Your job isn’t finished once you’ve bagged a customer and they’ve placed an order. Now, you need to make sure that their order gets to them safely. While many businesses consider it a small detail, the postage and packing of your items contribute to the overall feel of your company, and, more importantly, how your customers view it. Below, we take a look at some essential p&p tips that’ll ensure your customers are happy with the delivery, as well as the product they’ve ordered.
Get the Price Right
If you’re a small business, then you likely can’t afford to offer free shipping except in cases of large orders. But while you’ll need to charge some money for the transport, it’s important that you don’t make money off this aspect of the process. It’s not a chance to bump your earnings, but rather just an essential cost. So make sure you get the price right. You can charge for your postage and packaging, but it’s probably better if the packaging cost is absorbed into your overall operating expenses, rather than passed on to your customer.
High-End Packaging
Not all packaging is the same. If you’re trying to present yourself as a serious, professional business, then you need to invest in high-quality packagings, such as stand up pouches and branded boxes. Think of the process of your customer receiving their package. Your aim is to have them enjoy the overall process. This will be difficult to do if it’s been sent in a plain old cardboard box. There’s nothing to be excited about there. Plus, if you’re forever taking the budget option when it comes to your packaging, it may look like your main concern is just saving a few extra pennies for your business.
Go the Extra Mile
Your packaging is also an opportunity to give your customers an incentive to use your website again. How do you achieve this? By adding something that they don’t expect in the box. It could be as simple as a sticker, badge, or a coupon that’ll take 20% off their next order. People aren’t impressed when their expectations are just met, not these days. To make them impressed by their order, you have to deliver more than just the product they ordered. The good news is that they’ll be more likely to use your company in the future so that the cost will come back to you.
Insurance or No Insurance
Things don’t always go correctly with the postal system. If you’re sending your parcels via standard delivery, then you’ll need to think whether you want to get insurance in case there’s a problem with the order. Alternatively, you could make it standard practice to use recorded delivery, as this usually includes insurance automatically.
Gather Feedback
Finally, don’t play the guessing game when figuring out whether your customers were satisfied with the postage and packaging of their item. Include a question about it in your customer feedback form! They might just tell you something you hadn’t thought of before.
This is an article provided by our partners network. It might not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of our editorial team and management.
Contributed content