Guest Blogger Brian Kresge on How Operations Seals the Deal in Customer Acquisition
I have invited Brian Kresge, an experienced direct & ecommerce marketer, to guest blog for me today. Brian has held senior management positions at J. Crew, 1-800Flowers.com, and Toys R Us, among other well respected companies. Here are his thoughts on the importance of following through operationally once the sale has been made:
You Got The Sale – Now What?
How Operations Seals the Deal in Customer Acquisition
By Brian K. Kresge
Congratulations, you got your new customer to use their hard earned plastic to buy from your site. Getting them was hard. Keeping them is just as hard and how well you perform on the back end will go a long way towards helping generate repeat visits and purchases.
Operations are just as important a part of your customer acquisition strategy as SEO, SEM, or social media. If you get the order but disappoint the customer, not only will you not see them return, you probably will have a hard time attracting their 986 Facebook “friends” and 12,568 Twitter followers. The only solution is to do it right.
Remember Your Manners. Your parents told you to thank someone for giving you something and it’s no different in e-commerce. Say thank you in your order confirmation. I can’t count the number of e-mails I’ve received from purchases that start “Your order has been confirmed.” So has my lack of engagement with your impersonal message. It’s an easy thing to do, tell your customer you appreciate their business. You may also want to use this e-mail to offer the customer incentive to return to your site and purchase. Free shipping, a discount, first access to new product, whatever is in keeping with your brand’s image. Don’t waste this valuable opportunity to re-engage your customer. This applies to all transactional e-mails.
I’ll get it when? Maintaining a high in-stock rate is important to customer satisfaction. Getting your customer excited about a product and ready to order is great but if they are on backorder for 60 days or the item is out of stock, you’ve created a disappointed customer who will think twice about ordering from you again. Marketing, Merchandising, and Planning need to be joined at the hip so that out of stock items are not featured and promoted or, if they are, their availability clearly stated. Inventory management, and in fact all operations, must be viewed as a customer service function.
If the order is delayed from the originally promised date, send timely updates on the new shipping times with information on how to cancel an order if the new date is a problem. It’s not only good business practice, it keeps you out of the FTC’s doghouse. If you don’t know or don’t understand the FTC’s “30 Day Rule“, find out fast. The penalties can be as high as $16,000 per occurrence.
Great news, the order is ready to ship out. How does the packaging reflect on your brand? A badly or poorly packaged order will negatively impact how the customer views your company and influence repeat orders. Is the product packaged so that it will not be damaged in transit? Sure it may be USPS, UPS, or FedEx’s handling that damaged the product but the customer doesn’t care. They are dealing directly with you not the package delivery agent. Check out your drop shippers as well. A drop shipper using Styrofoam peanuts for an ecologically friendly brand probably won’t earn you any friends. It is extremely important to know how your drop shippers package your product and that it arrives undamaged to the customer. The customer ordered from yourbrand.com and the drop shipper is representing you. Do test shipments periodically with all drop shippers to insure proper packaging and have the test shipments sent to a private address, not your offices.
Now that you have the merchandise properly packaged, are you using the collateral to effectively communicate with the customer? A packing slip is another opportunity to sell the customer. Give them an incentive to place another order similar to the confirmation e-mail. Also make the pack slip clear and the return instructions easy to understand. Pre-paid return labels help make the return process easier and takes some of the aggravation out of a possibly negative transaction. Make the time period for accepting returns extremely clear. If it’s 30 days, call it out to reduce customer disappointments and make sure you highlighted it on your website. Ask for a return reason code on the return slip (too big, too small, etc.) and review, not only the data collected, but the actual return slips. Customers will hand write messages that are a gold mine of information. React quickly to cut down on merchandise and delivery problems.
Service after the shipment. Everything doesn’t end after the order ships. How you deal with customer service issues affects your repeat business. If a customer has a problem how do they contact you; E-mail, phone, carrier pigeon? If you funnel people to e-mail make sure you respond quickly and have enough trained staff. These days e-mail response is measured in hours not days, especially around holidays. A quick, personalized, and helpful response can actually improve customer retention. Customers will feel engaged with your brand and its people. Automated e-mails to customer questions, while cheap, are impersonal and often leads to more questions, e-mails, and calls.
Phone reps are also a critical piece to customer acquisition. These poor souls often bear the brunt of the most irate customers with the most intractable problems. It is important that the vast majority of the calls are handled the first time without a hand off to another rep or supervisor. To do this the call center rep must have product and shipment information readily available and be empowered to act. Nothing is worse for a customer than to hear “I’ll have to call you back about that.” This again includes information about drop shipments
Reviewing customer communications is vital to managing service. If you outsource your call center and e-mail, make sure you do some live call monitoring and a review outgoing of e-mails. Do not rely on your service provider to send you recordings or selected e-mails. I’m not saying they’d only send you the good ones but then again I’m not saying they wouldn’t. Trust but verify. Some of your best brand advocates can come from irate customers who’s issues are handled professionally, with sensitivity, and on a timely basis.
Once a return hits your DC, process it quickly. It’s tempting to put off return processing until later, especially during the holidays, but that is a sure way to increase customer service contacts and customer ill will. After it’s processed make sure to inform the customer that their account has been credited or a replacement shipped. And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, use the notification to sell, sell, sell.
One Last Thing. Solicit feedback. If you have product reviews, include a service review with that request. Keep it short and pointed. Include a postage paid, short survey on a postcard with the package and also have a URL on the postcard so people can choose to answer the survey directly.
Great operations will reinforce your brand message and enhance you image. You must do this by monitoring all customer touch points because the goal is not to get just one order from your customers, but to develop a relationship that encourages repeat purchases and customer engagement.
BIO
Brian Kresge is an energetic, passionate, and creative e-commerce executive. He has expertise and experience in all aspects of e-commerce including operations, systems, creative, merchandising, and marketing. Known for his cross-functional collaboration he has driven increases to both the top and bottom lines for many e-commerce companies. He can be reached at briankkresge@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @BrianKresge.
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