When a customer makes an order with your store, their experience doesn’t end there. Your company is basically accountable to that customer for every minute that passes until that order arrives on their front doorstep. If you take a week longer to deliver the item than you advertised, your customer will walk away with a bad experience in their mouth and might end up taking their business elsewhere. If the item arrives damaged, it will be the same story.
It used to be enough to deliver quality goods on time, but that is changing as shoppers’ tastes are becoming more and more sophisticated and their expectations are growing ever larger. Today, you must have an easily navigable site that allows the customer to find what they’re looking for. Then you must deliver the goods on time, in good shape and with clear communication each step of the way.
According to Cisco, online shoppers’ expectations have been climbing over the past few years. The only possible answer is to innovate and continually improve your service. If you’re not already offering sales order tracking, now is the time to start.
Sales order tracking refers to the customer’s ability to follow their order through every step in the fulfillment process. If their order gets stopped at a specific point in the fulfillment process, your customer will want to know.
Obviously the most effective way to allow your customers to get the pertinent information about their order is via sales order tracking software. Good sales order tracking software will integrate with your inventory software, web store and any other tools your company might be using. It should display where the order currently sits (literally: warehouse, or figuratively: order received) and customers should be able to check the status with ease.
Customer service can be one of the most powerful tools your company can utilize. Whether your product is groundbreaking or totally inconspicuous, your customer service can be the thing that makes or breaks you.
One woman who realized the power of giving customers what they want – and, in some cases, denying them what they want – is playwright Lisa Kron. Kron wrote, directed and performed in the Veri**on Play, which alludes to her struggles through the prerecorded answering machines and unhelpful staff of a major telecommunications network.
You can probably figure out who Kron alludes to.
The point is, customers have grown to expect sales order tracking so it’s time you start delivering. If you find a sales order tracking program that integrates with your inventory management software and all the other tools you use, start implementing it TODAY.