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~ Salesupply ~

of €29.99, 25% offer free shipping from €59.99, and another results. Here, two retailers responded to the testers’ inquiries
25% set the threshold at €60 or higher. in less than ten minutes and one retailer within an hour.

Almost 90% of major German online stores offer free
returns
Contrary to paid shipping, etailers in Germany continue
to be generous when it comes to return costs. 87% of the
major online stores in Germany allow their customers to
return unwanted products free of charge. Two retailers
charge a proportional service fee for returns, and seven let
their customers pay the return costs entirely out of their own
pockets.

Methodology
For the 2023 Post-Purchase Study, the parcelLab team
placed a test order with each of the listed retailers in June
and July 2023. In addition, Salesupply’s customer care
experts researched all available customer service channels in
the online stores of the top 100 online stores, as well as the
opening hours offered by the customer service team. ••

Customer service unavailable at peak shopping
moments!
The fact that customer service has the potential to function as
a profit centre and is not just a cost centre has apparently not
yet reached some of the largest online retailers in Germany.
More than 10% of the largest online retailers in Germany
can only be reached by their customers during office hours
on weekdays. The same applies to the weekend. Here, too,
one-third of the online stores are not available for customer
contact until Monday.

According to Salesupply co-founder Henning Heesen, the
accessibility of online retailers is a point that should be
improved: “For retailers, it is a missed opportunity when
customers in need of advice or support face closed doors”, he
says. “The main online shopping time in Germany is currently
between 8 and 9 pm. If you can’t be reached, then you’ll lose
prospective customers to competitors whose customer service
teams are available at that peak shopping time”.

Need a quick answer? Pick up the phone
Measuring customer service response times on the various
channels shows: If you’re in a hurry, you should pick up the
phone. Almost half of the online stores tested managed to
answer customer calls in less than 75 seconds. The average
response time is 2.33 minutes. E-mail inquiries to customer
service were answered after 34 hours on average. A quarter DOWNLOAD
of the major retailers in the test were way faster and sent an The complete Post-Purchase Study Germany 2023
e-mail response within an hour. Social media shows similar

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