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The ecommerce industry is booming, which makes it an exciting time to start an online store. But you have a lot of decisions to make.The type of products you sell ultimately determines best practices for stocking inventory, packaging and delivery.
What if you sell fragile items?You don’t want your products to show up on customers’ doorsteps broken or damaged. With the right tools, you’ll ensure a positive customer experience, inspiring them to trust your business and place more orders with you.
Here is a quick guide to selling and shipping fragile items successfully.
Ensure a Safe Delivery
Your top priority is getting your product to buyers intact. It’s also important to observe regulatory compliance in this area. Shipping absolutely has to adhere to local and national government laws and regulations. Further complicating things, the rules change all the time, so store owners must keep abreast of the rules governing their businesses.
Basic things you can do to boost delivery safety includes contacting local trade organizations, testing your products and partnering with a good logistics company. Local trade organizations are a great resource for helping you ensure you’re following the correct regulations for your product delivery.
Additionally, test shipping your product to yourself is a smart way to ensure your customers receive their packages intact. If your packaging passes this test, you’re on the right track.
The final option for safe shipping, as previously mentioned, is partnering with a good logistics company. They will have the tools and the expertise to reduce packaging mishaps, because they make their living packaging items efficiently and safely. Businesses like online smoke shops, which sell a lot of glass bongs, hand pipes and dab rigs, face this issue with every order. The better ones invest heavily in their packaging to ensure a safe delivery, given the fragile nature of the goods.
Troubleshoot Issues
Sometimes though, even when you’ve taken all possible precautions, products will get broken. Regardless of whether or not it was your company’s fault, you should take responsibility for the problem. In doing so, you’re showing customers that you care.
Additionally, realize that it’s realistic for mistakes to happen. This is at times difficult when dealing with an angry customer. Let’s presume you sell electronics, and a customer is eagerly waiting for your product to arrive. It also happens to be a holiday gift for a family member, scheduled for delivery just a few days ahead of Christmas.If they receive the product and it’s broken or malfunctioning in some way, they’ll be quite frustrated. And, there’s good reason to be angry about that mishap. The best thing you can do is acknowledge their frustration and proceed to remedy their issue.
This may mean changing some aspect of part of your delivery process. Whatever it is, you have to come up with a solution. Your best course of action is to take responsibility for the situation and do what you can to make the customer happy. All leaders face problems, but a good leader will plan accordingly when ecommerce goes wrong.
Process Refunds for Broken Goods
Another thing to consider is how you’ll manage the processing of refunds for broken goods. Customer satisfaction should be one of your chief priorities. Resolving faulty deliveries with refunds shows the customer you value their business and you’re willing to be held accountable. Of course, you must also be wary of charge backs and fraud. To help you in this regard, you can secure a merchant of record to minimize the potential for nefarious activities.
Try these useful tips on how to manage fragile items when selling and shipping. Just remember to take responsibility for when things go awry so that you don’t lose customers. At the same time, don’t assume all requests for refunds are automatically credible. Always look into and keep track of them so you can optimize order fulfillment.
