Picture courtesy Adobe

Discounts are everywhere, shoppers are spending like crazy, and all’s well with the world. Right? Wrong! Shoppers, it seems, aren’t at all happy, but they are determined to track down bargains and they’re using their smartphones to do so.

New research from multichannel customer engagement specialist Eptica shows US consumers are unsatisfied with the levels of customer service offered by retailers this Holiday season. Over a third (35%) are unimpressed by the online experience and worse still, that figure rises to 40% in-store.

As many as 18% of consumers complained that it was impossible or extremely difficult to find the information they wanted on retailers’ websites.

The study showed that while many consumers bought online (63%) or in-store (56%), they increasingly use their smartphones to buy products while in-store.

But even when they do that, customer experience can still be a pain – while 23% bought from the website of the retailer they were in, 20% purchased from a rival and 49% of them thought that the service was pretty poor.

Interestingly, factoring out smartphone shopping, more people seem to be extremely satisfied with their online experience (37%) than unsatisfied. But only 30% are extremely satisfied with the in-store experience compared to 40% who are unhappy.

Careful shoppers

Ready for another set of figures? This lot shows that there’s still a lot of pent-up demand out there despite the madness of the Monday-through-Friday shopping season.

While Eptica said 24% bought items online on Black Friday and Cyber Monday respectively, by November 30, 37% hadn’t yet made any purchases even if they’d been browsing. In fact, 21% said they hadn’t started their Holiday shopping at all, with a further 14% completing under a quarter of their planned purchases.

One in 10 organised Americans had finished shopping, with another 21% having completed over three-quarters.

Personally, I’m with the 21% who haven’t started Holiday shopping yet…