Shrinkhala'14 Jabong Caselet

Delivering lifestyle in
ecommerce
A Case Study on post purchase customer experience
in an Indian e-commerce company
Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce
Contents
1.
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 2
2.
Query-handling at Customer care .................................................................................................... 3
3.
Introduction to customer queries .................................................................................................... 5
4.
Customer query resolution model ................................................................................................... 7
5.
Challenges in present Query handling model ................................................................................ 8
6.
Questions ............................................................................................................................................. 9
7.
Appendices ........................................................................................................................................ 10
Appendix 1 Order Fulfillment (Order cycle flow chart)........................................................................ 10
Appendix 2: Nature of query and volume.............................................................................................. 11
Appendix 3 Comparison of Trendy.com with Mykart.com and Magic.com ........................................ 14
Appendix 4: Resolution process .............................................................................................................. 14
Appendix 5: Costing for query and complaints ....................................................................................... 15
Appendix 6: Sales and cost data of e-commerce companies in India..................................................... 16
All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com
Page 1 of 16
1. Introduction
E-commerce industry has witnessed tremendous growth and attention in last 2 years and its
rampant increase in scale and coverage has set the growth story next best to rapid expansion
of software industry in early 90s.
Going by the extensive studies on the growth of this mysterious giant in making called ecommerce, the primary reasons can be attributed as follows:
Rapid increase in internet penetration

Availability of much wider product range compared to what is available at brick and mortar
retailers
More convenience offered in online shopping.
Lower price and more discount offers available in online channels
Evolution of intermediary and marketplace model reducing cost even further & scope of
increasing product depth and width.
E-Commerce is one of the most exciting spaces for todays global online community and
Indias young startup economy is along for the ride. In the less than three months of 2011,
Indian VCs have already invested over $50 million in seven e-commerce companies, a 400
percent increase over the same period just last year quotes Sony ceberwal, COO, exclusive.in.
Last 6 months have been very eventful for trendy.com with it earning reputation as one of the
leading e-commerce companies. The company has fared extremely well in terms of Views per
day, conversion & brand development featuring in almost all popular e-commerce forums.
Trendy.com has been able to capture the imagination of an average Indian customer by offering
a large catalogue of lifestyle products and a super-fast delivery service to boot quotes leading
forum for VC across the globe.
Ever since inception, the company has embarked on a huge mass communication campaign
through online advertising, social media marketing & multiple TV and radio commercials. It
created its own logistics network, pioneered in WH operations which ensured a significant
presence in the market within a very short span while others took at least two-three years to
build them up.
But the picture is not as rosy as it seems. Ecommerce offers many operational challenges that a
very few companies have been able to manage despite many new ventures budding every day.
The primary catalyst for ecommerce is word of mouth marketing. In lieu of the pertinent
skepticism like will I get my order in time, will it be the same as shown on website, will I get
my refund in time if I return the product, Is the product I am getting original, it is imperative
to practice what you preach for all ecommerce companies.
Page 2 of 16

Negative flows 1000 times faster than positive reviews. With the advent of various social
networking sites and incredible awareness of consumer rights amongst a middle class metro
resident, one grievance takes minutes to reach hundreds of other customers.
Currently we have 68% new customers every day. The bottom-line is that an Indian customer
is still exploring e-commerce services. A poor first impression presents damaging risk of
losing the customer and hence proving detrimental for long term goal of every ecommerce
company: increasing customer life-time value (CLV).Company that has higher retained
customers survives this intensely competitive battleground Rahul Gupta, Director,
Operations, Trendy.com
Rahul continues, What is as important as minimizing customer grievance is solving them in
time & at par with customer expectation, if not better. This could very well serve the purpose of
retaining the customer. Currently 62 percent of customers who have called our customer care
at least once with a query or grievance, shop from our site again. Our eventual goal should be
to improve this number to 100%.
2. Query-handling at Customer care

The customer query/grievances are broadly categorized into following:
Pre-dispatch (WH issue)

Post-dispatch from Warehouse (logistics issue)
Product related (Production & sourcing issue)
Returns related
Every query/grievance is essentially concerned with one particular function (mentioned above).
More than 80% of customer queries are handled on call.
Trendy.com has a dedicated in-house ticketing system to manage information and action flow
across function. The ticket management tool serves following requirements of the company:
Seem-less, real time information flow between departments

