MAJOR CHANGE WITH RETURNS

Today I'll share about one of the things we need to let go of: manual customer service for standard returns and exchanges. Here's why. 

Since I started Elegantees, offering fair and convenient customer service is something I see great value in. It formed in me since high school when I was a waitress. I learned how to give exceptional service because my tips depended on it. I also cared for my boss, and knew that how I treated the customer would affect their business. I approached Elegantees with the same mindset. Repeat customers come back if the quality and service is great. 

Our culture and the market has changed in a decade. It used to be that the company that provided the most efficient, friendly, and accurate service transaction was the winner. Now it's an anomaly.

Automation is the change. For a phone call, you have to go through menus to speak to a human. To get support online, an AI robot can spin you in circles. Even a simple task requires that you install an app. 

While I would love to have amazing customer service, I realize I can't pull it off the way I started this company off.

I setup our returns and size swaps to be as easy for the customer as possible. The email you get with the label is easy, but there are multiple steps on the backend for us to generate that label, summarize for the warehouse, and track and manually put in that size swap. I used to do it very fast, but when we were growing, fast service wasn't the priority.

I do have volunteers and interns help me. But sometimes the process doesn't get adjusted for situational context. This means customers can feel confused or frustrated. When I realized this has been happening, I implemented a new process a month ago. It's the opposite of delegation though because I have to check over drafts before interns hit send. It does ensure that customers never get an answer that will question our integrity, but communication is too long.

What will I do when the fall semester ends and I'm in Nepal preferring to ignore emails, and all our volunteers are still very very part time? I don't want customers to feel neglected. This is one thing.

The very process of us doing returns and size swaps has recently been challenged because of cost.

Our shipping broker has a mishap in shipping quotes, and USPS is penalizing us for it. They transit the inaccurate info such as weights and dimensions back to our postage account and we get hit with compliance fees and adjustments. I looked at those recently and it was discouraging.

USPS is about to be more on top of this starting in January if the package dimensions are not listed correctly on our return labels. I can't see us accurately getting dimensions for return labels because it requires the customer to measure, and it will add more back and forth time. We believe it will ultimately cost more to send the customer a label than it would be for the customer to print a label herself.

That's what we're going to implement soon. Not only to save everyone money, but to try to add the joy back into Elegantees. Not doing the redundant process of sending labels may give us all a little more spark to do other things. 

I realize that if we change our process so that customers have to go out of their way a little more than before, we may lose some customers. 

We're thinking of offering free shipping instead. It probably has to be over a certain spend amount, but it would offset the out of pocket cost for a customer to mail back a return. 

We're thinking all that over, and we'll update you next Friday. I believe we'll be kicking off next Friday with the new process with a free shipping promo. It may cost us more, but at this point, finding the joy and not getting bogged down with the manual processes may be worth it! Maybe the “girl math” behind the free shipping will improve everything overall too?

Continue to pray for me, if I can be bold to ask for it. We're doing whatever we can. Love you friend!

Peace, Katie