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Customer Response to Late Shipping Items this Christmas? (10)

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Hello Everyone.

I have a store which took orders for gifts this Christmas. Although I have stopped taking orders for Christmas after Dec 5, my seller tells me that the items would not be delivered by Christmas.

Now I know there are angry customers just waiting to rain on me and thats making me concerned.

How would you tackle it? Refund customers well ahead of time or something of that sort?

Please respond on your suggestion or better, your experience if you have gone through the same.


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Any Suggestions?

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I've never run Shopify/ecommerce so this is just me thinking about it from past customer service businesses I've been involved in... but if you're really concerned then I might send a personalized email to them or something. The human touch usually goes a long way. You could apologize, tell them you appreciate the business, explain the mixup, and offer to refund them if they want. I bet most would decline and be okay with it if explained to them on an individual/personal level.

If its hundreds or thousands of orders and that's not feasible, I guess the only choice would be to refund and notify them or else offer them some kind of free credit or something...

So yeah no great ideas bro, just wanted to throw something out there since there weren't any other replies yet..

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How many orders we're talking about?




LeadCloak

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Thanks for the response Jack. Yes, I believe that the human touch will go the long way, especially I dont want to spoil the reputation of my existing store and spoil future sales through mailing.

What makes me disappointed is that the seller had 20 day delivery guaranteed..Now he says it cant be before 35 days. So I would lose the sale since the seller won’t refund me back because he had shipped the item.

Either ways I don’t want to be the spoilsport for someone’s Christmas.

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We’re talking about 200-300 orders on this existing product..


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This is very sound advice I would follow!


You've done all you could to avoid the situation, by stopping your advertising early. So it wasn't your fault - just be honest and tell your customers so.

You can offer your customers several options if you absolutely want to put store reputation above all else (which is very noble and smart of you):

-A discount code towards their next purchase. Or, better yet, an "I'm sorry!" greetings card with the discount code inside.

-A full or partial refund.

-A small gift to say sorry (there are a ton of small products you can buy for very cheap that would make for great gifts - cable bites for example).


Your good intentions will be blessed - I trust that your business will grow and Thrive from it. Good luck!



Amy

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Another option I just thought of - which would REALLY help your customers, but probably hurt future business for you:

Find places where customers can order similar products at the last minute and STILL receive them by Christmas (e.g. Amazon prime 1/2-day), and send them to those customers.

I've never done this before, so have no idea what kind of impact it can have on your business. Personally though, if I was a customer receiving this kind of message from a vendor, I would be impressed as hell and become an instant fan.



Amy

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Take the loss, send a personalized email along with a full refund and small discount code for next purchase. It'd be enough in most of the cases.



LeadCloak

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Make sure you use an affiliate link for it haha, this way you minimize your losses ;-).

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