Resolver’s top 10 online shops for customer service

We may have been able to return to the high street for a while but demand remains for online retail therapy, whether it’s to treat ourselves, shop for our essentials or look at creative gifts for loved ones we may not have been able to see in person as much as we would like. 

With so many shopping options available at the click of a button, it’s not always easy to know which ones are the most likely to offer stand-out customer service and be reliable at resolving complaints should anything go wrong. We thought we’d take another look at which online shops are hitting the mark with their customers – according to their direct feedback.

Analysing more than 146,000 cases in the sector over the year to September 2020, Resolver can reveal the online shops that have provided excellent service to their customers particularly when things have gone wrong. Take a look at the top online shops and find out why, according to their customers, they stand out.

Who’s top of the online shops?

Online clothing retailers make up more than half of our top 10 shops, but personalised gifting sites also appear to have offered top-class service to their customers.

A well-known pet retailer and an electronics exchange platform makes up the rest of our top shops, with all achieving five stars out of five for customer satisfaction and the likelihood of their customers to recommend them.

Five-star resolution

With an impressive Resolver Score of 98%, online gift retailer Notonthehighstreet.com tops our table. Scoring five stars out of five for all seven of our metrics, Notonthehighstreet.com has clearly been successful at dealing with its customers, particularly if there have been issues, indicating it has navigated some of the trickier points of retail, particularly with the offer of personalisation on a number of its products. 

Clothing chains Newlook.com and MandMdirect.co.uk claim second and third place with Resolver Scores of 97% and 93% respectively. Like Notonthehighstreet.com they each scored five stars for all seven measures, including resolution rates and the ease of complaining.

Seven of our top 10 shops achieved five stars out of five for resolution rate – the percentage of cases resolved satisfactorily from the customer perspective. They include Annsummers.com, Joules.com and Petsathome.com.

Meanwhile, Shein.com and uk.webuy.com (CeX) scored five stars for resolution time, indicating that customers were satisfied with the time taken to get their complaints sorted. 

How we score

Our scores are drawn from the feedback of Resolver users, along with measures used to assess response and resolution times. But every bit of feedback has a story behind it and our data specialists analyse all the information in detail.

Every Resolver user is asked how satisfied they are with a company when a case is closed. Our analysis of all these responses focuses on seven measurements of those aspects of customer service to come up with a score out of five. To get five stars for one of our measurements, a company has to score within the top 20%.

Resolver requires a minimum of 30 customer feedback responses for a company for it to be included in our series of customer service excellence, which is perhaps why you may not see some of your most-loved brands here. We are working on widening our analysis.

Here’s our rundown of the seven measurements we use to score customer service excellence:

• Response Time: the time it takes the company to provide an initial response to the customer
• Resolution Time: the time it takes to resolve the complaint
• Resolution Rate: the percentage of the company’s cases satisfactorily resolved from the consumer’s perspective
• Feeling Change: the change in the customer’s sentiment from the beginning to end of a case
• Ease: how easy it is to complain
• Consumer Advocacy Score (CAS): how likely the customer is to recommend the company
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): how satisfied the customer is with the company.

If you have a complaint about one of the online shops in this article, or any other online retailer, then we can help. Use Resolver to raise your complaint or query.