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AustraliaIn the age of thriving online e-commerce platforms, purchasing a product online is made easy, efficient and convenient to the average buyer. The benefit of scrolling the vast inventory of available products online based on its specifications, colours, and features increases the level of consumer purchasing up a few notches since the dawn of the internet. Customers may be thrilled to enjoy the fast delivery of items purchased online, wrapped safely in its individual bubble wraps and extensive packaging to avoid any unwanted damages to products. The product itself is received as per the expectations during a purchase, as most of the e-commerce platforms spend a lot of time and attention to ensure to deliver goods to a consumer’s expectations without damage. This ensures 100% customer satisfaction, and increases the reputation of the e-commerce platform. Yes, its all for the reputation of the platform.
Now, as you observe closely on the content written above in the opening statement of this article, you will realise that a purchase made online from such e-commerce platforms brings great emphasis on the overall speed of delivery from checkout, quality of product sold and outcome of receipt at a registered destination address of the customer.
“Once a product is sold online to a customer, the responsibility of the e-commerce platform is to ensure the customer receive the goods on time without damage, and as per the specifications that they viewed before checkout. This is the principal responsibility and commitment of an e-commerce platform to a customer from the moment they perform a transaction online. After this product has reached the destination of customers, the scope of duties for an e-commerce marketplace platform ends.
The duties of a seller resumes from this moment onwards.”
The responsibility of ensuring a product’s quality control and reliability after a purchase is done is always in the hands of the sellers, and never in the scope of liability of e-commerce platforms. It is clearly written and assumed to be acknowledged in their terms of service page which most sellers would never read as well. The most such platforms will do to safeguard a customer’s interest is by holding the payment amounts to a seller for a short period of time (3-7 days after receiving the order) to ensure that the product received is working without defects or issues. Hence, the sellers are then tasked to coordinate their necessary product warranty registration post-purchase with the customer directly.
Whether you are a product seller online or a customer purchasing from e-commerce platforms, here are some examples of common practices that current sellers are implementing to coordinate the registration of product warranty which you may find useful.
Here are the 3 common practices by sellers.
Physical Warranty Cards
Warranty cards are the most common method used by a seller to encourage customers to register their product. The inclusion of a hard paper card that is kept blank for customers to fill out is the most widely used process.
Advantages
- This is by far the most convenient and effective way for sellers to reach out to hundreds or thousands of customers easily across multiple platforms with a small printing cost for the warranty cards.
Disadvantages
- Customers will need to use a ball pen to complete this card as the glossy paper used is not suitable for ink pens (causes smudging).
- The card needs to be posted to the seller’s office within a certain period after purchase.
- Customers will need to visit a post office to purchase post the card ( in most cases no postal stamp is required).
- There is no acknowledgement after the card has been posted.
- Some sellers will send an email to confirm the registration but most of these sellers are usually buried with the thousands of cards received.
Keep Receipt for Warranty Claims
Receipts or proof of payment made is another option that is most convenient for sellers to process and keep record of the warranty period for the millions of products sold by them. Sellers usually take the reference number as displayed on the official receipt or invoice to track a customer’s purchase via existing POS systems and to verify if the warranty claim is still active.
Advantages
- The most cost-effective method with almost zero upfront cost for sellers who can rely on the digital documents as provided by e-commerce platforms.
Disadvantages
- For larger sellers, this process is sometimes really time consuming.
- After a warranty period is confirmed, the next step that requires coordination is time to call up the customer to determine the next action.
- Sellers will need to invest in a 1800 or 1300 number ready to accept hundreds of phone calls regularly, along with the hiring of a team of customer support representatives.
- Some sellers will send an email to engage with a customer to visit the nearest physical store for their claims but this process also involves a lot of coordination among various teams.
- From a customer view point – this process is very troubling and inconvenient.
Register Online
With digitisation of business processes, many larger sellers in the form of multinational corporations are successfully introducing online product registration portals to make it easier for customers to register their products online upon purchase.
Advantages
- The process of product registration is very easy and makes it convenient for customers.
- Some sellers also provide perks such as cash-back vouchers to customers to encourage them to register their products online.
- Such sellers have the benefit of collecting a customer’s data and are able to continuously support their customers and also upsell with promotions and upgrades.
Disadvantages
- The upfront cost to develop a portal including the time needed for product development may put off many sellers, especially if their product inventory is very limited.
- The monthly cost to maintain a working portal which also is expensive may not be ideal for smaller or mid-tier sellers.
The above are the three common practices by sellers in accepting a product warranty registration from their customers. In our mission to automate the warranty management and after-sales support process with Rezpon, we hope that more sellers move to digitise their existing processes to provide more convenience to their customers.
Secqrd is an after-sales engagement tool tailored for products that are sold with a warranty. We connect merchants directly with buyers via e-warranty registration, enabling in-app communication, issue loyalty vouchers, data analytics and merchants can upsell 20+ addons to buyers after an initial sale.