John Winning founded Appliances Online five years ago with a laptop, a rented truck and a 1300 number diverted to his mobile phone.

Since then, the company has grown to become Australia’s largest online appliance retailer claiming a delivery reach to 98 per cent of Australia’s population and boasting the largest range of brands and stocks to be found online.

Between 2005 and 2011 more than 150,000 unique customers have purchased from the company. The online retailer increased its customer base by 50 per cent and its total revenue doubled in 2011.

“The past six years have been a tremendous learning curve – I believe our model, which focuses on customer service as a key differentiator, is the reason behind our success,” Winning said after his company won the PWC Award for Best Medium Business at the My Business Awards in Sydney last week.

“We control each phase of the customer’s experience: from before the sale, through first contact, to delivery and beyond. Our Sydney call centre is open 16 hours a day, seven days a week and customers who aren’t comfortable making payments online are catered for with the option of paying cash, cheque or credit on the arrival of their new purchase,” Winning said.

Winning cites three key tips for ecommerce success:

• Listen to your customers at every opportunity – Customer feedback is proactively sought at Appliances Online, and is used to improve company processes and customer touch points. Customer feedback is tracked and analysed to detect issues that may be otherwise missed when feedback is looked at in aggregate.
• Empower your staff – your employees are the biggest asset of any business – we encourage all employees be innovative and we listen to all our staff’s ideas, regardless of their position within the company.
• Stay agile – no matter the size of the company, being able to adapt quickly to the changing e-commerce landscape and to embrace new ideas and technology is a necessity.

Said Winning: “We spend half of our time listening to, and learning what our customers want, and the rest of our time ensuring we deliver exactly what they’re asking for.

“Revenue has doubled every year since inauguration, and in the past 12 months the number of employees has grown from 20 to 80 people in our head office,” Winning said.

“Being online doesn’t mean you don’t have to deal with your customers. In fact, we want to create loyal relationships that last into the next generation,” he said.