Is This The strongest Company In Online Retail?

StellaService is the most powerful firm in e commerce. Or at least it's the most effective company you haven't yet heard of. Do a fast experiment so you know why I'd say this -based upstart that rates and measures the customer service of online retailers. Run a search for Nike shoes. In the results, you'll see a rating icon for each of the Nike vendors at the top. This evaluation (Google uses stars) is bas nike blazer high white.d in substantial part on the 100% objective (more on this particular later) StellaService rating of the customer experience of that seller . While these are paid search results, a retailer can't pay to have the rating removed from its listing or for StellaService's rating. This makes this young (founded in 2009) privately held company an uniquely powerful force in on-line retail for two major reasons. 1. Google's [clear] effort to move into the light. If anyone other than I listened to the congressional hearings on Google's misuse of its monopoly-ish power, you could not help but be struck by the brazenness w cheap nike free powerlines 2.th which Google hidden review sites other than its own in the search results and/or borrowed -- "scraped" -- evaluations from those websites nike blazers low cheap.nd rebranded them as their own. Nevertheless, I'm happy now to see Google using its power in a manner that benefits customers by partnering with StellaService. (Google may be motivated by the degree to which amazon.com Is becoming the de facto evaluations service for retail, not a cozy scenario for Google to relax and watch develop.) And a StellaService evaluation is a lot more accurate, and useful, than the ridiculously unscientific reviews on Google's previous product or a rant or rave, Google Reviews. The StellaService rating can't be gamed. It's supplied, as CEO and cofounder Jordy Leiser told me, by "hundreds of people" working for StellaService around the country "purchasing and return thousands of products," people identifiable only as common civilians to the vendors that they are shopping. In the event of my Nike example, the contribution to those evaluations of StellaService were ascertained through intensive legwork, says Leiser. "Individuals'd pick out an unique pair of Nike shoes and buy that same pair almost everywhere we could buy it online." Multiple orders from every merchant are sent to different locations around the country, so that StellaService can get "really apple to apples measurement about how fast the product arrived and what exactly the packaging was like." Now we reach another variable that makes StellaService uniquely powerful: 2. The indispensable role StellaService creates with the firms CEO store for itself. StellaService has created a scenario which makes them (StellaService) inevitable--in fact makes paying StellaService ineluctable. Paradoxically, that is without you paying them to do so because they will shop you without you asking them to do so. In fact, their secret shopping service can not be bought, and you can't un-purchase it: you can not keep StellaService you. They quantify over a thousand of the largest online sellers, covering 90 percent of business action. But then, the firms in question can purchase the business's Stella Metrics merchandise and see how they did in great great detail, and in comparison to the competition: Online retailers, including Mr Porter, Walmart and Zappos license the information through a web-based platform where retailers can access both their own performance information and that of their rivals. How quick did Retailer An issue refunds to shoppers? How often did StellaService's shoppers encounter pain in the neck or uninformed customer service representatives in Retailer B's contact centre in the last 12 months? Is Retailer C's new boat-from-shop software triumphing in shaving days off delivery times -- and how do these new delivery times and Amazon's compare? The Termite In The Sofa Being so powerful, so quite almost a gold standard, has some amusing and unintended results. "Because people see our evaluation and our seal on lots of sites and on Google, they believe that we are this Central Intelligence Agency of customer service. They send us complaints" --elaborate, fervent complaints--about online retailers. "We've received some three and four page long handwritten letters; it is possible to see tears dropped along with the words when they were writing them; letters to senators and government officials and the companies themselves where we were cc'd--and I mean with with carbon paper..." Leiser's voice trailed off in remembered amazement. The obliging StellaService staff of course dashed termite cum lobster photo and the letter to the C-suite of the seller in question; StellaService was taken care of right away, and it has relationships with many such companies.