Let’s say you’ve built what you think are the world’s best bunk beds: they look great, their price point is competitive, their manufacturing is built to last decades. You have great images on all of your online listings and tons of good data: height, length, weight, material, assembly instructions, etc.. You’re even able to offer two-day shipping to most places thanks to a great logistics team.
Yet your bunk beds aren’t selling. Why?
One huddle with your Customer Service team – or, better yet, a system to gather and process real-time feedback from their customer interactions – might tell you that you’re missing a vital piece of information: clearance height (essentially, the space between bunks, which tells you how appropriate the bunk beds are for older kids and adults). If one potential customer calls to ask that question, you can bet dozens simply saw the listing and moved on to the next bunk bed option.
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This actually happened to a manufacturer I worked with back in the day. And as soon as that manufacturer was able to provide clearance height for each bunk bed model, sales started coming in.
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The lesson here: many product types require a little extra info beyond the standard specs, but if you’re a relatively new manufacturer of those products, you might not know all of that information right out of the gate, even after doing your research. Your customer service team (and/or your sales team) has the super-valuable job of hearing from the customers themselves, which gives you access to data that can lead directly to higher less (and fewer returns) – if you choose to collect that data and act on it.
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My recommendation: if you don’t have a way to collect this data, set up a simple, shared Google Doc where your customer service and/or sales teams can log questions they get from customers, and check that log weekly. Before long, you’ll see patterns emerge that you can and should act on with your online listings.
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