What They Want
To put yourself in the client’s shoes for a second, remember back to when you were a kid and you could place an order. Maybe it was for a slice of pizza on Pizza Day at school or a toy out of a catalog. It felt so great to not only receive that item but also make the order yourself. In fact, there’re probably only a few feelings like it.
Whether you know it or not, as a product fulfillment pro, you are providing that feeling to your clients on a regular basis. They come to you to satisfy their dreams of getting those special items they want. As sentimental as it might seem, it’s very true.
Some product fulfillment pros don’t see this, possibly because they have issues with their business or get cynical over time. No matter the situation, it’s important to remember one hard fact: no matter how you feel about what you do, you have to complete client orders properly. There’s no way around that.
Customer order fulfillment is pretty much the top priority in product fulfillment. If you start to mess up customer order fulfillment, you might have to kiss your whole business goodbye. If clients don’t get the right orders that they’ve shelled out their hard earnings for, you can bet they will head elsewhere to find another service provider that can do what they want. But for your product fulfillment business, that doesn’t have to happen. You just have to satisfy your clients’ orders correctly. That’s it.
Completing the Deal
A good order fulfillment takes a three-stage process to complete. First, you have to make sure you have the products they want. Nothing burns up clients more than when they place an order for a needed product and find out that their product fulfillment service doesn’t have it. Keeping tabs on your merchandise fulfillment, suppliers, and product providers to make sure the stock is there should be top priority for you, and ensuring good, regular communication will help with this.
Second, you have to make sure you can put together the packages that are ordered by clients, no matter how complex. Assembly services need to be part of your product fulfillment business. You are likely going to get multiple orders, often around the holidays, so you have to be ready at all times to put together big packages of products for your clients.
Third, you have to iron out whatever postal logistics necessary. This is a two-fold situation. Make sure you have someone to receive orders through the mail and to investigate the ones that haven’t made it in. Then make sure you have the right mail processes to get the products out. This might mean opening up specific mailboxes at your postal center or acquiring a courier service to ensure your postal logistics are in top form.
Fulfilling the Best Desires
In the earliest stages of your product fulfillment, you might have to be the one person who makes sure that order fulfillment is completed correctly. Once your business gains further success, you might consider employing someone to help you with this. Augmenting a total order fulfillment center for your product fulfillment business, either in-house or outsourcing a third party, might be the best solution to make sure your business gets its orders done correctly. Check your budget and what resources are available to help you with this.
Completing orders for product fulfillment is a form of desire fulfillment. Your clients have the desire to get good products, and they turn to you to get them. Fulfilling their wants and needs is how you can keep your clients satisfied and have them coming back for more great client satisfaction, often with more cash in hand, too!
Need solutions to your product fulfillment problems? APS Fulfillment, Inc has the knowledge and services to make your direct mail and product fulfillment ventures more successful. Contact APS Fulfillment, Inc by e-mail at [email protected], visit its web site at www.apsfulfillment.com, or call (954) 582-7450.
