The goal of every business is to provide the best possible service to its customers. Customer satisfaction or lack of it thereof can make or break a business. This is why most businesses always aim to please their customers. Why? Because they are the reason why businesses exist in the first place. 

One major factor that can derail customer satisfaction is poor shipping. Some business owners might argue that issues that arise from shipping customers’ goods are not by any fault of theirs. In fact, most times, it is the customer or the shipping company’s fault, but you can’t risk your business by trading unnecessary blames. Poor shipping includes delivering  damaged products or late delivery. All these are bad for small business and big businesses alike.

A good percentage of these issues can be avoided if you take the right measures in ensuring that customers receive the goods that they have paid for without any disturbances. And as proof, we have compiled a list of 7 ways that poor shipping can crumble the business you worked so hard to establish.

You should always try to ensure that customers get their products as discussed. But if for some reason there would be a little delay, it should be communicated to the customer in the most apologetic way possible, and try not to make it frequent too.

So let’s jump right into the article.

1. It Can Make You Lose Customers

After a shipping problem like late delivery or damaged products, most customers usually don’t want to patronize the business anymore. This makes the whole effort that you put into selling that product go to waste because they either ask for a refund or stop patronizing you completely. It can even lead to that customer leaving a bad review which would discourage other people from patronizing your business.

2. Bad Brand Image

A common effect that poor shipping has on a business is bad brand image. If more customers are not happy with your business, then you can be assured that the negatives are spreading more than the positive news – and this would influence the opinion of the market against your business. It is going to take a lot of effort to restore or create a positive image for your business.

3. It Can Incur Losses For You Financially

If an order is delivered in bad condition or late, a customer might choose to reject the product and return it to the business and ask for a refund. This leaves you with having to refund the customer’s money after you have already paid the shipping fees. Since you are refunding the customer’s money, it means that you are paying shipping fees from your pocket and this is not good for business.

4. It Can Cause A Strain On Your Workforce.

Poor delivery habits would mean that your customer care would spend extra time and money on sending emails and making calls to apologize to customers. This would also affect the financials of your business in the long run because you would be spending a lot on apologizing, paying your customer care team for the extra work, and still giving out refunds.

5. Negative Online Reviews About Your Business

Online reviews matter a lot to any business that is looking to succeed – on social media, Google, E-commerce sites, and your business website. You need to make sure that genuine good reviews surpass bad ones because human beings tend to focus on the negatives a lot, so having negative reviews associated with your business would be very bad.

6. It Can Lead To Overall Increase In Prices

If your business usually experiences complaints caused by bad shipping, it means that you would be losing a lot of money to shipping costs and refund fees. And because you want to recover all the money that you are losing, it might cause you to resort to making adjustments in the price so that it can help you recover the money you lost.

The problem with increasing the cost of a product is that it can make your product more expensive than other alternatives. This is something that can chase customers away and discourage them from patronizing you.

7. It Can Lead To Excess Products In Your Inventory

The inventory is an important part of a business. In fact, it is the backbone of the business. Poor inventory management practices can ruin your finances and bring about customer dissatisfaction. 

Poor shipping practices would mean that you keep returning goods to your warehouse and these goods continue to pile up more fees while you are not making any sales. This also means that you can not make/ order the new products because you are not done selling off all the old ones, and the longer the old ones stay in the warehouse, the closer they get to their expiry dates.

Conclusion

These are some of the crazy effects that poor shipping can have on your business. It is important that you try to avoid shipping-related problems as much as possible.

You should look into the things that cause shipping errors and try to rectify them. If you are experiencing these issues because of the shipping company that you use, you can change them and look for a more efficient one. 

If the fault is from your customers, you should set up a way to make sure that your customers don’t make these errors. On your e-commerce site, you can set steps that help authenticate and verify their information. 

Some of the steps you can implement on your site are: You can ask them to double-check their addresses. When you put a call across to them, you can ask about their availability on the day of the delivery. All these, to ensure that they don’t miss the delivery and have it returned to you.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article and you picked a few to help you move your business forward. Have a good one!