BACK END

Traveling Exhibitions

For MuseumShop.com, outsourced fulfillment displays good results outsources fulfillment to keeps customers loyal

MuseumShop.com’s Patricia Varon has a clear definition of her role as director of customers and fulfillment. “I am,” she says, “the director of customer delight.”

For customers to be delighted, they need to receive their orders complete and in a timely manner. And for an online mall that represents the shops of some 55 museums around the world — including the Louvre in Paris, the Chateau de Versailles in Montreal, and the Museum of Science in Boston — that is easier said than done.

Visitors to the site can shop each museum individually, all the shops by categories such as jewelry or sculpture, or even join individual museums as members.

When the site debuted in 1997, the idea was to let each museum fulfill the orders. This quickly became unwieldy and expensive. Customers ordering items from multiple museums would receive separate shipments arriving at various delivery dates.

Last year, Arlington, MA-based MuseumShop.com turned to Fulfillment Plus to provide fulfillment and customer service, letting the company devote its internal resources to marketing and adding museum partners. Since Museum Shop.com did not want to invest in an in-house fulfillment operation, Fulfillment Plus was charged with finding a way to lower costs, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and consolidate deliveries.

As Varon explains it, the Cleveland-area warehouse that serves as Fulfillment Plus’ headquarters for the dot-com lets customers shop internationally or domestically. The partner museums ship to the warehouse in the United States and then the ordered items are shipped from there.

Consolidating the fulfillment in one location allows the site to offer services like gift wrapping to customers. But creating the operation was not without problems. Importing products from France, for example, meant Fulfillment Plus had to modify its software to accept descriptions in French.

Varon estimates that approximately 80% of the company’s orders are generated online; the remaining 20% are placed by mail, fax and phone. If the customer is also a member of MuseumShop. com, he or she can track the order online.

Customers service representatives are trained to describe the objects and suggest similar items or help with gift selections. Each shipment includes information on the purchased item’s background.

Promotional e-mails offering links to specials are sent almost weekly. Close to half the customers are repeat buyers. The typical customer is female, 35 to 45, well-educated and well-traveled. The average order is for 1.8 items (usually from more than one museum), and typically ranges from $50 to $80.

Surprisingly, no participating museums have attempted to target the customers they get online through Museum Shop.com for membership, nor do the package inserts include the museums’ catalogs. Also, while there is an affiliate relationship when a customer links over to a museum site from MuseumShop.com, there is no way to track what that customer does once on the museum’s site. Although unable to state how many MuseumShop.com customers linked over to their favorite museums to shop or become members, Varon suggests the figure might be less than 5%.

MuseumShop.com has been promoted by radio ads on National Public Radio, space ads in such publications as Museums, and links with such Web sites as Ross Simon and Travelocity. Inserts are also sent to Visa card members.