that would allow retailers to "kill" the
tags at the point of sale.
Bar codes faced similar criticism when they were first rolled out on a
large scale in retail during the 1980s, and those who remember that
controversy know that educating consumers about RFID will be an important
part of EPC adoption.
Details at...
http://www.frontlinetoday.com/frontline/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=64905
In a related article in Consumer Goods Technology, Gillette spokesperson
Paul Fox said the company's number one goal in deploying RFID is to ensure
its products reach retailers.
"The retail sector loses $70 billion annually because products are not on
the shelf, or because products get lost within the supply chain through
being misplaced or stolen,"says Fox. These losses, according to Fox, are
why more CG companies are migrating to RFID technology.
Details at...
http://www.consumergoods.com/issue/june03_art3.htm
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[6] Gameplan for CRM
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Is any list member using Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
software? If so, I would like to hear your experiences.
According to an article in RIS News, CRM software has matured, according to
experts, to the point where it lives up to the promise of optimizing
information for the purpose of effectively building virtual one-to-one
personalized relationships.
As a result, many more retailers have implemented CRM initiatives over the
past year. To maximize their CRM initiatives, retailers have learned that
the secrets of success are using the tools intelligently, having the
know-how to segment customers properly in order to differentiate between
them, personalize promotions and offers, and effectively measure results.
“You can’t just buy and install a CRM tool and think you’ve solved the
problem,” says Paula Rosenblum, retail research director at Boston-based
AMR Research. “You’ve got to invest the resources, make sure you know your
customer, personalize your programs and engage in customer segmentation.”
Failure to differentiate between customers — the key to personalizing the
shopping experience — is one of the main reasons why many retailers don’t
experience the full benefits of CRM deployments. Retailers who are getting
the most value out of CRM systems know how to segment and reach the highly
valued customers effectively, explains Chris Sellers, global leader,
solutions consulting, in the consumer industries and retail practice of EDS.
Details at...
http://www.risnews.com/issue/july03_art2.htm
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