Tag: case study

NFLShop.com Goes Against the Grain by Charging a Handling Fee

Recently, I was the benefactor of a handsome NFLShop.com gift card, courtesy of a promotional credit card offer. So while this post may seem a nit-picky, I am using it to illustrate how a powerful brand has decided to go against established e-commerce practices. Is it paying off? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, here’s the back story so you can decide whether this is a smart move.

Historically, handling fees have not been charged by e-commerce vendors. One has to look no further than the “big guys” – Amazon, Walmart, Target – to see that these e-commerce stalwarts do not charge a handling fee. In fact, the big guys seldom charge shipping fees, provided you make a minimum purchase amount, typically somewhere between $25 and $50 dollars.

Sure, the big guys can absorb the costs. Making it up by volume, as they say. They have enormous buying power and therefore can offer very low prices. Even on items that have extremely low margins or high shipping costs (due to weight and/or size).

In fact, the only vendors left that charge handling or processing fees tend to be the ticket sales vendors such as StubHub and Ticketmaster. Consumers have no choice but to purchase tickets from these platforms, so they are forced to pay these extra fees.

But let’s get back to NFL jerseys for now. The actual cost of manufacturing a jersey is under $20, typically done overseas in a place like China. The vendor then has to pay expensive licensing fees to the league which are eye-popping on a per unit basis – several dozen dollars. From there, they then wholesale the jerseys to vendors (at a 100% markup) and then the vendors sell them to the consumer at 100% markup. That’s how a $20 jersey becomes $350. Don’t forget tax, too.

Start eliminating steps along the way by manufacturing jerseys and selling directly to consumers, and the vendors can keep the prices the same, but double profits.

Simply put, the jersey market is extremely profitable. There are downsides too, such as manufacturing too many jerseys of a player who then retires, gets injured, is traded, etc… those jerseys become difficult to sell. Manufacturers have become very smart though, printing jerseys on-demand or “shells” where they can then apply the name and number locally once ordered. This costs a bit more to do, but limits production waste.

So, needless to say, when I recently went to NFLshop.com use my gift cards, I was surprised that after purchasing two jerseys for about $250 (these were not the game jerseys, but a cheap quality version), I was not only charged $4.99 for standard shipping, but also $1.99 for “handling”. Now, again, I’m not going to complain. Not only did I have gift cards, but I also had a coupon code. So I’m quite happy with my purchase, and the price I paid compared to the Buccaneer’s stadium shop (which I get a 15% discount at as a season ticket holder), was still better. I’m simply perplexed that these were two line items on such a high-margin sale. I probably would not even be here writing this article had the e-commerce site simply rolled the handling charge into the shipping charge and just charged me more for shipping. Charge me $6.99 and make an extra penny while you’re at it. I would not have known the difference.

So I decided to tweet the NFLshop.com to see what would happen.

Of course @OfficialNFLShop charges a $1.99 processing fee on top of tax and shipping and high margin jerseys. LOL. Had a gift card, so I cannot really complain. Just a poor e-commerce practice that is at the bottom of the customer-friendly list.
— Dan Soschin (@Dan_Soschin) August 12, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And I got a good, prompt response:

We are sorry about that. We ask that you please DM us your order number.
— Official NFL Shop (@OfficialNFLShop) August 12, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
So I DM’d them my order number and got this response very quickly:

Thank you for that. Our apologies. Upon review of your order we see you weren’t charged the processing fee. Can we assist you with anything else?

This surprised me, so I took a look at my order confirmation email which shows the fee:

And then logged into my account on the NFLshop.com to review the order invoice (yes, I told you I had a lot of gift cards and a coupon – I’m not complaining about the price, just the practice and customer experience):

And viola, interestingly they combined the charge post-haste. That’s extremely odd. I cannot recall ever seeing a vendor do that.

So for fun, I’ve loaded up my cart with two more jerseys, and here’s a screenshot of my cart. Notice the $1.99 handling charge. The “i” icon, when clicked, shows this text: “Handling Fee is applied to your order to help cover the fulfillment costs of storage and packaging.” in a pop-up bubble. Also note, that the site is running a free shipping promotion, but in fine print excludes the jerseys.

