Chapter 8: Order Fulfillment
Sometimes the most tricky element of the dropshipping business is customer satisfaction. As the dropshipper is invisible to customers, any errors on the dropshipper’s part will always come back to your business. This chapter will go into detail on how you can turn these errors from costly mistakes to valuable opportunities.
This is where the advantage of Amazon FBA comes into play, seeing as they offer a complete 24/7 customer service team, your customers’ needs are likely met through the customer services representatives allowing you to focus on the more important aspects of your business. For this reason this chapter will mostly concern eBay and Shopify dropshipping platforms.
This is where the skill of dealing with people comes in handy. If anything goes wrong whether on your part or on the supplier side, you will always want to admit fault and apologise to the customer. The reason for this is that to your customer, you have made the mistake and nothing is going to convince them otherwise. You are doing no damage to your business by taking the blame, in fact you can turn this into an opportunity which can pay off in the future.
By adding value to the customers experience if a mistake has made, you can not only satisfy their shopping experience, but it also gives you the chance to show them just how valued they are. Offer them something in compensation, whether it may be future credit, a free item or anything that will be a bonus to them. This will take their mindset from a negative experience to an instantly positive experience and can boost the chances they will return as a repeat customer.
If for example an item a customer receives is defective, this is obviously no fault of the dropship business owner but rather the supplier. In this situation, send the customer a completely new item free of charge. They will highly appreciate this and it builds loyalty which is priceless in the future.