Nov 11 2008
Cutting Costs or Cutting Your Throat?
Will Your Business Grow or Flame Out?
Is customer service an expense or an investment?
Consider this story: Cindy Shebley, an eBay PowerSeller, fired one of her product suppliers because of their brain dead customer service.
Cindy was the exclusive sales rep for a specialty product. She would make the sale, then contact the product creator who would ship it to the customer. This is the sort of arrangement many eBayers dream of – the hope to get rich through drop shipping. There are no upfront costs, no risky investments in inventory or storage. No need to do anything but list an item and watch the money roll in.
When it works well, it is a great system.
The problem – as experienced sellers will tell you – is that the seller is at the mercy of the drop shipper. When the drop shipper falls down on the job, it is the seller’s reputation that is bruised.
Yesterday, Cindy sold a product to someone who wanted a tracking number – a pretty standard request. The drop shipper refused!
Try to understand this: a buyer, who placed their money and trust on the line, asked only to know when the item was shipped and when it would be delivered. The product creator wouldn’t spend half a dollar to do it.
Fifty cents was too much to invest in customer service!
Cindy, who has invested much, much more than half a buck in her business, immediately severed her relationship with the drop shipper. (You can read the whole sorry story on Cindy’s blog.) The product creator has now lost her only sales channel and all her revenue until she can find a new partner: a loss of considerably more than 50ยข
When you make next year’s budget, are you planning to save money by cutting costs? Or will you make money by increasing profits? Are you suffocating your business by refusing to make the investments it needs to grow?
Photo by furiousgeorge81 Released under Creative Commons License
Similar Posts:
- Customer Service – Do Your Deeds Match Your Words
- What Is Good Service?
- Everybody Loves Me Except The Jerks
Print This Post
No responses yet
Follow Me on Twitter
