ecommerce

Retailers must gear up for mobile influenced cross-channel sales

Published on: August 08, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Cross-channel sales, also known as web-influenced sales, are purchases that are touched by a digital channel but are not completed online.  According to US data from Forrester, cross-channel sales are becoming increasingly important and are worth four times more in total than online sales alone. In fact, the analyst estimates that cross-channel sales will reach $1.8 trillion by 2018.A big par...

5 impacts that Amazon has had on customer experience

Published on: July 04, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Demand Generation Manager

Last month Amazon turned twenty. In 1994 founder Jeff Bezos left his job, drove to Seattle and set up the business in his garage. Originally going to be called Cadabra (as in Abracadabra), the name changed to Amazon after fears that people would mishear it as “cadaver”. It now offers over 230 million separate items for sale in the US alone and had 2013 revenues of $74.5 billion.Amazon ...

Delivering patchy performance - UK retailers and customer service

Published on: July 02, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

The UK retail landscape has changed radically in the last ten years. The rise of the internet, new competition, increasingly demanding consumers and the slowdown caused by the recession have triggered the demise of many long-standing players, transforming the sector.How are the UK’s top retailers coping with these challenges? To find out, the Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study eva...

4 ways customer service can make Mother’s Day special

Published on: March 28, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Demand Generation Manager

Over the years the importance of celebrating Mother’s Day has grown, and it is now one of the busiest periods for sending flowers outside Valentine’s Day. Britons spend an average of £12 each on gifts for their mothers, although research shows that this rises to £53 in Liverpool.However, there is one major difference with other celebrations such as Christmas. Mother’s...

Cyber Monday and customer service

Published on: December 06, 2013
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

We’re now well into the Christmas shopping season, with Cyber Monday behind us and both retailers and analysts releasing their first figures for sales. This seems to show a strong start for many retailers, helped by promotions around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. John Lewis said online sales for the week ending 30 November were 35.7% higher than last year, while ChannelAdvisor reported that...

Eptica powers global multichannel customer service for L’Occitane

Published on: November 27, 2013
Author: Eptica

In order to streamline and optimise its entire customer service operations, perfume and cosmetics group L'Occitane has chosen Eptica’s multi-lingual customer management interaction software.Eptica is being used to manage incoming emails, web self-service and telephone contacts, as well as to power L’Occitane’s new web chat service in Europe. Through a centralised knowledgebas...

Integrating showrooming into the customer experience

Published on: July 31, 2013
Author: Epticablog

Sales on the High Street continue to be squeezed by online rivals – and the growth of smartphones is opening another front in the battle for revenues. Increasingly shoppers are using mobiles while in-store to showroom, testing products and comparing offline and online prices before choosing where to spend their money.Research from TNS demonstrates the scale of showrooming – but also wh...

Christmas is coming…………

Published on: June 28, 2013
Author: Eptica

We’re now less than six months from Christmas, and the majority of retailers are well-advanced in planning how they will handle their busiest time. And with economic conditions little better than in 2012, competition is expected to be intense as shoppers demand more for their money.So what do retailers need to focus on to ensure that Christmas 2013 is a happy one?New research by L2 into spec...

Make it mobile

Published on: June 12, 2013
Author: Epticablog

Mobile commerce is growing rapidly. Figures from performance marketing network Affiliate Window showed it made up 18.16% of its UK online sales in May 2013, increasing from 16.48% in April. That’s an enormous 572 sales per hour. Backing this up, the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index saw 2012 mobile sales triple (up 304%) from 2011. More importantly, conversion rates on mobile have doubled,...

Lifting the gloom on the High Street

Published on: February 21, 2013
Author: Epticablog

Amidst all the bad news on the high street there is one bright spot when it comes to physical retailing – the shopping centre. Despite national figures that show 1 in 7 British shops are currently unoccupied, there is major growth in high end shopping centres that act as destinations for consumers. In fact rents are rising by 5-6% in larger centres with very few shops left empty and multiple...

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