Year 2000.I got my first computer. Year 2001. I became addict to Baazee.com an online shopping portal which was later acquired by ebay to grow into the current ebay.in. In the meantime, lots of other ecommerce websites bloomed and fizzled. Most notable were tradus.com, snapdeal, flipkart etc. As of today we have flood of choices to buy from, ranging from websites specific to a product category to A-Z ecommerce sites. The shopping experience has been improving by day and people are turning from being need based shoppers to impulse shoppers. Big ecommerce portals like flipkart can predict which of their frequent customer, an impulse shopper, will jump to a specific deal on a specific product.
But for the end user, ultimately its the shopping experience that matters. Right from the presentation, the price, ease of buying and the delivery mechanism is what customer uses to rate the overall experience. And over a period of just over one year, one portal has been delivering world class shopping experience to Indian. Amazon.
For years I’ve been drooling over the mouth watering deals offered in the USA by Amazon. Some deals unheard of in India all this time. Think of a camera at 6000 rs discount to its market price, not MRP mind you, market price(By market price I mean the average price at which it is sold in market which is normally much less than MRP. Brick and Mortar stores normally quote market price as discounted price and we believe that it couldn’t get better.) But portals like flipkart and amazon has redefined the concept deep discounts. The big billion day saw me lighter by 11000 rs but overall I saved 3000 rs by purchasing on that day. And those purchases were imminent. I purchased a camera on amazon about 8 months back for 30,000. Brick and mortar store still lists it for 36000, under discount.
And here’s the best deal.
(Adv: Amazon Deal of the Day
How many time you have bought something and within a week wished that you had waited for the better product listed later? I confess I have felt so, many a times. But what options do I have.
With amazon, you have the option; Of returning the item if better deal is available(apart from options of return in case of damage/defect etc.). I recently experienced this with my laptop purchase. I had bought a Lenovo B50-70 for 32,000, and within two days of receiving it, opening it up and putting it to use, amazon listed an upgraded laptop for 30,000.I was feeling quite dejected for the hasty discounted purchase and thought about talking to customer care about it but was sceptical about their response. But there was no harm in enquiring and so I had a chat with the customer care executive.
To my surprise, the executive said that I could return under the reason better deal available and can buy another one. The executive even offered to start the process for me. I jumped to the offer, knowing well that if things didn’t workout, I would not part away my current laptop and would cancel the delivery of the new laptop. Later I twice had a chat with two different executives to confirm that my return would be accepted and refunded, to which, both of them put me to ease. My only job was to packup the laptop and Fedex picked it up from my door step along with the paperwork send to me by amazon. As soon as the pick up was updated on fedex, I got a message saying that refund process was initiated and my card was credited with full refund within two days, about 4 days before the returned laptop reached amazon. I got the new laptop after 3 days pickup.
During the chats, the first customer care executive said that “customer satisfaction was their top priority and since I was clearly dissatisfied with my purchase I could return it”. Isn’t it Amazing?
I hope amazon keeps on redefining customer satisfaction in India and force others to follow suit.