Attention online retail executives: After the last month you’ve had as, I’m willing to guess that you’re tired of dealing with the data pouring in about the holiday season. Your head is probably swimming with statistics about your online sales revenue, your warehouse’s pick and pack accuracy, your returns rate, and your holiday marketing spends. Reconciling the good with the bad, fixing outstanding issues while still learning from your mistakes, and just sorting out the craziness is more than exhausting. The last thing you want to hear is one more statement that mentions numbers and figures, right?
In that case, here is a blog with no numbers, stats, or data. Instead, I’ll talk a little bit about stepping out of your comfort zone – both mentally and physically. That’s right – it’s time to step out of your office, away from the conference room, and as far from those spreadsheets and reports as possible and head out to where the action is. This blog is all about better understanding, refining, and guiding your retail operations – by viewing it firsthand.
- Step 1: When was the last time you walked the warehouse floor and saw your team in action? Even at a glance, you will be able to understand if your pick and pack operations are running smoothly. Are the order fulfillment processes you have in place actually being followed? Is the distribution center floor a disorganized mess? Are your pickers and packers running around like chickens with their heads cut off? Talk to the people on the front lines about the challenges they face – and find solutions to make them more manageable.
- Step 2: Have you listened in on a customer call recently? Head to your contact center and ask to listen in on an ongoing conversation. The reports you’re getting may indicate that problem resolution has never been higher, but hearing an actual customer voice her complaints or thank you for prompt action can help you understand the customer’s view of your customer service team, as well as the competence and skill of your team, the way no data can.
- Step 3: Do you know what’s being said on your company’s Facebook page or who’s mentioning your business on Twitter? Who recently blogged about the latest conference you attended or sponsored? While it’s okay to let your marketing team handle the content of your online messaging, retail executives need to remain plugged into the social aspect of the industry (and with today’s smartphone apps, social media monitoring services, and technology, there’s no excuse not to). That way, you’ll get insight into the problems your operations and customer service teams face when talking to your customers – and get some valuable info about consumer trends and demands, too.
Let’s be clear – I’m not advocating that you throw all the data you have out the window. However, I also don’t recommend spending your entire day knee-deep in the day-to-day operations processes involved with direct-to-consumer retail. What I do recommend is that you step out of your comfort zone occasionally to refine, or even just reaffirm, the strategy you have in place for your ecommerce business. Try a small-scale marketing campaign you’d normally turn down. Tweak the layout of your checkout page to see if it increases conversions. Chat with your contact center employees about the day’s highs and lows. Managing by walking around is not as outdated as you think – and will help you be an executive that’s more in-tune with the needs of your company and your people.
Posted in Call Center, Customer Service, Ecommerce, Holiday Planning, Order Fulfillment, Retail, Technology, Warehouse
I was actually pretty happy with your customer service, up to the point where you asked me to take a survey about your customer service. – Bill Maher
By now, you must have analyzed your holiday sales data to figure out what went right (and wrong) during your busiest season. So if you don’t mind me asking – how did you do? Did your ecommerce site crash under the weight of higher traffic? Did your order fulfillment team pick and pack the right products, to the right people, on time? Did your contact center get inundated with calls and sky-high hold times? What is your data telling you about your retail operations?
As customers become less brand loyal and more demanding than ever, retailers can quickly get the impression that they’re not getting customer service right, period. If you ask for feedback in the form of a survey, chances are you will end up miffing some of your customers. But if you don’t? Well, then someone somewhere will probably be upset about that, too. Same goes for your shipping and return policies, contact center interactions, and quirky marketing promotions – every well-intentioned move seems to drum up customer ire from someone. So what will really make customers happy?
“Excellent customer service” might be the right answer, however ambiguous that answer may be. According to American Express’ survey on customer service released last May, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed believe companies are not paying enough attention to customer service. Almost 78% of Americans say they will cancel an order if issues arise with a retailer’s customer service team, while almost 60% would take their business elsewhere (aka, to one of your competitors!). Not only do customers always want to be right, but they’re willing to pay more to ensure it – in fact, they’ll pay up to 13% more for the same product if it means getting treated better by an online retailer’s service team.
As you streamline your customer service team for 2012, here are some considerations to keep in mind:
- Customer service is a business function: Retailers now view customer relationship management as an investment in business growth, similar to sales and marketing. Makes sense, considering consumers are twice as likely to socially pass on a bad service experience as they are a good one. So let keeping the customer happy permeate every part of your business model!
