Sears Discovers Why Merging Call Center And Web Not A Great Idea
Written by Evan SchumanJuly 26th, 2009
As retailers try and inch closer to true merged channel reality, experiments abound. But trying to make all channels connected on the backend is good. Assuming that consumers have immediate access to all those channels—and plan to use them without being prompted—is bad. Don't take our word for it: Ask Sears.
We point to this delightful story in Consumer Reports' The Consumerist site, where a frustrated consumer unsuccessfully tried to buy a pair of air conditioners from Sears. The point of this for us, though, is that consumer placed the order on the phone—dealing with a Sears call center—and yet he was being charged a couple of hundred extra dollars because of fine print on Sears.com. But given that the order was placed on the phone and that the call center rep mentioned nothing about the consumer being expected to go online to read a lengthy "anything we do wrong is not our fault" document, it seems something that Sears can not reasonably enforce.
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
I have strong reservations about the 'individual' certification and posting of that information for merchants. Can you imagine the potential employee poaching that might occur? The implications when competitors can look up how many are certified with each of their competitors? 
-Christine
