Improved Customer Service To Tackle E-Commerce Dominance

The dominance of the E-commerce portals in the country is reaching dizzy heights with more and more consumers opting for an online option than visiting a local  distributor to buy the products due to a significant difference in the prices of IT peripherals.

The worried state of the country’s IT channel partners can be understood with a ban on e-commerce retailers by the Kerala government to ship products into the state. The step was brought in effect to protect the profit margins of the state’s IT channel partners and has left many online buyers disappointed in the southern state.

Also with the Union government indicating to bolster the E-commerce industry in the Union Budget, the partners are now possessed with a feeling that the E-commerce monster will eat up the local industry sooner or later.

So is there any partner in the country who has managed to overcome the E-commerce challenge?

Fortunately yes and the organization isn’t just competing with the online giants but also running seamlessly on the growth track with just one strategy-‘Customer is the king’

‘’We don’t just deliver products to our customers but also ensure that in case of a complaint we get the product repaired or replaced by the original vendor making our company a one stop shop for an IT consumer,’’ says Pankaj Goenka from Icon, an IT channel partner based in Mumbai.

Though online retailers offer a hefty discount on the pricing of the product but fail in the category of an excellent service support on which according to Pankaj the local partners can gain an edge.

Also the Mumbai based partner import niche IT products from abroad and offer full service support on them and claims that the customers are willing to pay extra for that added service.

‘’We import products like fireproof and waterproof hard drives from ioSafe and secured pen drive from iStorage and provide complete customer service for them. The customers don’t mind paying extra bucks on them as for them an innovative solution and quality customer support is more important than the pricing,’’ adds Goenka

Industry experts too believe that the only way with which the local retailers can compete with the increasing presence of e-commerce portals is via providing a quality and hassle free customer service.

‘’No one wants to take the pain of wandering through service centers for a faulty product. And a consumer is most likely to buy from a place where he has the trust of an easy after sales support than just the initial price difference,’’ says Deepak Kukeraja, an independent IT analyst.

The initiative by the Mumbai based channel partner sounds an effective move to battle up with the e-commerce retailers as a product without a good after sales service can be worthless to many.