Refunds can be a scary thing for small businesses. Offering guarantees and refunds can sometimes mean that a small business has a day of negative revenue or sales. But we need to rethink refunds and look at how they can actually positively affect our businesses.
Not long ago, I signed up for a paid subscription to a large publication. After a few weeks with my subscription, I realized that their content wasn’t as valuable to me as I had thought it would, so I decided to cancel my subscription.
Over a week later and multiple attempts, I finally reached a customer service representative to cancel my subscription. Unfortunately, I still had to endure a long list of questions from the customer service representative about why I wanted to cancel.
The experience was long, drawn-out, and frustrating.
I will never subscribe to a publication from this company again. And this point is why I say we need to rethink refunds.
If my cancellation process had been easy or at least not as frustrating as it was, I would be open to subscribing again in the future. But because of this companies reluctance to satisfy my choices as a customer, they have lost me for life.
Do you offer refunds or cancellations for your services or merchandise? If not, perhaps it would be helpful to consider that you may be retaining a prospective customer instead of permanently losing one by offering these services.
Food for thought, right?
Do you agree or have a refund experience to share? Let me know in the comments.
As we move more and more to online shopping, refunds as well as returns become a challenge that small and medium sized businesses are going to have to figure out. I would agree, that as both sides of a sales experience should be handled seamlessly.
Indeed. Online shopping and other online businesses need to prioritize the entire customer experience not just one aspect. Thanks foe your input Kate.
I remember one of the first rules in sales was that no only was the sales process to be easy, but so was the refund (return) process. If either process is not easy and friendly, then word will get out on the street, or in the cyber world and will lead to loss of future customers. Good reminder to us all.
Absolutely Kate. Thanks for dropping by.