When shopping familiarity can hurt customer loyalty and integrity.
If you have stayed online long enough to know the Philippine
social media landscape, you can say that it is not a perfect world where all
dreams are made, unless you are a “clouted” influencer, begged by many
followers to post more and more.
If you are bent on keeping your hopes
via a social media platform, en route to pushing a business, pursuing a
job, or amplifying your brand, know that your efforts could redound to fail and it is all hashtag "sipag" mode for you.
Unless you have the number of likes
to back you up. And the "pursigido" stance to back your social media exposure just like what controversial personalities do, staying online can be an utter waste of dreams and time.
In actuality, it is the likes and follows, that feed the gratification of social media users wanting exposure or earnings, and droves of advertisers together; like a symbiotic link that can make page rankings happen.
But whether there is sincerity to the
number of likes (are your followers really liking a product or a post, or are they
merely positioning their own social media exposure?), or whether followers await
incentives that some influencers offer, why netizens “follow” a social media page is another issue to contend with.
In the world of online marketing, likes
are good. And page views can be counted and paid to the decimal point, the way
freelancers are paid in the modern heyday of the millennials, up to the nth
point of counts, only when a writer has to scrutinize the words not by pages, but by
words before computing pay for a certain written work.
With social media, there is the
invisibility of how an algorithm would perform. Up or down views or slump, your pages or site
would have to bank on a string of luck if you're a newbie (of course we also count the SEO format
to make rankings happen). Thus page views and the so-called numbers give hints of how earnings can be made, not by lightning speed, but by slowed-down numbers
that would only trend with viral positioning and content strategizing.
If numbers are the “engine” for social
media that lures advertisers in, what then boosts an E-COMMERCE PLATFORM?
I say it is the ambiguity on the ease of use of a shopping platform that can push sales yet also mount an ordinary consumer's plain woe indeed.
Ambiguity because the business
structure of e-commerce is somewhat hidden from the public’s plain
sight.
Whereas when you buy food from a fast-food store, a customer can get a grasp of the grid of manpower in a typical fast-food outlet-- make an order, queue, or push a button on the screen and choose whether to pay via e-wallet or via the counter, THE BUYING process is all seen and everything can be managed and dealt with directly by the paying customer.
Incomplete orders can be easily
followed up. Unhappy customers can easily whine about undelivered orders, etcetera.
But with E-COMMERCE, it is a totally invisible
business makeup, that fronts the ease of buying as the main sell point using a
downloadable app.
Get an app and if one goes pick an item, cart away, or request a product ship then. BUT ALL ELSE IS STALLED WHEN AFTER BUYING a product, A CUSTOMER ENCOUNTERS ISSUES ON A PURCHASED ITEM.
THE ROUTE TO RETURNS IS NOT CLEAR. LIKE A TREASURE HUNT TO FIND THE RIGHT SITE TO RETURN AN ITEM OR HOW TO GO ABOUT IT.
MOST OF THE TIME, COURIERS DO NOT ACCEPT RETURN ITEMS AND WOULD POINT AT ANOTHER SHIPPING
PARTNER.
EASY PURCHASE, EASY DELIVERY IT MAY SEEM, THAT AN
E-COMMERCE PLATFORM COULD ALSO OFFER A PAYLATER PLAN. BUT THIS COMPLICATES THE PROCESS AS
WELL OF FURTHER REPEATING A BUY ON A PLATFORM.
The formality of staying within the app and waiting for a delivery is diluted with many factors that can serve as a paint point to a regular customer. The schedule and wait-and-see-receive time for purchases made are not always pliant according to the customer’s preference unless an individual customer has a repeat order history with a particular e-commerce platform.
Another is the complexity of
returning a purchased item as mentioned earlier. Where return routes are not accessible or when shipping site personnel do not accept return items readily.
The convenience of having refunds from sellers, but with issues negated against the requests of a customer can cause a strain on customer service handling. Some customers can be subjected to face-to-face ridicule, slight comments, or off-the-cuff remarks from personnel manning shipping outlets.
However, this does not cloud the many choices that fill the app, and tout the ease of using an E-COMMERCE PLATFORM for shopping.
Thus, customers can stay with the e-commerce platform due to the ease of shopping. But they also have to contend with the risk of data being shared, with exposure of customer details as well. Also, customers cannot elude face-to-face interactions and could be exposed to strangers aka couriers, getting a handle on their orders. In reality, the after-sales experience for a customer can always vary.
Also, when it comes to data privacy, customers can find their important mobile number pasted or stickered on shipped items' packaging, for coordination with the courier on the actual day and time of deliveries. Thus if there is ambiguity in the process of return for defective, or unordered items sent to customers, and the nuisance of making returns, the better concern is why customers have to deal with their details being fronted and shared on shipping packs, and through direct mobile prompts outside the e-commerce’s platform when availing of the PAY LATER SCHEME?
Further, the ambiguity of service in an e-commerce platform that
packs a lot of personalization when it comes to offering the right products to
customers can also be felt in the “no-response” posturing for customer care, which receives feedback and complaints. Surely must it
all be a chatbot waiting for feedback?
The point here is, if the ease of buying rests only on the
phase of delivery, from purchase to customer receipt, does this mean customer
loyalty or repeat orders must be shied away by the shoppers?
If it is, then the customers must not be blind-sighted as to how customer data is shared and passed on to others who fill up the e-commerce structure of making door-to-door deliveries and shopping convenience happen.
