Discuss how E-Commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees’ empowerment and facilitate customer support

E-commerce has indeed evolved and many companies are taking advantage of it to better suit the needs of the ever growing consumers. Companies are using the internet to smoothen and ease transactions, resulting in a reduction of cycle time.

Cycle time means the the amount of time needed for a company to complete a business transacton. The most important cycle time for a company to reduce is of course the buying process. Ebay.com for example has reduced the cycle time of buying process significantly. Below

are few easy steps to take to buy a product in Ebay :

First, You go into the website http://www.ebay.com/

Second, You click on 'BUY' icon at the top.

Third, You click on the item that you want to buy.

Fourth, You BUY the product.

Ebay has certainly gained competitive advantage against other competitors with these few simple steps as they make the buying process as easy as possible for customers and thus reducing the buying process.

E-Commerce can also increase employees' empowerment by giving them more authority to do certain tasks. This way, more tasks will be shared among employees and the top authorities will be less burdened with certain matters and they can spend more time on expanding and improving the business.

Employees can be empowered by delegating e-commerce responsibilities to them, such as allowing their employee to design the web sites and process, control and ensure the smoothness of transactions online, respond to complaints and suggestions of customer online, as well as updating company web site’s information, such as products details and news. For example, http://www.yahoo.com/ homepage will always change everyday especially the latest news compartment to update the readers. Below is an example of yahoo homepage:


















This way, employees will be more confident in handling the course and process of businesses and need not always refer back to the top authorities for their decisions as this will only slow down the transaction processes.



E-commerce can also help to facilitate customer support.



Customer support can be facilitated by having HELP sections or FAQs sections to help customers if they have any enquiries regarding the products or services provided by the company. This will also enhance the customer relationship and strengthen the loyalty of customers towards the company. Customers can make full use of the HELP services provided by the website. Example of it is like below:




















However, if the complaints or suggestions are being ignored and not replied immediately, there is always another alternative to voice out, which is through e-mail. You can email directly to the company and usually the company's email will be stated at the 'customer service' section. If howver you want to post a letter to them, you can always find a company's address at 'contact us' section.