Did you know that the most successful ecommerce fulfillment operations go hand-in-hand with customer care? It’s true! When your warehouse staff and contact center agents fully understand each others’ role in the order lifecycle, you can reduce handling times (and sometimes costs), increase customer satisfaction and operational efficiencies, and even further customize the experience for your customer.
Here are a few important scenarios where both your warehouse personnel and customer care staff should be on the same page:
- Upcoming Promotions: Are certain items that are part of a kit and not available for individual sale? Are you running a buy-one-get-one (BOGO) promotion? Planning to start a subscription program? If so, let your contact center agents know. They will sound super-informed when speaking with customers and can upsell your products more easily. And when warehouse staff knows more information about an order placed in the contact center, they can include targeted promotional inserts, special thank you’s from the agent, and other personal touches.
- Returns Information: To provide the best customer service possible, your agents in the contact center need to know how returns are handled beyond just a written policy on a piece of paper. Can your warehouse repair products damaged in transit? Do customers who receive incorrectly picked orders receive a discount on the correct item? Do you refurbish and resell products? By giving agents a clear picture of your operations, they can answer customer questions better and maybe – just maybe – prevent future returns to process!
- Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): Do you ‘ship clean’ daily? What’s your turnaround time on personalized orders? Knowing your fulfillment’s standard operating procedures will help customer care answer pesky “where’s my order?” inquiries and can even help them tout your fast shipping, high-quality value-add services, or other differentiators available in the warehouse.