Monitoring tool for response time of each function on any query/request
Repository of number of queries received at customer care
To answer any customer query, CC agent uses following application:
CRM: The system contains:
Item-wise detail of the order: This explains where the order lies in terms of its
progress in the value chain. One of the following can happen to any item in the order:
Order placed but not confirmed (Confirmation happens only for COD orders. The
order is ready to be processed in WH only after confirmation)
Order confirmed (Order is ready to be processed in WH)
Order in WH (item is processing in WH)
Page 3 of 16
Item is dispatched (The item is shipped from WH through one of the 9 courier
partners )
Item cancelled (The item is cancelled by the customer or it is not available with
Jabong anymore)
Item returned (Item is returned by the customer after successful delivery which is
referred to as customer induced return or the item is returned without customer
interacting with it which is referred to as Non-deliverable returns)
Item refunded (customer is refunded the amount for the same)
Order details: All details related to customer and the order that is placed which
essentially contains:
Order Number of that order
Billing address and shipping address
Pin-code based TAT (delivery turnaround time for pin code of the shipping
address)
Phone number and e-mail ID
Item description of the order
Docket number assigned to shipment (Airway bill number)
All requests and queries raised by customer concerning the order

All emails and SMS sent to customer pertaining to delay in delivery, product related
information, request confirmation etc.
Delivery service provider (DSP) tracking page: This tracking page details out docket
wise status of shipments dispatched from WH. The shipment detail can be broadly forward,
return & returned according to the DSP. Exact status of any order once it is shipped can be
traced only through the tracking page. A sample is as follows:
Page 4 of 16
3. Introduction to customer queries

Every I/B query is divided into 2 levels of severity. 1st level is plain query and 2nd level is referred
to as complaint
Query:
Definition: Any query by the customer that is confined to normal course of order cycle (the
order cycle is attached in appendix 1) and can be answered using the tools mentioned above is
classified as query.
The nature of query and corresponding volume received on call is described in Appendix 2.
The nature of query-severity 1 is very repetitive. Most of the queries are successfully handled
through given resources & Customer satisfaction (CSat) on such queries are usually very high
Quotes Amit Sharma, Customer care head.
He continues If we manage to pull out a system that shares same amount and quality of
information to the customer, the human touch point for such queries could be made
redundant
This query follows following work flow:
Complaint:
Definition: Any query by the customer that concerns with an exception in the normal order
cycle (Commitment given to the customer is not met) or involves a grievance related to services
that we offer and hence needs intervention by concerned function is classified as Complaint
(Order cycle is presented in appendix 1)
Page 5 of 16

All complaint or query-severity 2 come after order is placed. The exception could be compiled in
following table:
Bucket
Query/Grievances
I havent received only one item
of the 2?
Not
dispatched When is order going to be
dispatched
Complaint parameters
Share
Order/item is un-dispatched for more

than 24 hours for WH and > vendor
procurement time for marketplace
model
What is the status of my order

I havent received my order yet
Postdispatch
The tracking page of the courier

is
showing incorrect details
The AWB (Air Way Bill or order
tracking number) number is not
working
Information on the tracking
page is
insufficient
Other grievances related to

courier
company
If all items of the order is shipped and

shipment is pending delivery > pincode wise TAT commitment
No parameter. Query-severity 2
registered as a negative feedback to
courier service
courier service
courier service
Grievances could be anything related
to what the DSP is not supposed to do
like:
1. Asking for extra money
2. Field executive (FE) asked customer
to collect shipment from hub
3. FE being rude to customer
4. FE delivered to wrong customer
10%
0.10%
30%
0.30%
60%
0.60%
40%
0.80%
30%
0.60%
10%
0.20%
5%
0.10%
15%
0.30%
Inbound customer queries are the most critical parameter of judging how close the company
is to the services it promises. It is very important to keep customer informed about every stage
of the order. Even more important when there is any exception related to dispatch or delivery
states Sunil Kumar, Director, and Logistics.
The major exceptions on which communication (e-mail, outbound call and SMS) is sent in
present infrastructure are as follows:
1. When any item in warehouse is not available in inventory and could not be picked within
24 hours from order placing (coined as unfulfilled item)
2. When vendor cant supply a particular item of the order in case of marketplace. (coined
as out of stock)
3. When order is placed but it is not serviceable by any courier company available in the
WH or marketplace (Coined as Out-of-delivery area)
% of
order
volume
Page 6 of 16

4. When the shipment dispatched from WH or packaging center in marketplace could not
be delivered within pin-code based TAT
5. When shipment is lost-in-transit.
6. When shipment is returned to the shipper without successful delivery (Coined as Nondeliverable returns)
If there is any issue that customer is asking about pertaining to an exception in the process &
even if we have informed customer about the same in advance, it is still a serverity-2 query
because customer didnt read it states Rahul Gupta, director, operations
4. Customer query resolution model

