As many are aware, the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market begins today, August 1st in Salt Lake City. Every year the show attracts enough companies and sponsors like REI, Merrell, and Sports Authority to make it the largest gathering of outdoor sports industries in the world. Cyclists, climbers, runners, kayakers, campers, and outdoor enthusiasts from every major retailer will all have a chance to interact with their favorite brands during the 5-day event.
This unique opportunity for manufacturers to connect with retailers in an open market underscores the importance of a strong customer service model. Sporting goods companies, with their high volume of product damage and returns, must maintain a strong CRM system to streamline business. The Outdoor Retailer Summer Market is a great chance to meet retailers face to face, but this kind of exposure comprises only a small part of interactions with business owners. With the prevalence of online marketing, advertising, and shopping, most direct communication between manufacturers, retailers, and customers occurs online.
So how does your online presence affect customer relations, and are you doing enough to ensure smooth communication between your business and clients/customers? If you’re like most businesses online, odds are your CRM system is out of date. Consumers today are more powerful, informed, and demanding than they have ever been. Because of the availability of product reviews, social networking, and links to competing sites, consumers expect businesses to offer a near-perfect shopping experience.
There are several easy ways for companies to improve their online standing with consumers and clients with little added effort. The first is through social media platforms and online communities. Sites like Facebook and Twitter offer a unique, and free, opportunity to businesses, especially those in the outdoor/action sporting goods industry. Your company can gain customer interest by offering special deals to fans, or limited time offers to people who create user-generated content like videos or photos with a product. This makes customers feel special and drives brand loyalty.
Another way to spark the public’s interest is through community presence. Blogs and review sites are an excellent way for consumers to follow your company and offer their input on its products. Keep customers up-to-date with your brand’s latest projects by blogging about them, or offer special deals to users who consistently provide helpful reviews. Giving the public a chance to share feedback on your products and services can help your company identify what’s working best and, more importantly, what’s not working. If large numbers of your customers are complaining in reviews that their new bike’s gear shifter doesn’t work or the soles of their shoes are falling out, your company can fix the problem before another 5,000 units are purchased and returned.
Problems with products, however, are an inevitability in every industry. The best way to mitigate the annoyance of dealing with a faulty product is speedy customer service interactions. Few things are more frustrating for consumers and clients than waiting for help from a customer service rep, or trying to return a pair of factory damaged hiking boots on an outdated returns site.
Encourage your customer service agents to respond quickly to emails and questions. Monitor the response times of your agents and reward those that help customers the fastest. Customer service departments might also find it useful to implement an online chat system like Velaro or Olark, or more comprehensive customer service chat tools like Needle. Giving clients and customers the support they need in an instant will help facilitate their shopping experience and likely draw them back to your site later.
Having a simple or automated RMA system is also a huge asset for companies expecting a moderate to large volume of returns. In addition to reducing the stress on the customer, modern RMA systems allow for comprehensive data collection on every return. Skullcandy recently updated its RMA system with Cloud Conversion software, and now has one of the fastest and most convenient returns system online. ReturnsCloud also offers business owners and customer service agents comprehensive information on every return. Companies can now see where each product was purchased, which factories are producing the most defective merchandise, and which customer service agents are resolving their returns cases the fastest.
Of course, all this information can be hard to manage without a central hub for data storage. Trying to juggle returns data from eBay, customer service emails from Amazon, and orders from Shopatron can be overwhelming. The best solution currently available is Salesforce.com, where information from any ecommerce channel can be compiled and shared amongst employees. The only problem with this system is transferring and integrating all this data into Salesforce, but Cloud Conversion now offers several products that automatically and seamlessly transfers all data from eBay, Magento, and Amazon into Salesforce. Dale Majors from BikeWagon.com states, “Cloud Conversion and Salesforce have given our business a whole new arsenal of tools to run our day to day operations in a more organized way.” Also look for Cloud Conversion to initiate a program for Shopatron-Salesforce integration in the near future.