• 5-Star Review for Faulty Product

    By ZonSupport | Posted on April 16, 2020| Blog

    In the current COVID-19 environment, you know your customers are stressed. We are finding they are more likely to complain about a product than simply not bother…money is getting tight!

    We always reach out to every customer who requests a return. We want to find out the real reason they returned a product.

    If you’re fast, personal, and focused on problem-solving vs “how dare they return my perfect product, ” you will learn of quality issues as soon as they arise plus maybe win a 5-star review – for your faulty product!

    Don’t wait to run your Return Report in a month’s time to find out what’s going on in your business. What is documented there may not be entirely truthful anyway…

    Why would a customer “lie” you ask? Well, they are often not sure what to write for fear of Amazon not agreeing to the return. Sure, Amazon tells the world you can buy any product and if you want to return it for any reason, you can do so – it’s their A to Z Guarantee.

    However, human nature being what it is, many people write whatever they think will make sure they can get a return. So, you are better to dig into every return as fast as you can in case there is something behind it that you should be aware of.

    If they want to return your product because it’s faulty, you actually don’t want this to happen for a couple of reasons.

    Your Return Rate is a metric closely monitored by Amazon. 5% is the maximum but we’ve seen listings suspended for less.

    If you have a low sales volume, then it is easy to run right over this metric in a heartbeat! So, your strategy should always be to minimize returns wherever possible. Period.

    Amazon often put faulty returns back into stock. Your product then goes out again to upset yet another customer, creating yet another return!

    While the Amazon PR machine says that they open and inspect every return, this is just not true as anyone who has worked in one of their Fulfillment Centers confirms.

    A return comes in and in a nano-second, someone on the minimum wage puts in one of two baskets – back to stock or non-fulfillable. Sadly, no duty of care culture in this business. It’s all about efficiency and profits.

    As you can see in this 5-Star Review, we were straight onto this customer who requested a return, engaging with her before she had even dropped it off.

    While our client would prefer to have the faulty product back for repair, we simply can’t trust the Amazon process to put it into non-fulfillable. So, we asked the customer to dispose of it and simply shipped a replacement.

    Time and time again we prove this: Exceptional customer service drives 5-Star Reviews!

    Now is the time to look at every part of your e-commerce business and tighten up on your policies and processes.

    If you’re locked up at home, start writing them out. You’ll be surprised what comes out from some quality focus on all the moving parts in your business.

    As always, ask us anything. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll know someone who does!

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