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Hello *|HTML:FNAME|*!
I'm trying something new today. Segments.
No, not a beautiful study of colour, stripes and scale, like Diane Melm's image above. Rather "segmenting my list" à la Mailchimp audience segmentation.
For the past few months, I've been on the customer service side of the business again, filling orders and responding to customer queries, while Glen is concentrating on his board game design career. (And he's working through some larger database and backend system things for UPPERCASE, too.)
So if it at first seems weird for me to be talking about filling orders and customer segmentation... nope, it's all part of what running a small company is about. And I'm sure that a lot of you have your own Shopify stores, Etsy shops or other sales ventures, too, and can relate to the complexities of orders, customer relationships and logistics.
Typically I just send my weekly newsletter to the entire list of everyone who has signed up for it. But then people who have already purchased Quilted, for example, wonder, "Didn't I already order it?" And since I have such amazing, eager and enthusiastic readers, sometimes people just go ahead and order it again, anyway, just to be sure.
Sometimes their intention wasn't to order multiple copies... and customers later request to cancel and refund/change orders. Or after the project has already shipped and they have received multiple copies there is an element of surprise and confusion. That's not a great situation for the customer to have to request a refund or return or for me, from a planning/cashflow and time perspective.
On the plus side, it is a great dilemma to have—that I've created something so appealing and tantalizing that customers want to order it again and again! But it's also a customer service problem in that sometimes it wasn't intended as a duplicate. (But then again, sometimes it is, as a reader buys another copy as a gift. As I mentioned, it's complex!)
Quite honestly, when an order comes through the shop, it isn't up to me to determine whether the customer wanted to purchase it or not... the assumption is, why yes: they clicked all the various steps along the way, put in their name and address and paid for it! My job is to make sure that it comes through correctly and is directed to fulfillment asap or paused until the new book is available to ship.
There's always a receipt sent to the customer that indicates what was paid for. (hint... did you know that each receipt from my shop contains a unique discount code just for you that you can use on future orders, within a set amount of time?) But not everyone pays attention to, reads or keeps the receipt for any length of time, so unless they've elected to save their orders in my Shopify store with an account, then there is no consolidated place for a customer to see their orders unless they email and ask me.
Ideally, everything would be available to customers to view and edit in their Shopify/UPPERCASE account. But to complicate matters, address changes and management of subscriber data doesn't happen in my Shopify store, rather that's in an external Salesforce database. Until technology and budget allow me to consolidate all of that into one system, I see a few solutions to help customers remember what they've ordered...
- Emails to my newsletter recipients, segmented by what they have (or haven't) ordered, to expressly remind folks what they've ordered. This only works if a customer elected to be on my newsletter list, though. And opens the newsletter emails!
- Encourage customers to create accounts during checkout so that they have access to their order history. I've been scared to make accounts required for fear that it might prevent some sales. In fact, right there Shopify says "Keep in mind that requiring customers to create accounts might decrease sales conversions." So next time you're purchasing something, save your account and you'll be able to see your order history. Or if you'd like me to send you an account invitation to view your history, fill in this form.
- Customer education. Hello, this message! Please read and save your receipts! (Tip: If you're in a creative field, you likely can deduct subscriptions and books—ask your accountant—they'll need the receipts!)
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