Customer Relationship Management

I patted myself for the brilliant and effortless way in which I went about anniversary gift shopping  and waited patiently for my bank to communicate the go-ahead to the online retailer/merchant but from here onwards things didn’t kind of follow the script. Firstly it took ages for me to reach back my merchant's site and then to my horror I saw that I have reached the login page, and, hoping against hope, I plugged in my credentials, went to my account, and noticed that my order is still pending as they are "awaiting payment".

I thought this is a minor hitch, let me call the merchant (outstation call) and sort this out, after all I had the bank reference number and a screenshot of the approval message (smart on my part to have captured it, right?).

Well, I was told by the polite call center agent - who greeted me by my name - that they will look into this and call me back, I was pleasantly surprised by the prompt response and zero call hold time, and my faith was somewhat restored in online purchasing.

This incident led me to think about where the transaction went wrong. What could the merchant have done to ensure a seamless transaction and consequently a better experience for me. The retailer obviously had a modern ecommerce site and handed over my transaction smartly to the bank, whose security credentials I do not doubt. Here too everything went off smoothly and then the confirmation message back to the merchant system was generated but lost in transit. So the order is parked in the pending queue. Only after getting the banks approval will the merchant pass it on to their shippers.

Now when the merchant has invested so much in creating a modern ecommerce system why shouldn’t they think of overcoming such communication glitches? After spending on a good CRM system internally (good call center, chat facility on their website, friendly campaign messages and customized promotional discounts during significant events like birthdays, festivals etc) and having a secure interface with the bank why should they relax? Couldn’t they have anticipated such mishaps?

Should the bank send just one asynchronous confirmation message to the merchant and not wait for a received notification from the merchant? Or shouldn’t the merchant IT system ping the bank a few minutes after transfer on not "hearing" back from the bank regarding my transaction?

Or shouldn’t the merchant build some logic in their system which ensures that as soon as the money is transferred to their account by the bank (which I believe will be done instantaneously) they get a notification and their system will try and connect this transaction with a placed order and automatically update the status of my "pending" order to confirmed. Instead of leaving the order as an orphan.

Why should the investment made on internal systems – and customer satisfaction - be compromised due to a less than optimum interface with the bank? A less optimum solution would be for the merchant to have an agent deal with such fallouts manually but though this gives a human touch to their operations it will still lead to delays. For all such connection breakages there should be an inbuilt logic for automatic reversal of the transaction, at the banks side, on an unsuccesful hand over, with an appropriate notification (sms/on screen message) to the customer, this will certainly reduce the customer's anxiety and may even ensure that he visits the site again for a repeat transaction.

Another solution would be for the online merchant to invest in good PRM systems to connect with their shippers and other sales and service partners to ensure that they are notified of such an order which is very likely to be confirmed soon and in the meantime they ought to go ahead and start with the shipping formalities.

So after not hearing back from the merchant’s call center agent I sent them an email with all my case details and am anxiously waiting for a response. Should I visit another online retailer and place my order before it is too late? Hope CRM doesn’t become a reason for some marital friction and if it does then I certainly know whom not to entrust to send more flowers to mollify my wife, I would be better off calling the florist near her home for an assured delivery .