- Focus on hiring people with the right mindset: While retailers are doing everything possible to draw in customers via creative marketing messages, promotions, free shipping etc., getting the right people with a customer-centric mindset will turn good service into excellent service. That’s why retailers have already started adding “customer experience” executives to their teams.
- Consider a customer from all his behavioral aspects: Your customer’s physical location is just one contributor to his shopping behavior. Consider his temporal (having a baby, moved to a new city), individual (sports enthusiast, avid reader) and cultural (race, religion, lifestyle) interests and needs when creating campaigns with a personal appeal.
While it might sound trite to say your people make the difference, they actually do! For 65% of those surveyed, excellent customer service means friendly representatives who solved their problems quickly. At Fifth Gear, we treat our client’s customers as our own – the way any outsourced fulfillment provider worth their salt should!
Posted in Call Center, Customer Service, Ecommerce, Fifth Gear, Order Fulfillment, Retail
Was the recent holiday shopping season one big, crazy blur for you? Whether you’re an online retailer, a fulfillment services provider, or a deal-conscious consumer, this year’s holiday season has been a record-setting whirlwind of activity. So with all that shipping, shopping, and selling behind you, you’ve probably resigned to the couch with a pillow over your face, right?
Well, if you’re wanting to take a less stressful look back at the holiday season, have no fear. Fifth Gear presents the 2011 Holiday Hangover Report – a compilation of some of the season’s record-breaking and surprising stats. Sit back, take a deep breath, and check it out! Pain-free guaranteed.
Click on the image below to see the full-size infographic.
Posted in Ecommerce, Fifth Gear, Holiday Planning, Marketing, Order Fulfillment, Retail
Yes, it’s that time of the year when returns start coming in from customers who bought in haste during the holiday season (or those who got a gift they could live without!). January is the month when retailers traditionally expect the returns to start pouring in. Consider these stats on retail returns:
- Liquidation.com, a website that auctions off returned merchandise, return rates are predicted to be 2 points higher this year than during non-holiday times
- Return frauds supposedly cost American retailers $3.5 billion during the holiday season (that’s 24% of the total $14.37 billion projected for the entire year!)
- Retailers may refund back an average of 9.9 cents on every dollar they earned this holiday season – up by 1 cent when compared to last year, and way above the average of 7 cents during non-seasonal times.
Although it might seem crazy, online retailers need to use the returns process to increase customer loyalty while continuing to identify ways to streamline their “reverse” fulfillment process. Here are some quick tips:
- Make sure everyone knows your return policies: This applies equally to your customer care, warehouse, operations, and fulfillment services teams as well as your marketing and merchandising teams. Communicate effectively a common message that employees can share with customers across all channels – and be sure that everyone is prepared to answer customers’ questions, whether it’s via email, phone, social media, or live chat. It is not enough that just your customers know the rules of your returns process – the last thing you want is for your internal team to confuse a consumer. Nothing destroys brand loyalty faster than a lack of trust and confidence!
- Use returns processing time as an opportunity to sell more: Easier said than done, especially if the customer is angry or difficult to please! Training your contact center team to manage customer returns should also include ability to cross-sell, up-sell, and offer creative ways to replace or exchange with the right product. A perfect mix of communication and compassion is essential to encouraging a customer to purchase again after returning a product.
- Never say never: Ensure your customers can return the product with as little hassle and money as possible – aka, don’t make them jump through ridiculous hoops just to return something (sounds silly, but it does happen!) While it may be impossible to offer free shipping on all returns, see if you can offer it for product exchanges or for loyal customers, such as those who are members of your site or who belong to a loyalty program you offer.
Let’s face it. No retailer likes to process returns – or refund money. But processing returns is part of the sales process, and the more efficient you become in handling returns, the sooner you can return to your core business of selling more! An easier way, of course, would be to outsource your retail fulfillment needs to a partner who has the expertise and the experience. Talk to our fulfillment outsourcing team at Fifth Gear to find out how to make your products returns hassle-free for both you and your customers.
Do you have a returns process that keeps customers happy, or a top-secret tip that’s made processing your holiday returns super efficient? Share it with our readers in the comments!
Posted in Call Center, Customer Service, Ecommerce, Holiday Planning, Order Fulfillment, Retail, Warehouse
Operational efficiency. That phrase can send shivers down the spines of ecommerce and catalog retailers, especially during busy seasons. Battling with increased orders and unfamiliar customers, the holiday season exposes every chink in an e-retailer’s operations armor. So what did industry leaders find out about their retail fulfillment operations this season?
