Show Pictures and Avoid Your Warehouse Chargebacks
This is another interesting dynamic that we run into when we talk about LoadProof. We work with a lot of these small organizations like they have fifty people, hundred people with revenue around 20 million dollars, 50 million dollars, 20 billion dollars like that. This was an interesting scenario where these people were very much interested in LoadProof, but they were like “oh we ship to this retailer and they don’t even talk to us and they just automatically detect from our invoice”. We don’t know what to do right, so how we saw this is that organization liked your product so much, but somebody thought “hey this is a beautiful product, they looked at all your passion, they looked at your love and they looked at your care with which you make this amazing product, the beauty of the product.
Somebody in that organization fell in love with the product and they said I mean it’s usually a buyer right so they said “hey this is a great product, beautiful product and it would be great to be in our store and it’d be awesome to sell such a beautiful product to customers of ours. So my point is that these guys have been getting chargebacks from this retailer and they didn’t know what to do, how to do it. If you were brought down by that situation, what you do is, you can take pictures and show to people. When you see the website you can see how beautiful the product is. This entrepreneur basically started as a carpenter when he was in the 10th grade. He started as a carpenter and he started building some good products and then eventually he started building these amazing bathroom fixtures.
He’s selling it through this retailer and he left off a very sad voice in the middle saying that I have no idea what to do and this is what is happening. We automatically receive these invoices with chargebacks and we are losing a lot of money. When you look at the website it’s a beautiful product you can see the care that goes with making this amazing product so with your pictures you can show how, well you’re making such a nice product. You want to make sure that it gets delivered to the customer in the nicest way possible. There is a lot of attention and care that goes into packing and they do a beautiful packing. They start nicely in a pallet and then they nicely shrink wrap it, they add more packing material for the corners and then they fully cover this thing with a wooden board.
Then they nicely pack everything and then they load it on the truck. Not only that, there are also pillars that are kept between these pallets so these pallets don’t shake and fall down. So show that love, show that care. Not only you’re building a great product but also you’re packing it nicely, you’re packing it beautifully, and you’re packing it with a lot of care. Your intentions are the best to make sure the product gets delivered to the customer and when the customer opens this whole thing and looks at the product they’re in love with the product.
I mean obviously somebody on the retailer side saw that shows that right. When you show that page, the retailer looks at how well we do our job. This is how much care that goes into not only making the product but also in packing that product so it gets delivered flawlessly to the customer. When you show that the other side is also a person that’s looking for much care and nice packaging, they do everything perfectly. They will think of “how come it’s arriving damaged to our organization and how is that happening I gotta dig into this I need to understand something is going wrong so there is no point and just blindly giving chargebacks to them.
We got to work together, so you got to change the conversation right, you are being told that this is your chargeback, this is your job this but now you can change that conversation of just giving chargebacks and to look at the love that we are putting in this product, look at the care that we put in the packaging right. If the customer gets a damaged product, nobody wins and everybody loses in this thing. So change that conversation from just taking chargebacks to “hey help me partner”, “how can we partner to get this product delivered in an awesome manner so we evolved the customer end. Not only we as a product vendor, when the customer you as a retailer that sells this product also wins in the long run right.
So change that conversation from “hey just pay these chargebacks to “hey how can we make this partnership better”, how can we work together. It’s an important thing to show the right pictures over a thousand words and videos don’t lie. So when you take these pictures when you and videos and show to people “hey look at how well we have done it right”, people see oh my god these people do such a great job and you can do that only with pictures. That’s why LoadProof is another great tool to take pictures of all the work you do right viz., the pallets that you’re building, the packaging you make, the loading and stacking that is made inside the truck. So that’s why it’s important to take those pictures and show people when a chargeback comes.
You can tell them “hey we did your job right, it’s not fair for us to pay for these chargebacks because it’s not our fault and look at the care, love and the amount of effort that goes into delivering it to you, to make sure that this gets delivered absolutely perfectly flawlessly to the customer. So change that conversation and and move that forward as a partnership. It’s not a chargeback, it’s more about delivering a great product and a great customer experience both from a store perspective as well as a product perspective. So change that conversation, that’s when and that’s why it’s important to take pictures. The pictures and videos don’t lie. Make people believe you and they will start work with you better and you’re able to get out of this chargeback situation and make it easy for your customers.
Puga Sankara
Puga Sankara is the co-founder of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. SG LoadProof is a patent pending Centralized Enterprise Photo/Video Document System on Cloud for Supply Chain. SG LP is built on the fact that photos & videos are vital docs as important as POs/SOs/Legal Contracts/Fulfillment Orders that reside in ERP/WMS/TMS systems, that serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal proof of crucial, critical, vital operations executed in Supply Chain within/across orgs when fulfilling customer orders as well as meeting contractual obligations between orgs as merchandise is transferred between different parties that partake in Supply Chain functions & operations. And these photos/videos data should not be stored in someone’s Smartphone or Email Inbox or in their personal/work Computer, but should be stored in a Centralized Enterprise system, where such data can be pushed into super-fast, stored securely, accessible to all stake holders (CFO/Sales Reps/Customer Support/AR/AP) in an org, as well as facilitates super-fast retrieval/sharing. LP is an Enterprise System of record for Photo/Video docs & is as important as an ERP which is an enterprise system of record for POs, SOs, Legal Contracts between parties etc. that have huge legal ramifications, also as important as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) that hold indispensable shipment & fulfillment data on orders. Like how Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. have evolved into social media platforms/systems that enable individuals to showcase their beauty/pretty clothes/lovely cosmetics/hep coolness etc., LoadProof is an Enterprise system that holds similar photos/videos, but for a different reason, not for show off, but to serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal & indisputable system of record and proof that can be presented even in the court of law, when there is a dispute between parties while they execute many facets of the Supply Chain functions & operations. Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at [email protected] or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com.
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