Customers get frustrated pretty easily. Much of the time, it’s pretty understandable! You need to ensure that customers aren’t going to get irritated by the service your business provides. Here are the things you need to keep an eye out for.
Promise And Reality Disparity
Maybe your product isn’t doing what you said it would do. Maybe it didn’t arrive as quickly as your website said it would. Whatever the complaint, you’ve not delivered on your promise. And there few things a business can do to it’s customers that would incur more wrath. This is often the result of miscommunication.
You need to make sure the descriptions of the products on your website, as well as the ‘about us’ and FAQ sections of your website, are crystal-clear and accurate when it comes to what a customer should expect. Don’t allow your customers to be disappointed in your service; there are few emotions more disheartening and damaging to a business.
Inflexibility
Sometimes, customers are going to make some odd demands. In fact, many of their demands may not be that odd. Few consumers are going to ask you to, say, throw in a free cat with their next order, or to change their delivery address to the moon. But they may often make requests that, despite them not being the usual way of doing things, are perfectly reasonable in themselves.
As this post explains, you’re going to want to be flexible about certain things in your line of business. This doesn’t just include the purchasing process; you’ll need to be willing to be flexible about branding and marketing, too. If you’re able to go the extra mile for the consumer, they’re going to love you.
Under-Stocking
Let’s face it: we can’t all be Amazon. In fact, despite the popular idea, not even Amazon sell everything. But if you have a specialized ecommerce site, then not stocking particular items could be very damaging to your reputation. Let’s say you do own an online bookstore. Sure, you might be forgiven for not having a copy of something really obscure. But if you don’t have, say, the new George Saunders novel, then you’re definitely going to be losing a lot of potential business.
You should ensure you deal with such catalog problems. One solution you could consider is drop shipping fulfillment. Your store will basically be the middleman between the customer and the company that does have the stock. While it’s definitely better to have the stock yourself, this is an undeniably strong solution if that isn’t possible for whatever reason.
Shipping Errors
Make sure you improve the “shipping experience” for your customer until it can be improved no further. Bear in mind that this doesn’t just mean making sure the item arrives as quickly as possible. Yes, speed is a big factor. But you need to ensure that the delivery is safe and that the packaging is sturdy, so as not to incur damage upon the ordered product.
You also need to ensure that you’re working with the best logistics service that you possibly can; you don’t want to end up using a service that hires drivers who can’t find clearly addressed locations!