Congratulations to eBay CEO Meg Whitman, CBSMarketwatch.com CEO of the Year. CBSMarketwatch has a financial/stock-market perspective, and Meg Whitman has made terrific strides in many areas, especially for stockholders.
With our focus on users, here's what Whitman could do to make AuctionBytes CEO of the Year:
Create a more viable customer support system
Reduce fraud on the site
eBay might think of itself as a technology company, but in reality it is a service business. Phone companies, credit card providers, investment brokers provide toll-free numbers. If you have a problem, you can pick up the phone to resolve it.
When eBay suffered a 3-hour outage last month, it would be hard to imagine Meg emailing eBay's hosting facility to check the status of the servers. More than likely, she was on the phone attempting to get the situation resolved.
Meg's own customers can't do the same. If eBay has cancelled your auctions, suspended you, or you are a victim of fraud, unless you are a top-tier PowerSeller, you can't reach a customer service representative by phone. You might have a problem as devastating to your business as a power outage, but users are left in the dark about how to get a problem fixed.
Well, Meg might say, there are millions of eBay users, how can eBay be expected to answer their phone calls? The Global Consumer Group of Citigroup had 120 million card holders at the end of 2002 and offers excellent phone support, including phone support for their c2it service that competes with PayPal. (eBay had 28 million active users at the end of 2002.)
eBay's net revenue surpassed $1 billion in 2002. If users can resolve their customer service problems, they can get back to buying and selling, thereby making more money for eBay!
eBay introduced a new Live Help system, which I applaud. If I have a generic question about a policy or feature, I can generally get a satisfactory answer through Live Help (though the wait times have increased significantly the last few times I've used it). I go to eBay's home page and look for the "Live Help" button, and I'm chatting live with a real person! And by the way, an eBay executive reported at an industry conference that Live Help paid off for eBay immediately.
Why not expand Live Help to Live Customer Support? Have a question about your account? Log in and chat real time with a real person. eBay believes Gold PowerSellers deserve a dedicated contact person they can reach by phone. Just nudge the door open a little bit for the rest of us.
Meg Whitman acknowledged that it took the site meltdown of 1999 for her to realize she needed to invest more resources in technology. And it paid off handsomely. As CEO of the Year, I hope she will step up to the plate and avoid a customer service meltdown. I think it will pay off, not just for stockholders, but for users as well.
eBay is not alone in having less than perfect customer service. All CEOs should make this a priority.
Fraud continues to be a problem online, and we hope eBay is giving it the attention it deserves. In this issue, we are publishing the results of our eBay-fraud survey. The majority of respondents feel fraud is a problem on eBay and on other sites.
I was curious about how readers feel the media cover fraud and what kinds of stories they would like to see reported. 65% of respondents said they would like to see stories about the challenges of selling on eBay. What do you think? Post a note in the forum if you have specific story ideas. What challenges do you face as an online seller?
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=6238
In this issue, Delinda Burger talks about strategies for eBay sellers that are stay-at-home parents (there's some challenges for you!) We also continue the series on the problem of unsolicited email. And speaking of email, were you an AT&T Broadband user who got switched to Comcast? If so, you should let us know your new email address. Comcast will stop forwarding email to ATT addresses at the end of the year. If you need to let us know your new email address, send an email to feedback@auctionbytes.com
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