Over 50% of the 65 multichannel and store retailers analyzed in an Aberdeen Group study last November found they had no real-time access to their inventory levels or order data, while 30% of them had an average stock-out rate (that’s the ratio of the total value of out-of-stock items to total revenue) of more than 7%, which indicates lost revenue, lost opportunities, and most importantly, lost customers who may never come back.
Every ecommerce retailer wants to lower their operational costs but still have in-depth and real-time access to inventory data, fulfillment information, and supply chain stats. That means ensuring optimum levels of inventory – too much means unavailable warehouse space and tied-up revenue, while too little means lost profits and unhappy customers. The biggest business pressure faced by retailers (49% of those surveyed, to be exact) in 2012 will be the ability to react to demand changes in a timely manner as they face unpredictable buying behavior and market fluctuations.
Operational efficiency. Optimum inventory levels. Supply chain flexibility. It’s becoming obvious that ecommerce retailers will need to streamline their order fulfillment processes to match up retail operations with customer satisfaction. But how do you get started? One option for online retailers not looking to manage their day-to-day order fulfillment: using an outsourced single-source fulfillment provider. Not only will a single-source provider give you the benefit of fulfillment services and contact center services under one roof, but it will also keep your channels tightly integrated and branded in a consistent manner. Got a question about how that works? Let us know below!
Posted in Customer Service, Ecommerce, Order Fulfillment, Retail, Warehouse
Multichannel or cross-channel? These terms are used interchangeably by most retail marketers to describe retailers with multiple channels of sale – but is there a difference between the two? And will it matter to the success of your marketing efforts in 2012 if you don’t know what it is?
From a communication and marketing perspective, multichannel indicates that you are trying to get a single message to customers and prospects across various channels at the same time. As a marketer, your effort is to connect with as wide an audience as possible while minimizing cost and effort. Your messaging could be the same throughout all the channels or slightly modified based on channel specifics, demographics of that channel’s users, etc.
On the other hand, cross-channel is an attempt to track a particular customer across the different channels in which you operate. Cross-channel now becomes the process of getting the right message at the right time to your prospect so that he can make an informed purchase decision. This message is based on your prospect’s activity across all the channels and can be achieved through a variety of ways: remarketing efforts, transaction-based emails, geo-targeted advertising and messaging, etc.
Yes, the difference is subtle, but it’s mission-critical as 2012 becomes the year of the multichannel retailer. Keep this difference in mind and follow these cross-channel marketing tips.
- Continue prospecting and growing your new-buyer funnel with pay-per-click, SEO, and catalog campaigns. Once you have a buyer, focus your cross-channel activities based on his “lifetime value” as opposed to his initial order value.
- Differentiate your buyers based on where they came from and what search terms they used. A customer coming via a search engine could be more likely to stick around and purchase again than one who was referred via an Amazon program – but analyze the search terms they used to get to you and their interactions with your site before attaching an equal value to all prospects.
- If you’ve got a catalog, continue to print it if it makes financial sense – even if you are now posting more products online. Maximize your return on catalogs by using it as a web traffic driver by linking back to your website using “see more online” copy, QR codes, and personalized landing pages.
It’s time to approach your marketing with a sense of purpose and urgency in the New Year if you want to succeed as a multichannel retailer. From branding during the order fulfillment process, to ecommerce site design to email marketing and ecommerce campaigns, the team at Fifth Gear is ready to help you meet your resolutions!
Posted in Catalogs, Marketing, online marketing, Retail
How did you spend your holiday season? If you’re an online retailer, you were probably knee-deep in data reports about your warehouse, your contact center, your web traffic, and your email marketing results. You probably didn’t even feel like you had time to breathe – that is, if this time period wasn’t such a blur that you remember anything at all.
At Fifth Gear, however, our employees took some time in spite of the holiday hustle and bustle to provide another kind of fulfillment: the needs of the less-fortunate. Our operations teams in Louisiana, Missouri sponsored a toy drive, bake sale, pitch-in, and donation drive to support both internal families in need as well as families in the local community. The Indianapolis office hosted a food drive and donated the collected items to a local food pantry the week before Christmas. In total, the Fifth Gear teams collected over $1700 in funds, plus hundreds of toys for needy and abused children and canned goods for the hungry. What an amazing display of cheer during a very busy time! Our employees rock!
For a full description of the programs that Fifth Gear employees hosted during the holiday season, please see our news release.
Want to keep up-to-date with what’s going on at our Indy, Missouri, and Pennsylvania locations? Want to know what it’s like to work at Fifth Gear? Check out our Facebook page to get a glimpse inside our company. I think you’ll like what you see!
