As I exposed in the first two parts of this series of articles, the first Class service is another way of doing businesses in the Internet, taking high quality services to virtual platforms. In my last post I talked about a transportation service named Uber, which connects an excellent service of drivers taking passengers from a point to another with a powerful app that provides many benefits in order to offer an excellent service.
CrutchField, a First Class Service online store
I would like to present other example that shows how an excellent service can be taken to an online store. This example is called CrutchField. The company was born on 1974 when its CEO saw an opportunity of selling car stereos that could become “Do it yourself” projects. This company evolved over time and has been characterized by offering an excellent service and advisory on the stereo installation process. On the Internet era, they moved to an online platform without forgetting that their most important differential was high quality service.
Today this online store has many characteristics that make them different form their competitors that sell electronics for cars and home. First of all unlike other online stores the buyer doesn’t need to know exactly the product he is looking for his car. Just by entering the brand, model and year of the vehicle the platform will display all the products that fit the car. Therefore it is easier for the buyer to search for a product he might require and will be certain it will be compatible with his car.
Second, he will find an excellent technical assistance before he buys the product. He will be able to chat or talk over the phone with a person that knows about the subject. Also if the buyer has talked before with an assessor of Crutchfield, he will be able to ask him to continue advising his case. In addition to this, he may also ask for an employee of Crutchfield to call him, so that he doesn’t have to wait in a call center for minutes. Finally, the web page will provide the buyer with a unique number he will give to the employee of Crutcfield so that he can send the buyer to the page he needs him to see while he is advising him.
Third, in each of the product pages the buyer will find an extended description of the product that includes high quality images. This are not the ones provided by the supplier, but by Crutchfield. In this way they ensure they show every detail of the product.
Finally once he has bought the product and received it, the company provides assistance on its installation. This assistance can take as long as two hours but CrutchField doesn’t care that their employees are busy with only a client for more than 120 minutes in order to assure the best possible service.
Therefore you can see that on the Internet different business models can be applied, different to Long Tail model. Uber and Crutchfield are a pair of examples of other model called First Class Service. What other model can you think about for an online store?
Image Taken From Flickr.com