A Crafter's Guide to Starting a Subscription Business
Lesson 18 of 21
Frequently Asked Questions
A Crafter's Guide to Starting a Subscription Business
Lesson 18 of 21
Frequently Asked Questions
Lesson Info
Frequently Asked Questions
So let's talk about some frequently asked questions that your customers are going to ask you on I'm talking about this now just to prepare you that this is going to happen you know these air like some of these air literally the faa cues s so just be prepared for this people are going to ask how do I cancel my subscription and as I mentioned you know you can give them instructions or you can do it for them when will my order ship home that's another big one especially if you're in the cyclical subscription model especially when people's credit cards have been charged six seven eight weeks ago especially international orders who who shipping times might end up taking a little bit longer there will be a lot of people who ask when their order will ship and talking about shipping if you use the really cool paid programs like ships station I'm not sure if andy sure stamps can do this but if in your spreadsheet you include the email address off each customer you can turn on sending email noti...
fications with tracking numbers so that would really help eliminate this question because every customer will get kind of a branded nice email that will say this is your tracking number and this and you know it's a clickable links so that when you click on it we'll bring you to the usps website and it will show you an estimated delivery time and that's all automated so that's why I really like ships station and they're going to be some people who are going to ask if they can make a special request and at this point it's kind of really up to you if you want to go through the trouble and make them something a little bit different from the rest of all the other people, so sometimes I would get someone who's saying, because my juries all scented, right? So sometimes I would get someone who would say, I really want to be in your subscription, but I don't want it scented or someone would ask, I noticed that all your necklaces are eighteen inch ball chains can I have it on twenty four in chains? So little things like that can cause your subscription to be a little bit harder to manage because then you're you're process will not be a streamlined and your processes processes won't be a sufficient because I'm really big on this giving people a great customer service experience. I always just say yes and then in my spreadsheet I always just have a notes column with just some extra special request to those things I mean as long as well it's it's within reasonable, reasonable balance balance of course then people are going to ask, how do I change my address? People move all the time and for those people, there will be some people who forget that they're subscribed to your club or whatever it is, and they're going to move their package is going to be shipped to their wrong address and and yada yada yada. Um, but for the most part, people are going tio remember to tell you so, though, either send you an email or if they're tech savvy enough to go in and change it themselves and paypal. But this is also something that you can do because essentially all you need to change you don't need to go into paypal to change this yourself. You just need to change it on your spreadsheet and then where's my order. I think for the most part, usps is pretty good, I found with delivering orders on time, but international orders tends to be more of a problem because of customs. Sometimes customs can decide out of the blue to just hold on to your package for inspection, and that can really draw out how long it takes for your customers to receive your product in those scenarios, you know, just having a really good template, really good customer service email to just explain to them about the tracking process, you know, because when they reach out to you, they're hoping that you have more information about their tracking information. Most of the time we don't we see exactly the same thing they see from the tracking information, so just kind of tell them about that and if they want to, they can definitely call their local post office most of the time because in my experience when it says that it's been kind of for me because I'm in minnesota, the outgoing thie point in the post office from before it goes out to the international flight is normally in chicago, so sometimes that can be stuck in chicago for a long time and then two weeks would have gone by and they're like why hasn't arrived yet normally my experience what happens is like two days after they send me that email they get there, they get their stuff, so don't be I just tell them to hang tight for a couple of more weeks and my my my time frame for international orders is normally up to eight weeks, so once that eight weeks has passed, if they haven't gotten their orders, then I'll think about re sending them the product altogether. So for all of these frequently asked questions because I think once you start scaling up and you have a lot of subscribers aa lot of these questions are going to be, you know, that's it's going to be a daily routine for you, so what I would really recommend is to create templates for easy copying and pasting, but a really nice app that I like to use for gmail is their canned responses feature, and so what this does is you can actually add all of these templates into canned responses, and whenever you get someone asking for a frequently asked question, just copy that in there, it's just like literally two clicks or maybe three at the most, but then what you can do also is just to go into the email and personalize it based on that person's question, in case you need to do that, do we have any questions so far about un subscribes? They're a couple questions online, okay, I took up the ass there's a few questions about returns and refunds and exchanges, and who could be asked what are the other ways to handle people who do not like their product besides an exchange, especially if you on ly our subscription only company and someone asked since they're receiving subscribes surprised products, and you talked about this in terms of exchange, but there she's wondering if you could issue a partial refund who are uncertain to people are unhappy with certain tonics, so I'm curious with huckabee, and by the way, hello, she's, in my facebook group, I would like to know, why is she can actually let me know why an exchange it won't d'oh! So even exchange won't do, then I think the only other way you could really make them happy with this just to send them a refund. I'm curious as to why an exchange won't work, though or, you know, ask them if there's anything else in your shop, because I think huckabee, you sell crowe shape patterns, and I think maybe kids is well, I'm not sure, but it's possible if if they don't, if they can't find anything in her shop, if you have nothing else in your shop to exchange with, then I think the refund is the best way to go, and I would definitely recommend for youto ask first if a refund is ok with them, because sometimes people don't want refunds, which is very interesting, I find the only way I could see offering a partial refund is if you don't offer refund on this shipping. Otherwise, I guess if you if you really wanted to, depending on your business model, if you could actually spell it out to your customer, that element a in your subscription box element be is how much element is how much elements sees how much andi if you wanted to break it down to them, and if they weren't happy with that specific element, you could offer that partial refund for just that thing, but I think I think you could definitely do it's. Totally possible, justus. Long as you communicated to them. Be really objective with your response and just be really matter, effect. But also be really empathetic and understanding with your response.
Class Description
Not sure where your next sale will come from? A subscription product or business eliminates the guess work and is a great way to secure a steady paycheck. Find out how it is done in A Crafter's Guide to Starting a Subscription Business with Mei Pak.
- Create the ideal product for your subscribers
- Package your product to move
- Add more subscribers every month
- Establish and maintain organizational systems
- Engineer an amazing customer experience and keep customers happy
Lessons
- Introduction
- Why Sell Subscription Products?
- Great Subscription Ideas
- Positioning Your Subscription Product
- Pricing Your Subscription Product
- Interview with Stacey Trock of FreshStitches
- Subscription Models: Which One is Best for You?
- How to Manage Your Subscriptions
- Shipping Tools and Apps
- Finding Your Ideal Customer
- Why Marketing is Necessary
- Copywriting for Your Subscription Product
- Photography for Your Subscription Product
- Promoting Your Subscription on Social Media & Blogs
- Interview with Maureen Vasquez of Pipsticks
- How to Handle Unsubscribers
- The Unboxing Experience
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Common Challenges for Subscription Businesses
- Growing Your Subscriptions
- Interview with Wendi Gratz of Shiny Happy World
Reviews
Nuvea
Mei gives lots of practical information and resources in this course.