Posted in Ecommerce, Fifth Gear
“The customer is king” is an attitude that has been drilled into our minds, both as members of the retail industry and as consumers (because who doesn’t want to be right all the time?). As ecommerce sales topped $35 billion this past holiday season, e-tailers are patting themselves on their back for a job well done. After all, skyrocketing online sales are simply not possible without great customer service, right?
Maybe. Do you even know the number one reason why customers come to your website in the first place? Convenience. Product selection comes a close second, with better pricing and free shipping rounding out the top consumer reasons for purchasing online versus in-store. Do you see great customer service in the top four? That’s because customers no longer worry about customer service. If they have a bad experience with you, they will simply go to your competition. After all, the competition is just a search and a click away in the ecommerce world. And in an era where consumers are becoming increasingly price-sensitive and decreasingly brand loyal, the temptation to patronize another retailer comes pretty quickly even after a so-so experience.
So does good customer service matter? Yes, but not in the way you imagine. In today’s age of hyper-competition, the customer takes excellent customer service as a given – live customer chat to answer questions instantly, no-hassle product returns, multiple channels to place orders, and purchases that are delivered on time and with the correct contents inside. This means that your customer service operation becomes an instant reflection of your order fulfillment operation.
According to an Aberdeen study of over 65 multichannel retailers in November 2011, over 50% of those surveyed do not have access to real-time inventory and order data, while 69% of them have no access to vendor inventory levels. Not only is this a potentially dangerous way to operate a business, but now this critical error directly reflects on your ability to deliver your customer’s orders.
When you outline your customer satisfaction list for this year, pay special attention to your fulfillment services and supply chain operations. Focus more on ensuring your customer never sees an “Out of Stock” label on your website or an email apologizing for delayed shipping times or incorrect orders by tightening the lines of communication with your vendors, working with carriers to find the lowest-cost and fastest shipping options, and above all, ensuring the accuracy of your pick and pack operations. After all, it’s a clear reflection of your dedication to your customers’ satisfaction.
Got enough on your plate as it is without worrying about your warehouse operations? It might be time to consider outsourcing your order fulfillment.
Posted in Customer Service, Ecommerce, Order Fulfillment, Retail, Warehouse
So the holiday season is finally over, but thanks to some less-than-stellar inventory management or an unforeseen number of product returns, you’re drowning in an excess of argyle sweaters, dog beds, or uniforms plastered with a festive holiday pattern. Not sure what to do with that extra inventory? Never fear, because there are a few ways to manage your products while still making a few dollars (and without throwing good items into the trash!).
Here’s a few ways to part with that excess inventory:
Offer free shipping: If there’s one promotion in ecommerce that’s proven to move inventory, it’s the promise of free shipping. If you typically charge a fee, waive it on the products that you’re hoping to get rid of (or any order that includes them!).
Bundle items as a package deal: Pair your overstocked products with complementary items in your inventory and sell them at a “special package price”. Combining them with bigger ticket items if possible is best. However, don’t just ‘include’ the item as a surprise inside each customer order, no matter how desperate you are to get rid of stock. Not only is that sloppy branding, but it makes your pick and pack operation look haphazard and will probably generate more than a few confused calls to your contact center.
Encourage customers to “buy more & save”: Volume discounts are a great way to clear out inventory quickly – but only when it makes sense for the item (nobody needs 10 license plate covers or 30 pairs of earmuffs, so just resist the temptation if it seems strange!). Run a “stock up” sale that features marketing copy telling customers to order for themselves, family, and friends. Offering a BOGO promotion with the second item at a steep discount will also encourage consumers to purchase multiple items.
Liquidate it: If you’d rather not handle getting rid of inventory on your own, seek out a product liquidation site to help you. Not only will you get rid of products you don’t want, but the liquidation provider will take the responsibility of marketing the deals as well as fulfilling any orders that come in. These sites work best for non-luxury or branded products that have a relatively high margin (although don’t expect to make much money going this route!). But using a liquidation expert doesn’t mean you lose all access to your products – work with the provider to set an item price that both makes sense and meets your needs.
Fifth Gear offers our clients a liquidation service for discontinued or overstocked merchandise. If you’re interested in deploying any of the above strategies for your post-holiday hangover (or need some guidance on inventory planning for the holidays ahead), you need to talk to us.
Posted in Customer Service, Ecommerce, Holiday Planning, Order Fulfillment, Retail, Warehouse
