Markets

Lands' End Beats Rivals to Roll Out Ecommerce Video Chat

By Carol Tice

Updated on: October 7, 2010 / 6:11 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Apparel brands are all so fabulous and trendy that adding live video chat to their customer-service offerings seems only natural. Which brand got there first? It's that uber-hip fashion trendsetter... Lands' End.
What makes this breakthrough particularly unlikely is these days, the 47-year-old purveyor of khakis and polo shirts is part of Sears Holding Corp. (SHLD), which is not exactly known for investing in new technology. For instance, Sears recently paid $1 million to settle a California lawsuit over its inability to get its sale ads and checkout-scanner systems properly coordinated.

Lands' End also timed its service coup to coincide with National Customer Service Week which occurs this week, so the company even has a news hook for it. Canny marketing, there.

The details:

The video chat is one way (Lands' End staff won't be seeing if you're in your pajamas or not)
Lands' End personal shoppers and "outerwear experts" will staff the line 7 a.m.-11 p.m., seven days a week.
It's got a training module for the clueless, so if shoppers click "Live Help," they can choose "Find Out More," or proceed straight to "Help Me Now."
Customers can use a headset or computer speakers to talk live to Lands' End personnel, or can type questions.

Next, Lands' End plans to bring video chat to its in-store kiosks inside Sears department stores, and to its own outlet stores -- known at the company as "Inlet" stores. Har. Somewhere, better-dressed fashion executives must be slapping their foreheads and saying, "Merde! Why didn't we do this already?"

Somehow, despite being absorbed by Sears Holdings, Lands' End seems to have managed to retain some of its own innovation culture. Live video chat is just the latest in a long string of customer-service firsts for the chain, which include the first toll-free phone number and the first apparel retailer to have an ecommerce-enabled Web site. Maybe Sears Holdings grand poo-bah Eddie Lampert is too busy trying to make Sears and Kmart turn a profit to notice what they're doing.

It's too bad the marketing and customer-service creativity at Lands' End can't be cross-pollinated to the rest of Sears Holdings' properties. A leap into the modern age of technology and marketing could be just what's needed to give Sears and Kmart new appeal.

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Photo via Flickr user jessica mullen