A customer shops at an Alibaba rural service centre in Jinjia Village, Tonglu, Zhejiang province, China, July 20, 2015.
A customer shops at an Alibaba rural service centre in Jinjia Village, Tonglu, Zhejiang province, China, July 20, 2015. E-commerce growth in the countryside now outpaces that in major cities, though fewer than one tenth of online purchases made on Alibaba platforms were shipped to rural areas in the first quarter of this year. Alibaba estimates the potential market at 460 billion yuan ($74 billion) by next year. Picture taken July 20. Reuters/Aly Song

Australian Electronics retailer Good Guys has won the Canstar Blue Customer Satisfaction award 2015 for the fifth time in a row, leaving Bing Lee, Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi and Dick Smith behind. To complete the data, research company Colmar Brunton surveyed around 2,500 customers, out of which over 1,600 made electrical purchase in the past six months.

Canstar Blue found that Good Guys stood up as the best company so far as satisfying customers is concerned. The customers rated Good Guys as the best whether it’s in terms of value, layout or catalogue category. The customers gave five stars to Good Guys in all seven categories, namely, value for money, point of sale service, overall satisfaction, store layout, product range, price compared to other retailers and catalogue.

“The Good Guys is clearly a firm favourite with Aussie consumers,” Canstar Blue head Megan Doyle said. She also said that there are other brands that live up to the expectations of customers and that are credible but the physically existing companies need to provide better experience to the customers to compete with online retailers.

The best thing about brick-and-mortar shops is the face-to-face interaction that provided. This is what online stores lack. “The only thing worse than bad customer service is no service at all,” she said. The customers are very particular about getting enough staff members to help them and prefer being treated as valued customers. Good Guys, in spite of being an online shopping platform, has provided that comfort zone to the customers.

“If they’re spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new item, people want guidance from the experts and assurance that they’re making the best purchase decision for their needs. You can’t replicate that sort of customer service with a pop-up window on a website,” she concluded.

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