Being a retailer comes with many challenges, one of which is managing frustrated customers who receive incorrect items after placing orders through the e-shop. The support team plays a vital role in assisting and reassuring customers. With their exceptional empathy and communication skills, they are able to turn angry customers into satisfied and loyal ones. However, this process can come at a cost to the retailer.
Whilst the first action is to offer a prompt refund or replacement to gain the customer’s trust. Various methods include offering a discount on future orders, providing a gift card redeemable on select featured products, or rewarding customers with points for their next shopping experience. These solutions leverage marketing strategies and budgets to strengthen the brand and encourage customers to return. Customers will feel reassured if they are listened to and if they see the support team validate the issue and try to work to prevent it from happening again.
Our goal is to minimize customer frustration by preventing the need for them to contact the support team. At the same time, we aim to avoid overburdening the support team with return-related issues. However, in many cases, reactive solutions remain the only practical approach. A proactive step, such as implementing data validation during the order placement process, can eliminate these problems before they arise.
This challenge is part of a broader issue faced by retailers, where industry-specific data accuracy is crucial. For example, in fashion, precise size, color, and stock information is essential, while in other industries like computing, accuracy in data such as memory, processing power, or product manufacturer is critical. Ensuring that catalog data is accurate enough to prevent return-related issues is a genuine concern.
In today’s world, both online stores and physical retailers, along with marketplaces, share their digital data. While ensuring accuracy across these ecosystems could address the root of the problem, we still find ourselves needing to build strategies, invest time, and respond to these issues reactively.