“Profitability, when you work at an established company, is an expectation and a requirement. It is not optional.” With so much concern over online retailers these days, it is refreshing to see there are many companies doing well in the online world and making a profit. For companies like Eddie Bauer (featured in the 2000-5 eRetailNews Report), profitability is an expectation. Sally McKenzie, Director of Merchandising and Operations for Eddie Bauer’s Interactive Media Division, puts it like this, “Profitability, when you work at an established company, is an expectation and a requirement. It is not optional.” According to McKenzie, Eddie Bauer will be implementing a major site overhaul this year; as well as improving the way a product is presented, the site will offer customers different ways to shop. In addition to navigating through category tree structures, they plan on offering the ability for customers to put outfits together themselves and view how they look on a mannequin or model. They also plan on allowing customers with catalogs to browse the site in parallel with looking at their catalog, helping them to navigate through products in the same sequence. The site will feature “pertinent lifestyle content,” says McKenzie. “We have a customer base that’s interested in a lot of lifestyle activities. The more that we can bring them relevant information about the end use of our products, the more likely we are to build a site that keeps them coming back.” Eddie Bauer’s online marketing strategy is divided into three areas: Acquisition – finding new customers to bring to the site; online placement with portals such as MSN, Yahoo, AOL have been most effective, as has banner advertising. Retention – Creating incentives for online customers to continue shopping at Eddie Bauer; direct mail and email work well. Conversion – taking a shopper that would normally shop in an Eddie Bauer store or from a catalog, and getting them to shop on the web as well; catalogs and direct mailers work well. “There are distinct differences between online shoppers of today and those of just a couple of years ago,” suggests McKenzie. “The expectation of the online shopper is changing pretty dramatically. When we launched the website, most of the people that shopped us were very technology savvy. They were very forgiving of issues.” Common in the early days were emails that said things like ‘hey I think your site is having a problem, you might want to check this out, and here are some suggestions you might try to fix it’. People shopping on the Net were at the forefront of online shopping. “Today it’s a very different situation. We’ve got main stream consumers shopping online, which is a wonderful thing, but they of course have zero tolerance for any kind of malfunction.” The speed at which customers expect a response is accelerating. Eddie Bauer has recently implemented tools from ServiceSoft to enhance their site. “We’ve primarily used it to streamline the customer service areas of our site,” says McKenzie “We use it in the AskEddie feature, which is the knowledge base feature that allows customers to type in a question and get an answer. If they can’t get an answer then they have the option of chatting live with an associate via email chat. We have noticed dramatic decreases in the amount of email we have received from customers about the typical matters that come up in the course of an online shopping experience. That has allowed us to maximize our efficiency at the customer service center. We are not wading through lots and lots of email where the answer to those questions can now easily be found on our website. We feel very strongly that customers on this channel want to be self-service and the ServiceSoft tool really does allow them to do that.” The next phase for Eddie Bauer will be to move the live chat further up in the site profile, making it easier for visitors to engage in chat sessions with the customer service representatives. “One of the things that you need to do when you’re dealing on the customer service side of things is not promise something that you can’t deliver,” suggests McKenzie. “What we need to understand is, where are those places on the site that the customer tends to use the feature more, and make sure that we are staffed adequately to be able to handle it so that we don’t have people waiting.” McKenzie’s keys to profitability: Maximizing efficiency on backend systems – the more you can reduce the cost per transaction, the better off you will be. Leveraging the brand – the more a company can leverage its existing brand equity through multiple channels the less money is needed to spend on advertising. Keeping focused on the customer and making sure that the development dollars you spend are spent on things that make life easier for the customer. That is really what is going to keep them coming back.
Don't miss the feature on Eddie Bauer in the 2000-5 eRetailNews report. | 