So, I replied to the DM tweet thread and explained that I was, in fact, charged the fee and would be happy to show them the screenshots (which I then included.) The next day I received this note:

We see, and we are so sorry about this issue. Normally, there is a flat rate incurred for shipping & handling. We greatly appreciate you bringing this to our attention, and we will escalate this feedback to the appropriate department for further review.

Again, I wasn’t demanding a refund or being unruly, and I give props to their team for timely replies. I think they should have simply refunded the $1.99 fee, plus the shipping and handling since I took the time to point this out. Nonetheless, I’m moving on.

Ultimately, this whole experience seems a bit shady and easily avoidable. If they need this extra $1.99 on top of their high margin items, they should roll it into shipping. But I think you can win a lot of favor among fans and customers by implementing more consumer-friendly e-commerce practices. When the major e-commerce experience is a certain way thanks to the big guys, other vendors need to hop on that bandwagon or risk alienating customers further.

Update 12/1/2020

While unrelated to the shipping and handling experience I wrote about above, I’d like to share another experience worthy of a few moments. The jersey I ordered in the above post in August, five months ago, still has not arrived. When ordered, I was told it would be shipping in September. Obviously, COVID messes up things, and their off-shore supply chain was likely affected. A couple of months ago they sent me an email apologizing for the delay assuring me that it would be express shipped to me as soon as it was state-side in December, and that should be no later than 12/17. I was offered the opportunity to cancel, but I did not. Then, two weeks ago, I received a call from them offering me a $50 refund or a gift card. Since I paid via gift card, I simply requested the gift card.

Both of these gestures were nice, given the situation, and I appreciated them. I used the new gift card, and a black Friday sale, to purchase a jersey that was in stock. To my surprise, it arrived two days later. That obviously exceeded my expectations. The quality of the jersey however, did not. I’ll save that for another day.
Big data is just another tool so please stop treating it like the messiah
Big data has been around as long as data.

Think about it for a minute.

When man built the first computing machines that produced output, we had to invent some way to store the output. Magnetic tape was an early solution and as our data appetite grew, so did our innovation into to shrinking the footprint of our data hoarding ways. Take this iconic computing image, for example:

Source: Wikipedia.org

Yes, that’s right, 5 MB. As in your Apple Watch has 3,200 times more memory and it fits on your wrist. But this is not my point. My point is that we’ve been collecting a lot of data output over the years. In 2010, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt stated that earthlings create as much data every two days as we had created cumulatively from the beginning of time up until 2003. And that has only accelerated in the decade since Schmidt made that statement.

And we’re doing some amazing things with that data. Netflix figured out how to produce television that people would watch; Target knows to send you emails and coupons for child berthing before you know you’re pregnant; and Facebook shows your mom ads for products they know she’ll buy.

However, for every great big data success story, there is a heaping pile of failures. Some failures are projects that cost a lot of time and money and produce no results… let’s set those aside and instead focus on an example of how big data can steer you wrong.

Let’s look at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida. My family has season passes to the park as it’s only 20 minutes from our home in Tampa and we have a four-year-old boy. We typically go on Sunday mornings for a few hours, especially off peak weekends. We’ve mastered avoiding crowds. But, I’m probably not a good customer and it’s because of big data. Actually, I don’t particularly like Busch Gardens or think they do a good job; but my son has fun for a couple hours, and that’s priceless. I get 10,000 steps by noon, so it works for me. You see, I bring my own food and drink. The only things I buy each visit are a refill of my season pass holder’s Icee cup (99 cents) and a refill of my season pass holder’s popcorn bin (99 cents). I don’t buy souvenirs or play the midway games. That’s it. I bring my own snacks and drinks for two reasons:
1. The food at Busch Gardens is horrendous. There is nothing healthy or fresh. Everything is frozen and purchased using cost as the primary factor. Some analyst must have figured out that if they switch from one brand of crappy frozen french fries to another, and make the oil last one batch longer, that over the course of the year they could generate another couple basis points of margin. Multiply that across all their food items and some accountant generated an extra few hundred thousand dollars in profits. And the shareholders rejoice. Okay, but I’m not the typical park goer. I have standards and if you look around at who goes to Busch Gardens, you’ll see that they still are able to sell a tremendous amount of crappy food. But, why not offer some better food? It might be at a lower margin, but some margin is better than no margin, right?
2. On Sundays, especially in the morning and on non-peak weekends, most of the food stands are not staffed and open. It’s actually pretty difficult to buy snacks at 10:00 on a Sunday. Again, some analyst must have figured out that between 10:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., their staffing and operation costs outweighed the limited sales they’d have if they were open. So they don’t open and they protect their margin.
But what is missing here is that Busch might be making decisions based on park traffic flow and behavioral data sets. They are not factoring in the human element – customer service and satisfaction. I think the elasticity of a park goer’s return is pretty high – in that it would take a lot for a pass holder to not return again; after all, they’ve already paid the fee. Even the single day goers have paid the fee already. Busch’s customer service is really failing here. To protect margin, they are serving crappy food, if any at all. In the end, they annoy a few customers and lose a few bucks, so it’s no big deal. And the output the analysts see is improved margin. Sure, they can see comments on Facebook, etc… but until there’s really a concerted effort, I don’t see Busch making progress when profits are up. When profits go down, if they rely too heavily on the data, it will compound the decline. So they are damned in both situations until they take a more customer-centric approach.

