What is your return policy? Is it fair? Is it cost effective? Is it too strict and losing you sales? Is it too lenient and stripping your bottom line? Should you change it? What is everyone else doing?

 

Well the last question may be the most important. The climate of the marketplace will change, and customer expectations change as it evolves.

 

In the past, “the customer is always right.” As companies like Target tighten up their return policy (no returns after 90 days, no returns without a receipt), customers are expecting less from your return policy. As fraud increases, in particular online, etailers tighten their return policies in an effort to protect themselves.  These things combine to set a climate that an etailer can use to their advantage. 

 

Return policies sometimes seem to be stricter for “bargain” companies.  For example, in the B&M world, Burlington Coat Factory, known for designer clothing at Target prices, will not give a refund after 2 weeks, even with a receipt. That’s strict. 

 

So who pays for shipping? Most online retailers pay for return shipping if it is their mistake. Some pay for return shipping even if the customer changes their mind. One logic is that if you bought the vaccum cleaner at Target, you drove to Target to buy it, used your gas and car and time, and if you got home the vacuum did not work, you would have to drive to Target to get another one.  Target is not going to reimburse you for your gas expense or time.  Even though it was not your fault.  So why should you pay for your customer to “drive it back” to your store?  Answer: because it is mostly still expected in the online world. The customer does not equate a shipping cost with their time/gas spent shopping in the B&M world. Free shipping still reigns.  And a few etailers even pay for return shipping even if the customer changes their mind (like Gotham City Online, top online shoe-seller). 

 

But as larger retailers tighten up their policies, this attitude should shift. There will always be a debate about the value of customer service, the increased sales from a lenient return policy paying for the cost of the returns, and for some business models this will work.  But overall,  “what everyone else is doing” will guide customer expectations, and staying in tune with this can help you maintain a return policy keeps customers satisfied and profits up.

        

Anyone that has every done a stint serving customers, whether waiting tables, answering phones, or via email, has struggled dealing with stupid customers, or angry customers. The best customer service reps are able to keep situations brief, keep conflicts to a minimum, and the highest percentage of customers leaving happy. These are some general tips that I use personally and share with my staff.

 

 

1. Every interaction is a potential sale. Even for sales that have taken place, unhappy customers, that customer will tell people good or bad things about your store. So keep your eye on the dollar bill.
2. Customer service via email has its own challenges, because people have “cyber balls”, they are much nastier then they would be in person. You too may be nastier. If you find yourself getting way too mad, tempted to tell someone off, go ahead and write it out , then delete it, and send your 2^nd reply instead.

 

3. Check your personal bad mood at the door:  Anyone has a bad day now and then, and that is the hardest time to deal with customers. Even minor questions turn into big headaches. Check in with yourself, recognizing your bad mood is the first step. If you realize that your irritation level is due to your own bad mood, stress in your own life, illness, you can then decide if you can overcome it, or if you need to take a break.  Deep breaths, a change of scenery, taking a walk can make a difference.
4. Picture the person you are talking to is your dear sweet grandmother.  This trick really works! When I find myself answering the stupidest question, if I picture this is my actual grandmother, sweetest woman in the world, just confused, not internet savvy, my patience level increases tenfold. How could I be so irritated with this sweet old lady whose eyesight is not good and who is confused with reading my webpage and just wants to know what the shipping cost is?  (by the way, this trick also works for driving in Florida behind a slow blue-hair with their blinker on for 3 miles—imagining it is my nervous grandmother keeps the road rage at a minimum)
5. Treat it like a personal challenge to turn around a grouchy disgruntled customer. When you react without sarcasm, when you respond with patience and sympathy and understanding, the chances of turning around a bad situation are very high. Most people just want to be heard, they want an apology. Think of that satisfying feeling of turning around a bad situation, and knowing it was your reaction that controlled the situation and made it all better. Keep a running tally, give yourself a gold star, something to remind yourself that it can be done. And often the angry customer ends up apologizing---give yourself 2 gold stars! If you work with others, have a contest, keep a public board of your gold stars.
6. Have a budget for making unhappy customers leave satisfied.  Offer refunds, future coupons, plan on spending a little bit of money. Do not go overboard, but in the long run, a bad situation is turned around quicker with a coupon or refund, the time spent arguing and future lost sales are not worth the $10 shipping credit you could give to make the problem go away instantly.  Not to mention your stress level or your staff’s stress level.
7. Realize that some customers are going to be unhappy no matter what. You cannot have 100% customer satisfaction. Realizing this, or letting your employees know that you realize this, empathizing with them about those few absolutely insane customers, will go a long way in decreasing their stress level, and making them better service employees.

        

My daughter is at the age where kids have lemonade stands. That first spark about making her own money burst out this weekend. We were making Christmas ornaments like we do every year, and she had the idea to sell them.  As I sit and brainstorm with her of which family members she can give each one to, I can see the dollar signs in her eyes--- she’s got the fever.  On one hand, I want to encourage generosity and thoughtfulness, I really WANT her to want to make some gifts and keep the spirit of Christmas alive.  But on the other hand, I want to raise an entrepreneur, I want her to have the confidence to build her dream. AND the skills. 

 

So I let her run with it, and encourage every idea, even the ones that I know will not work.  She was obsessed, talking about it for hours, about pricing, about where to set up a table to get the most traffic, about making ornaments year round for other holidays, about donating a % to charity. She went to bed talking about it, she woke up talking about it, and even though she and I knew that our neighborhood had just about zero traffic, when she asked me where the card table was, I knew she was going to set up shop today no matter what.

 

How excited I was! Her first ‘lemonade stand’!  Except it was her sequined popsicle stick stars.  And within 5 minutes a neighbor made the first purchase! Nevermind that she sat outside for 4 hours and only sold 3 ornaments.  The point was she DID THIS, on her own, and was not hung up on her profits as much as the experience of selling.  And the ideas “Mom, we must set up another location tomorrow, we need to move around to reach more people”.

 

All I could think about today is my experience with the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. If you own a business and have kids, read it.  If you do not own a business and have kids, and are sick of working “for the man”, READ IT.  The idea is about raising entrepreneurs, but the lessons transfer to the adult reader too. Owning your own business requires confidence and risk taking (smart risks hopefully!), and these qualities can be taught.

 

One of the big takeaways for me from the book:  making yourself available to take those opportunities. So many of us find the reasons that business idea will not work, or reasons why we cannot start our own business. So I could have said: “Oh Elly, no one will be in our neighborhood today, you will spend hours outside and not get many sales, I don’t know where the card table it, I don’t have any change to give you for your stand” etc.  Instead I helped her become available to this opportunity (the ornaments were made already, why not?) So I tried to be supportive without taking it over, help set expectations for slow sales so she would not be too disappointed, and she got her first taste of having a business. And she loved it. And she brought a boombox outside halfway through the day to pipe Christmas music into her “store”.  No one was there to hear it but her, but it’s a valid idea! I was proud and impressed.

 

There is so much more to the book, about the value of networking, about keeping the goal to have a business that does not require YOU for 40-60 hours a week for it to be profitable, about acting on our ideas instead of just thinking.  So read it. And next time you see a kid’s lemonade stand, buy one, you are building an entrepreneur.

        

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