The primary target of complaint resolution is CSat which refers to how satisfied customer is with
the resolution taken on the complaint. Following are the measures to identify CSat for any
complaint resolution:
o
o
o
Repeat complaints received on single order

# of calls made by customer in between customer resolution process
Closeness between resolution demanded by the customer & resolution provided by the
company
Trendy.com has fared well in terms of CSat scores and complaint resolution quality. The
comparisons of Trendy.com, company X and company Y on query handling is presented in
Appendix 3.
In simple terms what makes a complaint resolution effective is understanding issues of
customer and taking quick and effective action while keeping customer informed in every
stage of the process states Amit Sood.
The complaint resolution process is essentially a fairly complex process involving multiple
functions, incorporating scenario based solutions & a communication matrix to keep customer
informed at every stage of process. The process flow chart is presented in appendix 4.
Page 7 of 16
5. Challenges in present Query handling model

Despite high Customer satisfaction and reasonable resolution quality, the present model
presents some very critical issues for the organization:
1. High cost incurred on query and complaints. (details shared in appendix 5)
2. Delayed call backs on CC1 and CC2
3. High resource engagement (details shared in appendix 6)
I think considering that queries are fairly repetitive and so are few categories of complaints,
it can well be automated using an interactive environment that talks to all the systems that a
CC agent uses currently for query-resolution. The major challenge will be to direct genuine
complaint to right function for grievance addressal & quick resolution out of the list of queries
received through the automated system states Rahul Gupta.
There are several companies in India and abroad that have felt a need of an alternate channel
for handling repetitive First call resolution queries. The best practice will be to replicate an
already existent process through another system which is cost efficient and equally or more
effective in resolving customer queries.
Page 8 of 16
6. Questions
1.
What are the key customer challenges and their root cause of Trendy.com. How do these issues
affect customer retention and to what extent?
2. Design an alternate channel for resolution of customer queries which can help the company
improve customer retention and costs and profitability.
a. What will be the key features of this system?
b. What will be the organization structure and KPIs? What will be the business impact of
this initiative in terms of revenue, cost and profitability for the company?
c. What will be the operational plan to ensure better CSAT and less response time?
d. What will be the implication on overall cost incurred on the same? Develop a predictive
model for the same.
3. What will be the roadblocks and risk in implementing this system? What is the plan for mitigating
the risk?
Page 9 of 16
7. Appendices
*(Appendix 2 and 4 are attached with the case study)
Appendix 1 Order Fulfillment (Order cycle flow chart)
Page 10 of 16
Appendix 2: Nature of query and volume
Issue
bucket
Query
Standard operating procedure
How to use vouchers on the

item that I am purchasing
Take item details.

Tell customer the standard way to
use voucher & TnCs
I am a repeat customer, do I
get a discount on the item
What is the colour of the item
Product
related
Do you have size fitting me

Currently my size is not
available, can I get the item of
my size
My order is not getting booked
on the check-out page through
my card
Take customer details.

If voucher is available with the
customer, tell how to use.
Else, no special discount available
out of the way.
Give details of colour through
standard
comparison on wheel chart
Take size of the customer and item
description. Let customer know
through size chart available on web
site.
My order is not getting booked

on the check-out page on my
pin code
If available in inventory, place

order. Else, put item in wish list
Take card details. Educate
customer with how to use card.
Place order if customer cant do it.
Check the pin code details. If
serviceable, ask customer to place
order again or CC agent places the
order himself.
Others
Address the issue and resolve using

available resources
Share
Bucket
Share
of
order
volume
30%
20%
5%
10%
20%
5%
5%
5%
8%
Page 11 of 16
Issue
bucket
Query
I have received mail stating

that one of the items is
undispatched.
Please let me know what is
this?

Take order number detail or
customer details to know if order is
marketplace item or WH. If
marketplace, dispatch will happen
within <vendor procurement time>
and if WH, dispatch will happen
within 24 hours of order placing.
If time lapsed is 24 hours for WH
item and
< vendor procurement time> for
marketplace item, tell the customer
about timelines. If dispatched, tell
customer the AWB number.
Explain the process of
undispatched to the customer if the
item not received is WH item. If
item is marketplace item, tell
customer about <procurement
time>. If any of the following
things have happened with the
item & customer has received
communication about the same,
explain customer about the same:
1. Unfulfilled
2. Out of stock for marketplace
model
3. Out of delivery area for
WH/marketplace item.
Others

available resources
When is my order going to be

dispatched
What is the status of my order?

