Ranjini Rao's Journey to an Extra ordinary living

Ever since the FlipKart Mega Sale concluded and enough said on the huge revenue amassed by them and I was also amongst those to having received their regret letter and read a lot of frustrated online shoppers on social media who were not lucky enough to pick their choices in time!
Lets see what happened to those who picked the products well in time and seemed lucky ! I guess FlipKart didn’t spare them as well to turn good customers into bad ones 🙂

The worst recent posts on Facebook state that #Flipkart sends them a regret note to inform them that their courier partner was unable to deliver the order and hence they have taken the liberty to cancel the items and initiated refunds!
(Source :Anonymous & restricted)

The result :
1) Furious shoppers bad mouthing them again on forums!
2) Hashtags like #flipkartsucks #onebillionfools
3) Comments like ridiculous fake discount tags with cheaper prices.
4) Earning interest and buying time during the refund period week
5) No control over the courier/ logistics -Self or owned

Who gained in revenue Flipkart ..
Who gains long term? Amazon of course !

The overall negative sentiment is proving that all online shoppers are swearing to shop on Amazon and that tilts the #CustomerExperience and positive #Sentiment in their favour .

As strategists we often ask :
Q : Who owns the end to end customer experience here ?
Q: Is FlipKart listening on Social ?
Q: What is the response strategy?
Q: How will Flipkart regain customer mindshare?

What could they have done differently ?

These are just suggestions but happy to hear suggestions and more inputs :}
1) Real time tracking social media monitoring & response mechanism : Listening to negative sentiment and responding actively and genuinely to unhappy clients / prospects
2)Build trust and maintaining transparency : Genuine concerns/ challenges stated upfront by maintaining transparency amongst customers especially for delayed shipments would have gone a long way in retaining trust and customer retention.
3) Customer Experience It is : Appointing a Customer happiness manager ? Clients will feel assured and trustworthy to purchase in future and know that FlipKart cares..Please refer to my post on Customer Experience matters in a digital world
4) Email or phone communication around replacement or refund : The clients did not shop with an intend to seek refund !

So all said and done..in a digital world there are no faces -there are only transactions for Flipkart or any ecommerce company and if and when they reach enlightenment for gaining customer loyalty and customer retention then someone needs to show up and take ownership …So will the real mr Bansal please stand up?

(Disclaimer: These views thoughts,opinions are my own and does not represent my company.I am not representing my company while sharing any opinions on social media)

I recently published my first post on Linkedin :http://linkd.in/1mPKheG
Here is the excerpt

Customer Experience is growing to be the most significant part of all businesses whether B2B or B2C. Marketing professionals, digital domain experts, online retailers, brick and mortar businesses and even the entire gamut of service providers across the world are all eager to know more and implement more concrete steps towards enhancing customer experience. Learning is truly endless and the advent of the internet has made real time learning completely possible. Here are the top sites that garnered my clicks and more when it comes to Customer Experience.

Forrester – The site is a treasure of links that reveal informative blogs by CEM professionals, ratings and reports that give you the demographics about CX practices and what not. Industry trends in CEM are most often captured in Forrester blogs as key decision makers and CXOs share their CEM strategies and success stories. I have found their articles very vital to my CEM learning and that explains why the site features on first position on my list, way ahead of the rest.http://blogs.forrester.com

http://solutions.forrester.com/customer-experience/

CX Journey – This site by Annette Franz is a collection of some seriously informative and well -presented articles. She has riveting articles by guest bloggers too. Her report interpretations really score high on my must-read list. Annette Franz’s CX is a site to watch out for. You can even read testimonies of her CX information on comments by other readers. It is evident that this certified CX professional is making the most of her learning by sharing it with the rest of her likes. I will let the site to the talking.

http://www.cx-journey.com/2014/

Clear Action – This is a CX consultancy firm that seems to have an appreciable body of informative articles by CX professionals. I have read their blog pages that cater to separate CX categories like Voice of the Customer, Customer Value, Experience Innovation and the like. I will like to trail this site and its offerings.

http://clearactioncx.com/blog/

Customer Experience Matters – This is the WordPress blog of the Temkin Group. I have found the site absolutely useful and helps keep track of current industry CX trends, reports and more. Temkin Group’s CX ratings of organizations also find their way to these blogs. I have, in fact, mentioned Bruce Temkins as one of the top influencers for CXM practices on my blog. Bruce Temkins is a key contributor to the Customer Experience Matters blog. Here’s a site a CXM professional will not like to miss reading.

http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/

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