Order Errors - How Do We Effectively Handle Them Without Always Discounting?

Let’s talk about Order Errors and actual examples of how we have addressed them at Be Branded !

First and MOST important?-->?Order errors are unavoidable, but can be HEAVILY reduced through operational checks and balances. There have state of the industry reports that errors average as high as 17% of all orders.??This is when you take into account both the errors made by promotional product/apparel companies AND their suppliers.??

At Be Branded we have a less than 1% error rate, but how? We don’t mess around with suppliers that aren’t vetted.??We ask all pertinent questions at the beginning of a project to make sure that expectations are all filled when product delivers.??Sometimes it ends up feeling like an interrogation on the customer side of things.??What color? When is the event? Where do you want the logo???Do you have the logo in the right format???What is the theme of your event? Etc.

We still experience occasional errors at Be Branded, so what have we done in those cases???We’d love to hear from you about what you think we did to resolve these issues below.??Some of these are supplier errors, but most errors we run into end up being a lack of communication on the customer side of things even after we’ve asked a bajillion questions!

1 – Bubble Mess – Temporary Inconvenience

A customer ordered 2500 bottles of bubbles from us.??The bubbles were “event-oriented” and were part of 5 or 6 other products on the same order.??When they delivered to the customer a heavy portion [80%] of the bubbles were leaking which leads to label failure and a gigantic sticky mess for the customer.??We reached out to our supplier and let them know what happened and asked them what they thought was appropriate.??We got them pictures of all the damaged boxes/product per their request.??Right off the bat they offered 20% off and a remake for the customer.??They also said to dispose of the initial order of 2500 bubbles.??Unfortunately, the remake took significantly longer than anticipated.??Our supplier relations team reached out to our bubble supplier and negotiated up to 50% total off on the project.??

In the end – the customer was fine with the late arrival of product because after chatting with them further they really didn’t NEED the product until late spring for the events they planned on using the bubbles for.??

Did the customer receive the full amount at the quality they originally anticipated receiving???Yes.?

Did we pass on a discount to the customer? No, but why? There was no additional recourse requested by the customer besides us taking care of the bad product that was initially delivered.??Both sides felt fine with the solution and we are already working on other projects with them!

Did we repurpose the bad bubbles? Yes. We picked up 13 boxes of bubbles and brought them home.??We could not in good conscience throw away 2500 bubbles. We retightened the lids, washed all 2500 bubbles, dried them, and relabeled them with our own Be Branded labels.??

Speaking of - Need any bubbles???

2 – Apparel Did Not Fit As Planned

Many times customers send us links of the exact product that they want and we are more-so just the fulfillment channel for product that they found on our website.??Recently we had a customer who did just that.??They sent us the apparel that they wanted along with the sizing/design, etc.??We sent a digital mockup before producing the order.??Everything was approved.

After the product delivered there was one set of cardigans that didn’t fit as they had planned, but they knew that we had not done anything wrong.??We worked together and came up with a solution.??The original order would be paid for as is.??Be Branded would produce a new order at cost + 10% to cover our time.

Were they happy? Absolutely.??How much extra time did this take us? Maybe 10 minutes.??What did we learn that we can improve on in the future even though we didn’t technically do anything wrong???Regardless of if the product link is sent to us to just order or we are recommending a specific apparel product – we should always be pointing customers to apparel size charts so they are never surprised. Lesson learned!

3 – I Thought It Would Look Different On The Mug

A customer ordered some mugs that they sent us the link on.??We asked the million questions prior to the that we always ask.??They approved the order.??We did a digital mockup that should the exact placement and sizing.??They approved the mockup.??The customer received the product and hated how it looked. They said it looked nothing like the proof and sent us a picture of it..

We took a poll from a few associates asking how they think the physical product looked compared to the actual product.??All agreed that there was no deviation in color or size on the product compared to the proof.??The customer said that they would have to donate the product because they can’t hand them out.??They asked us what we can do.??In this specific case we opted to say that we could do a small discount on an additional product if they chose to do a different product.??The customer decided to take it as a loss and move on, but in the end did not blame Be Branded because they know that we followed the same process that we always do.

What can we take away from this situation???If you are consistent with your customer processes when they like the outcome of the product AND when they don’t like the outcome they may come to their own realization that the fault was not yours.??In this case the customer has continued to consistently order from us since this occurred and we have not changed our processes with them at all!??Keep track of conversations dealing with approvals of both costs and digital mockups.??Paper trails expedite conversations so that it doesn’t turn into a he said/she said situation.

4 – Make Sure Your Company Has Specific CMYK & PMS Colors & Vectorized Logos

Customer wants lanyards with a design in a picture that they sent us.??The same color of shirt and the same color of print as in the picture. Alrighty we can do that!??Do they have the design in vector format that you can send to us???Nope!??We will need to charge them for that.??Reluctantly the customer agrees to the additional costs and we have our designer recreate the logo.

We take the design and apply it to the lanyards.??We send the design to the customer with specific noted PMS colors on the lanyard and ask them to review it carefully because colors on different computer monitors and phone screens will all look different, but the PMS colors noted are universal.??The customer approves the project.

Fast-forward to delivery.??The customer hates the way the lanyard looks.??“It was supposed to be a white lanyard and I told you that on the phone.”??How many times have we been told that a customer said something on the phone, but when we look at our email correspondence it is completely missing???I’ll let you take a guess, but the answer is A LOT!??We forward the entirety of our documented email correspondence and ask them what we could have done differently. Customers says they can’t hand these out and that we need to remake them even if the email doesn’t say anything about white.??We reference the PMS Colors and how we asked for careful review of the digital mockup.

Unfortunately this did not end with a great resolve.??Did we remake these lanyards???Yes. For full cost? No.??Did the customer accept any responsibility? Kind of.??

We want to believe that customers are always right, but our experience is that firm boundaries when customers won’t accept responsibility for their involvement is much more effective than letting customers tell you what to do and becoming a charity for other’s errors or oversights.

Let us know what you think what we did right and also what you would have done differently in any of these situations!??All feedback is constructive!