It is not shipped yet
Pre
dispatch
related
Share
Bucket
Share
of
order
volume
50%
25%
5%
5%
20%
Page 12 of 16
Issue
bucket
Query
I want to postpone delivery of

my order
Take order details or customer

details and let
customer know about the Pin-code
based TAT
(turnaround time)
details and
share the AWB number with the
customer.
Let him know when he can expect a
delivery
details and let
customer know about the Pin-code
based TAT
(turnaround time). Give details of
shipment through tracking page.
Tell customer that postponing the
delivery can
happen only when it is out for
delivery to the customer.
Others

available resources
When am I receiving my order
Logistics
related
What is the tracking number of

my order?
What is the status of my order?

It is shipped already
Share
Bucket
Share
of order
volume
50%
20%
5%
10%
10%
10%
Page 13 of 16
Appendix 3 Comparison of Trendy.com with Mykart.com and Magic.com

Parameters
Trendy.com Mycart.com
Magic.com
Queries as percentage
of order volume
18%
22%
26%
Quality score on first

call
resolution (FCR)
94
97
96
Internal CSAT Score
86
NA
NA
% Of repeat complaints
2%
3%
1.80%
Appendix 4: Resolution process
Page 14 of 16
Appendix 5: Costing for query and complaints

5.1. Cost matrix
Costing matrix
Cost*
Inbound call (including salary overheads,

fixed cost and variable component in
customer care)
Rs 35 per call
Outbound call (including salary overheads,

fixed cost and variable component in
customer care)
Rs 35 per call
Salary-assistant manager (Logistics)
Rs 4 lpa
Salary-executive (Logistics)
Rs 2 lpa
*Figures quoted here are hypothetical

5.2 Human-resource details for order status query-handling
dept.
Team name
Resources
1 Assistant
manager
3 Executives
Complaint escalation team

Logistics
WH
Customer care
Ticket management team
1 executive
Complaint resolution team
1 executive
Ticket management team
1 executive
2 Team Leads
Complaint-escalation
team
15 executives
Deliverable
Handle complaint resolution
at the end of logistics
Handle Query tickets at
logistics end
Handle complaints at WH
Handle Query tickets at
WH
Handle and redirect complaints
to concerned divisions
5.3 Miscellaneous details on order status-query

# of queries received a day
number of inbound calls by customer
during complaint resolution process
# of outbound calls made on a
complaint
Average pre-dispatch complaints
Average post-dispatch complaint
700
4
3.7
40
80
Page 15 of 16
Appendix 6: Sales and cost data of e-commerce companies in India

2012 Data
Average Selling
Price
Daily hits on website
Items per order
Avg. Orders per day
Fulfillment cost per
order
Margin on COGS
applied to derive
MRP
Average Discount on
MRP
Cost of acquisition
per customer
Orders per customer
Trendy.com
Rs 2000
Mycart.com
Rs 1800
Magic.com
Rs 1500
1000 K
1.5
8000
Rs 400
2000 K
2.1
20000
Rs 350
800 K
1.8
11000
Rs 500
25%
30%
25%
10%
5%
8%
Rs 1000
Rs 600
Rs 800
1.8
2.5
2.2
Page 16 of 16

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Delivering lifestyle in

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

Query-handling at Customer care .................................................................................................... 3

Introduction to customer queries .................................................................................................... 5

Customer query resolution model ................................................................................................... 7

Challenges in present Query handling model ................................................................................ 8

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

Rapid increase in internet penetration

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

2. Query-handling at Customer care

Pre-dispatch (WH issue)

Seem-less, real time information flow between departments

To answer any customer query, CC agent uses following application:

CRM: The system contains:

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

All requests and queries raised by customer concerning the order

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

3. Introduction to customer queries

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

Order/item is un-dispatched for more

What is the status of my order

The tracking page of the courier

Other grievances related to

If all items of the order is shipped and

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

4. Customer query resolution model

Repeat complaints received on single order

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

5. Challenges in present Query handling model

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

Appendix 1 Order Fulfillment (Order cycle flow chart)

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

Appendix 2: Nature of query and volume

Standard operating procedure

How to use vouchers on the

Take item details.

Do you have size fitting me

Take customer details.

My order is not getting booked

If available in inventory, place

Address the issue and resolve using

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

I have received mail stating

Standard operating procedure

Address the issue and resolve using

When is my order going to be

What is the status of my order?

All Rights Reserved by Jabong.com

Delivering Lifestyle in e-commerce

I want to postpone delivery of

Take order details or customer

Address the issue and resolve using