C³ Commerce Cubed Strategy.

How to wow customers and keep them coming back

C³, or Commerce Cubed, is a customer retention strategy encompassing three essential components required for successful e-commerce web sites in the 21st Century. To survive in this new era, online companies need to have an effective C³ strategy. This issue of eRetailNews examines the three components of a C³ web site. We will also introduce the leading tools available to eRetailers to quickly implement a strong C³ strategy, and we will look at some of the sites using these tools today.

Early e-commerce

The early e-commerce web sites can be characterized as online catalogs, offering a wide range of products with the convenience of ordering online. These first generation sites are still abundant on the Internet today. 

With thousands of sites coming online each day, many companies are struggling to differentiate themselves. Having a great selection and low prices is not enough to survive. Sites must evolve or die, and they must evolve at an unprecedented rate. 

If you consider the evolution of traditional retailing over the past fifty years, the Internet retail economy is evolving ten times faster. What took fifty years in brick and mortar takes five years or less on the Internet.

C³ components

The components of the strategy are:
Customer Care
Content
Community

Each component must be present to ensure customers visit a web site on a regular basis. The quality of each component determines the volume of traffic the site receives.

Customer Care

Customer care is the broadest component of C³ and the most important in determining profitability. Consumers are prepared to pay higher prices for great customer service. Since it’s difficult to offer the lowest price and afford to deliver great service, very few companies should consider having ‘the lowest price’ as a strategic imperative. There can only be one winner using this strategy because only one company can have the lowest price. (This differs from using low price on promotional products as loss leaders to attract consumers).

How are new generation sites delivering outstanding customer care?

The best sites are offering a wide range of options for customers to get help on their site:

• Live online chat/help with trained experts
• Immediate call back or voice over IP (VoIP)
• Shopping assistants to help customers select products
• 24x7 telephone help.

(Continued)

FULL TEXT AVAILABLE TO eRetailNews MEMBERS IN 2000-3 REPORT.

Click here to join.