Andrea Payaro, Anna Rita Papa

(P&P Consulting & Service s.r.l., Italy)

 

 

Abstract: Customer satisfaction is one of the most important issues concerning business organizations of all types, which is justified by the customer-orientation philosophy and the main principles of continuous improvement of modern enterprises. Nowadays most companies operate multiple channels including Internet. For companies, receiving a complaint by Internet is particularly attractive as online complaint management increases both the efficiency and effectivity of complaint management. Moreover, complaint channel choice and online consumer complaining behavior have received only limited attention. The aim of this paper is to verify the after sale service of 138 companies producers of consumer goods. In particular, this study measures the response time and the quality of the answer after a complaint sent by email or web form. The sample is composed of food (no fresh, no private label) goods and they are randomly selected from the shelf of supermarket. In our sample, a small percentage of companies don’t write the Internet site or an email address on the product’s label (14%). Only large enterprises and multinational companies answer in less than 24-48 hours. Often they personalize the reply and only in few cases they surprise their customer with something the customer doesn’t wait. Probably, small and medium enterprises don’t consider the customer service a main component of the business.

 

 

Key words: web service; complaint; consumer goods; customer service

 

JEL codes: M300, M310