Every Return Tells A Story

June 30, 2006  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Delivery on July 2006 In our business, the most important delivery you will ever make is the next one.

In today’s competitive world, perceptions about home delivery are changing. Once considered a necessity and a burden, delivery into the home is now viewed as an event for the consumer. It is also a service retailers can use to enhance their brand, along with in-home design consultation and other services, to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Research shows that the average consumer makes a major furniture purchase about every seven years, which means that the consumer will experience an in-home furniture delivery only about six to eight times in a lifetime. That said, there is a limited window of opportunity for a retailer to reverse a negative experience. If the delivery goes badly the customer has years to regret where she made a purchase, and to complain to her friends and relatives.

Statistics show that consumers are much more likely to let others know about negative experiences than positive ones. Retailers invest millions of dollars and countless hours on things such as store location and design, product selection and merchandising, hiring, and sales training. Often overlooked is that all the effort made on the front end can be completely wiped out by bad delivery experience.

The delivery event needs to reflect what the customer experienced when she was in your store—where the expectations are set. Many retailers recognize the importance of creating a total experience for the shopper. This may include coffee and snack bars, play areas for small children, multi-media areas for older children, and perhaps a sports viewing area for the men.

You can take this one step further and have the driver deliver fresh-baked cookies or a logo-imprinted coffee cup with the furniture! If you want the customer to leave your store with a warm-and-fuzzy feeling, it follows that she should have the same feeling when the driver delivers her furniture into her home.

Even though this may sound like a reach, it just may be the difference between a negative and a positive delivery—as can roses on Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day. Women, after all, make 80 percent of the home furnishings purchasing decisions and are usually the ones who are at home when the delivery is made.



Keeping it Safe

Another important aspect of home delivery is security. It is not enough to just do criminal background checks on personnel—you need to create a sense of security with the consumer. This is especially true when you deliver to a woman who is home alone or with young children in the house.

Have your delivery people wear identification badges and introduce themselves at the door. Advise the customer during the confirmation process who will be arriving at her home by name, and then have the dispatcher call to let her know the driver is on the way. Also important is the delivery team’s awareness of specific rules and policies while making a delivery. Of course, ensuring that the driver is properly qualified to drive a commercial truck is essential. All are part and parcel of the ethical obligation we all have to our customers and the general public.

A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if your delivery team members are people you would invite to your own home for dinner. If the answer is no, why would you want them in your customers’ homes?



Arm Delivery Team with Knowledge

Since furniture is the third-largest purchase, after a home and a car, the average consumer will ever make, and a fashion item, you can assume that the customer will be happy and excited about the delivery. What you do to ensure that the last step is a positive experience rests with the kind of training you give your drivers. It goes beyond how to deliver furniture and includes how to communicate, resell the furniture once it is in the home, and how to answer questions.

Because the customer views drivers as experts, she will ask them questions, which they will answer, prepared or not. It is better that you prepare them to deliver the message conveyed in the store so everyone is on the same page. One tool that may be useful is a tri-fold, laminated card of Frequently Asked Questions that the driver can keep. This ensures that your customers are told the same things, whether they are speaking with a sales associate, customer service representative or driver.

Additionally, put your sales associates on the delivery trucks, and get your drivers into your showrooms. Use cross-training between sales associates and drivers at every opportunity, and have a clear and simple way to measure driver performance. Reward a driver’s performance in the same way you do sales associates. Once each quarter, set up informal workshops with your drivers, sales associates, customer service reps, and key warehouse staff. Develop five or six topics of discussion, then let them speak among themselves. You will be amazed at what you learn, and what they learn from one another. They key is that people will feel that they are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

It is worth noting that on a good day, your rainmaker sales associate may close three or four sales. Your worst delivery team, on the other hand, will interact with 10 to 12 of your buying customers in their homes, without anyone watching or monitoring the interaction. When your worst delivery team is interacting with three to four times the number of customers than your best sales associate on her best day, who has more influence?



Track the Returns

In general it costs three times as much to handle a returned piece through a facility than a new piece, not to mention the disappointment and inconvenience the customer surely experienced. Spend time on the return dock and talk to the drivers to learn what went wrong.

It is good policy to call behind deliveries to see if customers are satisfied. Such a tactic is not designed to reach the customer who will complain, but to reach the customer who is unhappy. It is better to risk complaints, though, because never forget that the goal of your delivery operation is to increase sales and to bring business back. Every delivery made represents your store. The look of your drivers and their uniforms and your trucks, as well as your provisions for safety and security, all matter.

As my grandfather used to tell me, “In our business there are only two things of importance, the customers and the furniture. If you take care of the customers, they come back. If you take care of the furniture, it doesn’t come back. HFB