Tag: customer service

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.
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.
Legacy customer service challenges can impact success of a social media strategy

Erik Sass at MediaPost.com reported today that Wells Fargo is launching a social media command center and this got me thinking about big business, social media and customer service. Is it possible for a big business to do social media “well”? The key to this is to understand how businesses perform in the area of customer service, since I believe social media and customer service go hand-in-hand for businesses.

If you invest time and money into a social media strategy you may be effective in managing your reputation in the online space; or at a minimum simply understanding what people are saying about you and identifying areas that need improvement. But if you are an organization like Wells with tens of thousands of employees – many on the front line, you have a different challenge. Essentially your front line staff can do more damage to your business than you think. By giving bad customer service, they may be counteracting anything positive you are doing online. Furthermore, you may be frustrating your customers and employees if your social team is faster at acknowledging, triaging and escalating customer service issues. If you do a good job in the social space, more customers will go there to get help – potentially creating more negative sentiment online, and overtaxing your social team. If you send those customers back to the support team, they may not receive the same response times they are used to when going through social.

This is a difficult challenge to overcome, and really hits at the root of customer service – training front line staff so that they are not liabilities to your brand, but rather, they enhance your brand’s equity at every interaction. And good customer service as a tenant of good business has always been prudent.

To conquer this challenge takes time, coordination and a bit of patience. Start by reaching out to your counterparts in various departments to educate them about social media, your mission, and social’s ability to positively impact the business (and improve their lives). You’ll need to do a lot of selling and a lot of training. But a collaborative approach whereby you involve department staff in the social process is an approach that is both effective and well-received at organizations I’ve helped tackle the service challenge. You’ll find champions in each department who will lead the effort with you – and it’s a joint effort. I recommend starting with one or two departments, perhaps with folks that are already doing some social or demonstrate social wherewithal. Then incrementally add on more departments and communicate through regular conference calls and presentations to discuss case studies (successes AND failures) so that you can improve upon your efforts over time.

And, none of this is possible without a really good social strategy and policy – two things you must have in place before looking to conquer the world of social media customer service.
Oops, You Screwed Up, Now What?
I’ve written a few bits about handling negative buzz and developing a crisis response plan when it comes to gaffs and complaints, but what about dealing with your mistakes?
1. Act quickly to correct the error
2. Post the correct and an explanation of what happened
3. Be honest, humble and transparent
4. Acknowledge that you will have disappointed customers
5. For retail, understand that some customers would only have been your customers because of the error (offering a tablet for $10 instead of $100). These people would never have come to your site to purchase the product if it was $100. They were only interested in a $10 one. So focus on your important customers first and don’t take the complaints personally.
What you need to do, is avoid ignoring people and don’t be rude (even if people are rude to you).

Here’s a great article about this topic that I recommend from Denise Keller at MarketingProfs.com.
Facebook Introduces Consumer to Business Direct Messaging

Facebook rolled out a new feature to it’s Asian-based users whereby fans of a business page and initiate “private” communication threads with the page admins that do not appear in the “public” feeds. I use quotes hear as everyone familiar with Facebook and the web should understand that nothing you do online on a social media site is necessarily fully private and secure.

Regardless, this new feature enables users to send semi-private messages to the admins. The reason this is important is that prior to this point, if you wanted to have a conversation, you had to do so primarily through the wall (there are Facebook apps and other things that provide alternatives, but the wall is the main area). If your comments or messages were not particularly relevant to the community, you may have decided to not post your thoughts; or the community might have been distracted from your thoughts. Therefore, this alternative method for posting might come in handy – especially regarding customer service.

If you wanted to engage a retailer about the details of your order, do you need 25,000 other fans on the page to see the details of your order and the conversation? Probably not; but now you have a channel for doing so.

One interesting side effect of this is that it may reduce the volume of comments on the page, making it appear that the admins and community don’t engage regularly. It could also prevent the company from showcasing its excellent customer service. Though, on the contrary, if the company runs into several issues that are all handled privately, that might actually be a good thing!

Here’s an article by Jon Russell at www.thenextweb.com on this new feature.
Why your business should use Twitter
If you think Twitter is silly, then you have fallen for the propaganda of Ashton Kutcher and Charlie Sheen and other celebrities who primarily starting using Twitter to let us know where they were partying and what food they like.

In reality, Twitter is a powerful platform that will help you:
- listen
- research
- engage
- communicate
- resolve
- promote
I recently gave a webcast on all things Twitter where I addressed these great features and debunked the celebrity Twitter mentality, debunking the myth that Twitter is for tweens to follow Justin Bieber’s whereabouts.

In fact, Twitter is a powerful B2C and B2B customer engagement tool that if you are not using, you are significantly missing out on opportunity. However, with all social media and digital tools, Twitter requires education, policy, training and strategy. If you create an account and just start broadcasting out messages to whomever you can convince to follow you, you are using the tool completely wrong.

Here are nine fantastic case studies on Twitter:

http://mashable.com/2011/06/09/brands-twitter-success/
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!
The Power of a Bad Review
Erik Saas just wrote a piece regarding a couple of surveys showing that consumers are highly likely to share a bad experience with their networks. This has long been reported as the case but perhaps somewhat ignored by many companies?

A study by Kaset International found:
- 96% of unhappy customers never complain
- 91% will not buy again or use your service
- An unhappy customer will tell nine others about their bad experience
- 13% of unhappy customers will tell 20 or more people
While this survey is over five years old, the data is still profound. In fact, the 13% figure is probably much higher today, than when this report was released, primarily due to social media.

What can you do? For starters, you need to be listening, which involves monitoring your brand not just in social communities, but on the entire ‘net.

Once you start listening you’ll be able to address issues more proactively and target areas of your business that need improvement. It really is THAT EASY. The improvement may actually be the hard part!

Here’s that article:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=146772&nid=124747#

Tag: customer service

Update 12/1/2020