Problem Solving Systems

When you have an E-commerce inventory based business, you are going to have customer issues. That itself is undisputed fact, the sooner you realize it the better. Items or parts will be broken or missing. The shipper is going to damage something. Or the customer is not going to like something and they are going to tell you that it’s all your fault. When I first started selling in E-commerce; this use to really bother me a lot. After doing some research I found out that it is a normal part of business. You simply cannot make everyone happy all of the time. So how do you deal with it? Actually you deal with it one customer at a time but you have to have a system.

Thinking through potential problems is a great way to start. You have to actually plot it out on paper the things that could go wrong or get broken and write in a solution to fix it. This for-thought will keep you from having the “fireman” principle. That is, you spend a lot of your time putting out fires and stressing over them. You do not want to get into that mode of operation. Probably the biggest factor is a dent in your encouragement. Realizing that these things do happen; make a big difference. Planning for them is key.

Here is how you do it. Take every product that you carry and look at all the parts of that product. If you can order the individual parts or make individual parts as spare inventory, do so. This gives you a plan in case a part is defective or damaged in the shipping process. Have a form for your accounting that covers a replacement part cost and shipping. You will want to track how much things cost you to replace and ship. This can easily be forgotten if you are in the fireman mode. Have some extra stock on hand for replacements. Have a return shipping method laid out so that you can make return labels for the customer to attach to a box that might need to be resent back to you. All the big shippers have this option built into their websites and you can easily go to the tracking number for that customer and get a return label. If you have the item fulfilled through a warehouse, they also have that capability.

Make sure you put a return policy in your website that covers a restocking fee if someone wants to return something because they do not like it or ordered the wrong item. This will also force you to think about a return policy since you will eventually have one. Make sure you add a testimonial or two to that policy, it’s free and it’s like adding insurance onto your page.

Hopefully this article has helped you with a little thought about developing your Return or problem “system” Systems are the key to piece of mind when you are in business. All large businesses have them and so should you

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