EL SEGUNDO HERALD December 14, 2017 Page 17
Self-Serve Postage from page 2
to ship all orders as specified on the offer;
however, Amazon requires sellers to ship all
Books, Music, Video, and DVD … products
within two business days of receiving the
order from Amazon.”
Merchants who fail to meet Amazon’s
shipping requirement can be suspended from
the world’s largest online retail site, and have
their accounts frozen. Frazier had it happen
to him once when an employee suddenly
quit on him.
Cyber Monday--the Super Bowl of ecommerce
had Frazier and other Stamps.
com customers singing a happy holiday tune.
Printers were humming, turning out shipping
labels for packages and stamps for envelopes.
Stamps.com customers pay a monthly
$15.99 fee, which enables retailers and small
businesses to print stamps and shipping labels
from their offices. It’s a convenient service
for a small business owner like Frazier, who
otherwise would be making trips to the local
post office in Flagstaff, Arizona where
he’s based.
The danger for him is when his packages
don’t go out on time, Amazon can suspend
him and freeze his account, according to
Frazier. Being late, especially on a Monday
following a busy sales weekend, has disastrous
consequences for a small store like his.
“It can be a huge misstep for an Amazon
seller,” he said.
Stamps.com is a competitor in the Internetbased
postage service business. It contracts
with the U.S. Postal Service to sell stamps
and postage labels for letters and packages.
The company targets its self-printing services
to small businesses and home offices, according
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to its website.
Stamps.com spokesman Eric Nash said the
website outage in mid-October that panicked
its customers was due to heavier-than-expected
Web traffic on that Monday, close to Halloween
when sales by online retailers spike.
“Staff observed a huge surge of unusual traffic
that took us some time to identify, isolate and
reroute to another data center,” said Nash, the
senior director of online marketing. He said
the company has since fixed the problem so
that surges in customer traffic won’t take
down the website.
So far, the U.S. Postal Service vendor has
made good on its promise to improve the
reliability of its site. Retailers and business
customers on social media reported very few
problems in the six weeks following the Monday
meltdown. Judging by the few complaints on
its blog site and Facebook page, Stamps.com
is doing better.
Customers were irritated with the company
back in October for not telling them the outage
wouldn’t be restored quickly. A message posted
on Stamps.com estimated the service outage
would be resolved in 30 minutes. However,
as the downtime reached five hours, retailers
were getting nervous. And they were ticked
off, too. “If there is issue please let all of us
know immediately instead of chicken out!
So we will not waste our time to figure out
what’s going on!” one Facebook user wrote
on October 17. Another person asked, “Are
you guys down?”
An oft-repeated complaint on social media,
including the company’s Facebook page, was
that information about the October outage was
never updated. Without service, some customers-
-especially on the East Coast--decided they
couldn’t wait any longer. Several customers said
on Facebook that they too needed information.
“Monday and it is not working for me either.
Not a good day to be down,” wrote a woman
who was dealing with stress and deadlines
for getting out packages in the mail. Another
wrote at midmorning on October 16 that she
was in the dark about when--or if--the service
would be restored. “Down and so much to
ship,” her post read.
Stamps.com last week promised to do a better
job of communicating to customers when
service goes down. It responded to the flood
of complaints that its Web application and
communication to customers need improvement
by creating an system-status page on its
website. Rolled out on December 5, the page
shows if the postage-print services are running.
The feature will offer real-time information,
thus avoiding what happened in October when
customers had to rely on old information about
when service would be restored.
The new page promised, “If there are
any interruptions in service, a note will be
posted here.”
Frazier is happy with the changes and said
he’ll remain a customer despite the website
hiccups that sometimes make it impossible
for him and his lone employee to print postage
before the end of the business day. “This
is so much simpler than going to the post
office,” explained Frazier, who decided not
to switch companies.
Stamps.com says it was the first company
to be licensed by the U.S. Postal Service for
home- and office-based printing of postage, but
it has got competition. Indicia, ShippingWorks
and ShipEasy are among the companies that
also sell self-printing postage to business and
retailers in the U.S. and Canada.
Online companies have a responsibility
to be honest and timely with information
about technical problems that interfere
with normal business operations, says
associate professor Nelson Granados at
Pepperdine University. Customers are
more interested in knowing when service
will be restored than in any technical talk.
“The best approach is to be forthcoming to
clients upfront,” said Granados, who teaches
about information systems and is director
of the Center for Applied Research at the
Malibu campus.
A recorded voice message, email or message
should inform customers what’s the problem
and when they can expect it to be resolved.
Messages should be updated when new
information is available, the professor said
Tech company executives can learn to
manage their customers’ expectations and
anxieties by paying attention to the airlines.
“Think of it as what happens when a flight
is delayed. If one announcement is made and
then the communication stops but the delay
continues, it only creates more anxiety,”
Granados said.
Mistakes happen, technology fails and airplanes
run behind the schedule. What sets off
customers is silence or, in the case of Stamps.
com, leaving an old message on a customer
service phone line up on the website. “The
best approach is to be transparent,” Granados
said, to reduce the backlash from nervous
and irate clients.
The website Isitdownright now.com can
reveal if a site is working or whether the client’s
computer system is the problem. It’s also
a place to view comments left by customers
about technical issues and any suggestions. •
“Having an aim is the key to achieving your best.”
– Henry J. Kaiser