The concepts of customer satisfaction, service, and security available in an e-commerce environment can be applied to different business environments. For example, one of the capabilities available in e-commerce that produces greater customer satisfaction is personalization of a web site. When a customer logs onto Amazon.com, for example, he is greeted with a hello message containing his first name and some selected items that the system believes he may be interested in (ôWriting the Book on E-Commerceö). At the bricks-and-mortar store level, this can be approximated by knowledgeable salespeople who get to know the customers personally and greet them by name, pointing out items that they know will interest them.
Service in e-commerce is augmented by automatically generated correspondence that lets the customer know that an order has been received and interactive web sites that allow customers to modify, delete, add to, or track orders. In a physical store, customers can have the same latitude if the shopping and service desk functions are set up with customer service in mind. The ideal service desk would be one where the customer could process his own returns, taking the item to a scanning station that acknowledges the return, processes the item, and returns the customerÆs money.
The security of e-commerce consists in conducting actual transactions over secure screens, indicated by a lock icon shown in the locked position at the bottom of the screen. E-commerce security consists of privacy, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation, all of which can be duplicated in the non-technological environment by employing the same safeguards with hard-copy customer data (ôCustomer Security: Basic Principlesö). All data entered on these locked screens is encrypted and protected from information theft. The same type of security should be provided at store level, with customers not asked to provide sensiti
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