Vendors keep drawing a distinction between business to business and consumer commerce on the 'Net, but there's really no differenace at all, participants in a "Town Meeting" session said last night.
"You have to listen to your customers," said Deborah Alexander, CEO of the Kosher Grocer online grocery store at the electronic-commerce session, said. "They are yet adjusted to Web shopping," but they can tell you what they need. By next year, between 4% and 10% of retail shopping will exist on the Web, she said.
The important thing is to teach customers how to use the Web, "otherwise they won't know how to come on and shop," she said. "You're not developing technology, you're developing a way to keep the consumer satisfied."
But Pat Dickens, director of electronic business and market development for Intel Corp., said it is the computer industry that is not comfortable with the 'Net yet. "Customers have very high expectations," she said.
Many companies make the mistake of thinking that they are going to save money by merely setting up a Web site. But that money has to be spent on predicting where the industry is going and how your company is going to take advantage of new technologies such as increased server power. "You can't just sit back and say, 'I'm saving money,'" she said.
Dickens said that no one truly paid attention to the importance of customer support and services until the focus of electronic commerce switched to business-to-business. "Now money is pouring into these areas on the business-to-consumer side."
Jim Coane, president of N2K, Inc., agreed that customers have to be the drivers in your business. His online music store, Music Boulevard, experienced this firsthand. While Coane had accounted for most technology issues when establishing his Web site, he didn't plan for his customers' heightened need for live customer service. He had to increase his phone center staff sixfold in six months. "Our customers are not the early adopters that are used to putting up with problems," Coane said. "If you have a 1-800 number, it had better be fully staffed and working."
But Alexander said "the virtual store should be paperless and have minimal phone calls."
Coane argued that that is not possible. His customers sometimes call up just to hum a tune to a customer service representative to figure out what the title is. "That's something you can't do online yet," he said.
Coane added that the hard part is not retaining customers because he has a very high return rate, it's acquiring them in the first place and making sure their needs are immediately met.
Feeling safe
One area where customers' needs aren't being met is security, the panelists said. While the infrastructure is there to make transactions secure, vendors and customers agreed that the financial institutions and credit card companies need to jump on the bandwagon and say the 'Net is a secure place to do business."The Internet is going to follow the ATM model of security," said Randy Meyer, vice president of marketing for Compaq Computer Corp.'s electronic commerce division. "Eventually, it will become trusted." Meyer said it took a while, but the ATM is now viewed as a secure way to do business.
Again, Dickens said the problem may not be consumer hesitation, but instead company reluctance. "I'm not too sure Intel would feel safe sending dailies for the big ad campaign over the Web," she said.
"If anything is going to bring 'Net commerce to its knees, it's not going to be security, it's going to be privacy," said Robert Weinberger, vice president of marketing for Open Market, Inc.
The cart before the horse
"Sometimes companies do electronic commerce without fully understanding what they're trying to accomplish," Coane said."That's when you start automating bad processes," and get stuck in a cycle," said Don Bailey, senior vice president of operations for EuroRSCG.
"The 'Net is going to revolutionize how you can sell to and reach customers," Weinberger said. "You will not just reach customers from your Web site, you will need to reach them from everywhere." While this global view of universal access can add pressure to Web site operators, it also opens up the opportunity for small businesses "to tap into a network infrastructure only available to large companies," he said.
Also participating in the town meeting were Lawrence Catchpole, chief technology officer of WebTone Technologies; Peter Kestenbaum, director of field marketing for Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Bryan Plug, president and CEO of Pandesic Co.; Leith Anderson, marketing manager at Hewlett-Packard Co.; and Fred Douglas, executive vice president of new product development at SNS Systems, Inc.
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