E-commerce fulfillment is extremely fast paced and consumers have high expectations. From next day and same day delivery to quick answers to questions, todays’ consumers demand logistics services at a level never seen before. If you outsource your fulfillment, working with a company that is able to meet and exceed these expectation levels is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but rather a necessity. One of the best ways to ensure this takes place is to ensure that your partner provides you with a dedicated account manager.
How Most Fulfillment Companies Handle Service
First, it’s important to differentiate between customer service to ‘your company’ versus ‘your end customer’. Most fulfillment houses provide service to you or members of your team rather than answering emails and calls directly from your end customers. If you’re looking for a company to handle inbound service for your end customers, you’ll need to make sure they offer inbound call center services and text/email/live chat support. Only a very small percentage of fulfillment companies offer inbound call center services and other inbound support services. In fact, most companies that outsource both fulfillment and call center services use separate providers, which helps them to diversify the risk of these services.
Second, most fulfillment companies offer a collaborative approach to servicing your questions and the questions of your customers. In the collaborative approach, questions get answered by a number of different contacts, rather than one person in particular. For example, when working with a smaller warehouse, some questions may be sent to the warehouse manager or warehouse staff, while other questions get sent to a customer service department or even an executive level team member. When working with larger companies such as Amazon, customer service is handled by an entire customer service department. In both instances, your questions will be answered by different people, depending upon who is available at the time.
The Problems with Customer Service ‘As Usual’ in the Fulfillment Industry
On both ends of the spectrum, whether from a large provider like Amazon or a smaller regional fulfilment company, service becomes challenging when so many different people are involved. For example, if you’ve ever experienced the “big business” customer service of Amazon, you know that it oftentimes is quite painful just getting a live voice on the line, and nearly every time you interact with a customer service agent it will likely be with a different person. Because of this, the customer service rep will generally have no background knowledge or familiarity about your individual company or circumstances, and you’ll have to experience the torment of longer interactions as you wait for the customer service rep to look up basic information in order to help with each request.
For smaller fulfillment companies, the frustration is similar in that being serviced by different team members nearly guarantees that the experience will vary from contact to contact, with no one person really achieving a high level of depth of your account needs. Unlike the service from a larger dedicated customer service department, smaller companies also present the challenge that your questions will get answered when the appropriate person has availability to answer. Without a single point of contact from a person dedicated to providing service, you may find yourself waiting for responses when you need a quick answer.
The Dedicated Account Manager as a Solution
Thankfully, there is a hybrid approach that some high-level fulfillment centers offer – a dedicated account manager for each account. In this scenario, the fulfillment company will provide you with a dedicated person who will act as a single point of contact for most all inquiries. Because this is their only job to perform at the fulfillment center, they are available all throughout the day to quickly respond to your questions, or find answers by coordinating with other members of the team.
Companies that use the Dedicated Account Manager solution tend to sing of its praises. For example, AJ Khanijow of Fulfyld notes that, “Having a dedicated account manager for each of our client accounts has led to an increased level of customer service at Fulfyld that differentiates us from our competitors. Each of our clients have their account manager’s direct phone number and can text/email/call them at any time.”
Account Managers assist with any trouble shooting, inventory management needs, and simply go the extra mile to streamline the clients’ logistics process.
The Pros to Having a Dedicated Account Manager
Dedicated Account Managers are an ideal solution for providing excellent customer service because they:
• Are generally able to respond faster than, on average, any other method
• Become extremely knowledgeable of all of the details of each individual account that they manage
• Offer a single point of contact that is consistent and unchanging
• Can get quicker answers from other team members if needed
Because customer service is so critical, it’s imperative that you choose the best fulfillment company to handle inbound customer service questions and provide quick resolutions. Using a company that employs a dedicated account manager strategy offers the best solution to meet these stringent demands.
Proactive Approaches Separate Customer Service Quality in Fulfillment Companies
Working with a fulfillment company requires extensive communication to ensure that everything runs efficiently. Whether they are simply providing customer service to your team or handling a more extensive function such as direct communication with your end customers, the quality of this communication can make or break the entire fulfillment experience. What separates customer service quality in fulfillment companies is paying attention to various details you may not think about until they happen. It’s why you should look carefully at your contract before working with a fulfillment center and see how they approach communication with you. Or, discussing it over with the manager can give you an idea.
Here are some things to consider so that you can avoid having any difficulties with the service provided by your fulfillment center.
Proactive vs. Reactive Responses in Customer Service
You can quickly determine which center has the best approach to customer service based on whether they do things proactively or reactively. In the latter case, the support team may only contact you when sending you a bill, or responding when you have a problem. Using a proactive method, on the other hand, is where they’ll let you know in advance about specific issues, improvements, or savings that will benefit your company. Always be sure to ask if the fulfillment center has a proactive support team and what frequency they’ll proactively reach out to you. Another good way to determine if they offer proactive customer service is to discuss the technology systems that they use and have them provide examples of how it helps them identify potential issues, track ongoing performance, and manage email and telephone communication for your company. Ideally, you should always have a symbiotic relationship with your fulfillment provider where communication happens frequently.
Support Staff Availability
Most people have experienced poor customer service where you have to spend 10 minutes to get a hold of a live person, get put on hold for extended periods of time, or deal with representatives that aren’t able to handle the issue at hand. The same potential negative scenarios exist with your fulfillment operation unless you ensure that they have adequate support staff, training, and availability. The stakes are even higher if they are providing any support to your end customers. “Statistics show that when a company fails to respond properly to customer concerns, it all reflects badly on you, the retailer. A lousy customer response in dealing with a return could lose you a customer for life, including getting highly unfavorable reviews on influential places like Yelp,” according to Max Zitney, who runs Ships-A-Lot in Warren, Ohio.
It’s imperative you choose a fulfillment center that has support available during the appropriate business hours of your company. Most importantly, you need to have multiple contact methods as well to deal with an emergency. Methods of emergency correspondence could include text messaging, direct phone calls, using service such as Slack for transparent conversations, or standard email.
Mobile communication is equally essential, especially when you need to travel for business and can’t visit the fulfillment facility in person.
Working With Account Managers on Communication
The account manager in your fulfillment center should keep communication going on a regular basis, including messaging you at agreed upon intervals to update you about what’s going to occur. Having daily or weekly briefings confirms which items are getting shipped, which items get handled on returns, and details on warehouse procedures. If there’s any changes in technology or other procedures, the account manager should let you know so you’re aware of any slight downtime during transitions.
In addition, you should get monthly reports from this manager detailing everything from accuracy, speed, to savings they’re giving you. When the fulfillment center can save you money through more enhanced technology, it only helps you in a time when customers expect deliveries yesterday rather than today.
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