Bianca Barath
The life and sustenance of your business lies in satisfying your customers. If you manage to satisfy your customer, you have done your job. But successful businesses that grow by leaps and bounds every year do more than that. They work on not just delivering promises but on exceeding expectations with every single order they receive and send out. So, if you want your customer base to stick with you for a long time, it would be a great idea to see what these successful businesses do to delight their customers.
1. Have an accurate inventory
Stock up on customer favourites. It’s annoying to find that you have several product pages that display ‘Out of stock’. And once the customer orders a product, he expects that the product be shipped across as soon as possible. You will ruin your reputation if you call the customer and tell him that unfortunately, the product he has ordered for is not available. So, have an accurate inventory. The moment one of your products is off your warehouse shelves, it has to be off your website as well.
2. Have honest discount schemes and loyalty programs
Thriving e commerce players are transparent with their pricing. It’s dishonest and particularly nasty to hike prices up by 10 per cent and then advertise a 10 per cent discount. Savvy customers do their diligent research in the hundreds of websites that sell the same product and come to a conclusion that you are dishonest.
3. Deliver on time
If you promise to deliver the product to the customer in 3 days, you have to do so. The customer would be very unhappy if he receives the product after a week. So, it always makes sense to promise delivery a day later than you actually can deliver. This leaves buffer time to save your reputation in case something goes wrong with the shipping procedure. Always liaise with a shipping partner of repute.
4. Package it right
If you are looking to please a customer, go a step ahead and make sure your packaging is notice worthy. When a customer saves the box his product arrives in, you have arrived! While great packaging is not always possible, especially with lower priced products, it can factor much in customer happiness index in mid to high priced products. Even in cheaper products, it is a good idea to focus on perfect, spill proof and damage proof packaging. With the higher end products, you can play around with creativity and advertising to come up with long lasting, save worthy boxes. check out
Smart packaging = Less shipping cost
5. Surprise the customer with free samples
When a customer orders for, let’s say, a bottle of shampoo, you can either just ship the shampoo alone or you can send a similar flavoured/scented sample sachet of conditioner, moisturiser, shower gel or lotion. If he or she is impressed with the sample, they will order the same again. And everyone likes to receive a free product. So, the customer is definitely delighted.
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