My solution for Busch is to actually farm out food operations to local eateries that are popular in Tampa, enabling them to open stands at Busch, mark up their food to theme-park levels, and then Busch gets a cut. Busch can eliminate a lot of headcount and operational headaches while support local business. For example, Wrights Gourmet, PDQ, Ichicoro, Holy Hog, etc… I think they’d sell more food with a lot less effort – and make customers much happier.
Why public utility companies need to have media relations staff
It doesn’t matter if you are a public company, private company, non-profit or somewhere in-between; one thing is for certain – your customers are everything to your business. Now, one could say in the case of a public utility, since they have a monopoly, they don’t really need to care about their customers. And you might be right, which is why most public utility companies are still in business despite generally having satisfaction ratings that mirror the airlines and wireless companies.

Yet, what if I told you there was a benefit to having good customer service?

If your customers loved you… because…
- You answered the phone quickly, and at all hours…
- You replied to email in less than 24 hours…
- You offered live chat…
- You were empathetic, caring and good listeners when it comes to your customer’s lives and challenges
- You participated in the community…
  - through events…
  - charities…
  - public education…
- You cut people a break once in a while
So, if you did all this, wouldn’t your customers love you? Wouldn’t your image be sublime? When a public utility staff member says where they work, they’d be greeted with a smile rather than vitriol?

Still think it won’t get you anywhere?

What if I told you that having a strong brand as a public utility would probably go pretty far?
- Enable you to sell/justify rate hikes (wouldn’t we all pay 1c more per gallon of water if service was superb when we needed it?
- Enable your locality to pass better legislation because people respect you…
- Get reelected?
- Raise taxes?
Now, thanks to the goofs that run Pasco County Florida’s water utility, we’ve learned a good lesson here. Recently a customer of their’s contacted them when they received a bill for more than $3,000 (600,000 gallons of water), despite normally having a water bill of around $100. It seemed odd, so they did what anyone would do – they called the utility company to see what the issue was. But Pasco said the bill was correct and the customer would have to pay it. Pasco suggested to the customer to check their plumbing for leaks. So, the residents paid the county $190 to check the meter and the county declared the meter was fine. The county said they could follow a payment plan.

Gee thanks. Pay $3,000 and by the way, you’ll probably owe us twice that next month, because that was just a partial bill for 19 days.

So the residents contacted Tampa News Channel 8 (a local NBC affiliate). I would have contacted an attorney myself, but hey, that’s me. The good people at News Channel 8 hired a plumber for an independent test. He determined that it was physically impossible for that much water to even pass through the pipes in that amount of time. And if by chance he was wrong, where the hell did all the water go? It surely would have flooded the house or the street and be noticed.

So the news channel contacted the utility and the utility would not comment. They contacted the county, and a county spokesperson, without really know what the hell he was talking about said if a faucet was left on, it’s possible 23 gallons of water an hour could have come out. But the bill shows 1,000+ gallons per hour over certain periods. He later called back and said he meant 23 gallons a minute. Here’s the real rub, the couple wasn’t occupying the property, and the water usage is now back to normal. Here’s were customer service and media relations come into play. A better response would have been,

“We agree that the bill is unusually high. There are a number of things that could result in a bill like this, so we are working with the customer to investigate whether it was an error in our billing system, our meters, or if in fact, the homeowner has a plumbing issue that needs remediation. We hope that together, we’ll be able to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible.”

