Amazon India scores highest in user loyalty, says study

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E-commerce platform Flipkart's co-founder and chief executive officer, Binny Bansal, recently made news when he introduced customer satisfaction and loyalty as their new metric. Thereby, keeping aside the other popular e-commerce benchmark, gross merchandise value (GMV) of products sold on a platform.

However, a study shows Amazon India is already a market leader as far as customer satisfaction score is concerned. 

According to a recent study by research and advisory firm RedSeer Consulting entitled ‘The Digital Indian — Online Shopper Perspective Q1 2016’ that works closely with start-ups, Amazon India already has the highest customer satisfaction score among all online marketplace majors. The findings are a result of studying 1,800-odd online shoppers across India.

“We conclude that customers' overall satisfaction level is highest for Amazon, followed very closely by Flipkart, while Snapdeal ranks third," said Mrigank Gutgutia, engagement manager at RedSeer.

The Indian operation of the Jeff Bezos-led e-commerce major had around 88% customer satisfaction, compared to Flipkart's 85%. Snapdeal, which in the past few months has taken a number of steps, including relying heavily on precision analytics to satisfy customers, was third at 69%.

RedSeer said the customer satisfaction score was equal to the percentage of customers who rated their shopping experience as four or five on a scale of one to five, minus the percentage of customers who rated their experience as one or two.

Without giving the actual figures, Amazon put its overall growth in 2015 at 250% growth. This year so far, the growth is pegged at 150%.

"My impression about Amazon is that they stuck to the basics. They have followed exactly what they do in the US, with certain tweaks for the Indian market. They have not done any major acquisition as a Flipkart buying Myntra or Snapdeal acquiring Freecharge," said Amarjeet Singh, partner- tax, KPMG in India.

Singh added that Amazon's interaction with vendors is a lot more sophisticated. "At a corporate level after they lost out on China, they have put in a lot of investment and efforts behind Amazon India and their international network has supported them."

What might have helped is that Amazon's biggest rival in India, Flipkart, has had to face challenges. On Friday, 

Morgan Stanley, a minority but a significant investor in Flipkart, marked down the value of its holding in the company for a second time in three months. With the latest mark-down of 15.5%, the total value of Flipkart has dipped to $9.4 billion, from a high of $15.2 billion a few months earlier.

AMAZON'S ATTRACTIONS

• The company tries to ensure their call centres pick up calls on a single ring
   
• Average time allotted for a customer query is a minute
   
• Usage of predictive analysis to study consumer behaviour