I was working with a customer who operates a store in
Georgia plus an eBusiness operation. We launched their new
eCommerce website two months ago, and met to review how the
website was working and how smoothly business processes were
completed. Initially, the eCommerce shopping cart was
configured to only authorize the credit card when the shopper
submitted the order. After fulfilling the order, the
shipping manager charged the card in the eCommerce
administration website. This ensures that a credit card is
not charged before the order is fulfilled; a good eBusiness
practice to follow.
The merchant wants to streamline fulfillment and be ready
for the busy fall season by changing this process. The
requested change to the eCommerce website is to authorize and
capture the charge when the shopper submits the order.
Inventory on the eCommerce website is kept up to date, they collect
phone numbers with each order in case there is an issue, and their
shipping policy gives them enough time to ship all the orders made
each day. The new process would mean a phone call to a
customer if there happened to be an order that could not ever be
fulfilled.
In the rare case an order could not be shipped that day or the
next couple days, after speaking with the customer to discuss
another product to order, the merchant then would go into the
virtual terminal of his credit card payment gateway
software. Each virtual terminal tool has a
function to credit the charge on a credtit card. If
the customer felt like they were not being treated honestly, the
merchant risks losing them and maybe any friends.
Knowing their business, internal processes, customer service
standards and after evaluating how the eBusiness operates, the
merchant feels the odds of orders that cannot ever be
fulfilled are very, very low.
Because it is just a database value change to us, this process
change was made in less than a minute on the fly without
taking the eCommerce website out of operation. That's what I
call a configurable eCommerce solution. We added the policy on
his site in the FAQs section, under Terms and Conditions, and
with the shipping and returns policies to be up front with
customers. After a couple months we plan to meet again to
evaluate the change and make a final decision in time for the busy
fall season.
If you are a consumer, the policy is well communicated
and you have the customer service phone number and store
address available to you on every page, does it matter to you that
your card is charged before your order ships that same day?
What would you do if you received that phone call?