How hard would that have been? How hard would it be to help this customer? Would a little empathy and assistance gone a long way? Yes. Now, many of the 4 million plus residents of the Tampa Bay region think negatively of Pasco County and it’s public utilities commission. That could have been avoided very easily.

Some times people are just jackasses. I’m not why people think its better to be a jackass than helpful and compassionate. One might say it’s easier to be a jackass, but I don’t buy that argument.

Oh, and by the way, all of Tampa Bay’s utility companies are this incompetent. This is not new. Maybe I’ll write about how Tampa Electric cut my power because I hadn’t paid a $700 deposit, even though I provided physical evidence I had.

Sometimes I feel like Rick Moranis in Space Balls… I’m surround by assholes. At least now I know why people want to privatize utilities.

UPDATE 10-1-2014: I just learned that Pasco County’s inspector general is now investigating the matter further… because of numerous complaints received across the county. Sounds like this is just the beginning of a big PR mess.
Social Digital San Diego – Recap
We had a blast, fellow roosters, cats and dogs! Thanks for making my trip out to the amazing Gas Lamp district in San Diego for the Social Digital 2013 summit. I had a great time presenting, “Are you winning the race? Strategies for measuring success each step of the way on your social media journey.”

Many of you have tweeted me asking for the case study template and the dashboard template. Have no fear, the links (along with my slide deck) are below.

Just a reminder, the data in the presentation screenshots is not real, but the concepts are! Take your organizational reporting on social media ROI from good to better to best… and dip your big toe into attribution too!
Thanks again for all your great feedback on the presentation.
Social Media – Case Study Template
If you are involved in social media management that it’s important that you regularly report on your successes (and failures). But, that doesn’t mean simply running reports from Google Analytics or Facebook Insights and forwarding spreadsheets and PDFs to executives. You have to use the data to “tell a story” and that involves more work than “print to PDF”. Once you have the data behind your success or failure, it’s important to wrap it into a story that provides context. For example, don’t provide someone with the GA report on visits from social media platforms without explaining to the end user what the data means and the conclusions you’ve reached. Similarly, if you had a success social media campaign, but the ROO (return on your business objectives) wasn’t necessarily easy to quantify because it involves brand equity or goodwill, it may be better to produce a case study. Here are my tips for a successful case study:
1. Keep it short! I suggest less than one page. Execs don’t have enough time to read their emails, so they sure aren’t going to read a 5000 word beast of a case study. Short = good. The shorter the case study the higher it will most likely be read and shared.
2. Be specific, but don’t worry about the nitty gritty. This is a high level overview of something you did. If you get stuck, see #1 above.
3. If the case study had a long threaded conversation, just provide the highlights. You can include a screen shot of the thread as an addendum if your audience wants more details.
4. Structure
  - 2-3 sentence intro (who did what and why it matters)
  - 250 word body (the details of what happened)
  - 2-3 sentence conclusion (further explaining the value this generated for the business)
Here is an actual case study we published based upon a win we had at American Public University System back in 2010. We still share it to this day to help communicate why we do things the way we do. And we produce new case studies every quarter to help tell / share our story.

Here’s a template that you can download to get started. Feel free to share and use this as necessary. I’d love a shout out in the footer as the creator (Created by Dan Soschin for American Public University System http://www.apus.edu). Please give credit where credit is due.
Top Landing Page Optimization Resources
Here are some of the absolutely best articles I have come across of the years with regards to building and optimizing great landing pages and the calls to action (CTAs) that great pages need.

In no particular order:
And, if the above pages weren’t enough to get you going, the resource below is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of create the VERY BEST FORMs for all types of situations:
Conversion Optimization: An In-depth Guide to Forms
Social Media Customer Service Case Study: Revell Models

Augie Ray shares an incredible case study about how Revell Model’s customer service failing to live up to expectations based upon a recent experience of a friend. The case study examines how the company could/should have responded which would have resolved the issue consistent with its stated corporate mission, and also easily rectifying the situation. Instead, it’s now being featured in a case study of what not to do. Oops!

Tag: case study

Update 12/1/2020