How to Prevent Buyer’s Remorse and Boost Customer Loyalty
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Buyer’s remorse is an unexpected punch to the gut. Just when you think you’ve made a successful sale, your customer comes back asking for a refund. Luckily, there are many ways to prevent it, nine of which we’ll discuss right ahead.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What Is Buyer’s Remorse?
How to Stop Buyer’s Remorse
9 Tips on How to Prevent Buyer’s Remorse
Conclusion
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What Is Buyer’s Remorse?
Every single return and reimbursement solicited by a client counts as buyer’s remorse because there isn’t a more accurate way of measuring it. Even if the customer was planning on returning the item all along, even before they bought it, a return is usually attributed some degree of buyer’s remorse.
True buyer’s remorse is when a customer feels regret after making a purchase. It usually happens with items that seem unnecessary or extravagant.
The issue with identifying true buyer’s remorse is that businesses rarely have a way of recognizing whether there was any real regret involved with the return, so the best way businesses have of measuring buyer’s remorse to date is by following return rates.
While buyer’s remorse that ends up in returns is not as common in the vaping industry as it is in other industries where products are way more expensive, it is still an issue, and solving it could result in a reduced return rate. Which is a valid goal for any online vape shop.
How to Stop Buyer’s Remorse
Overcoming buyer’s remorse can take one of two versions; either the customer can find a way of justifying their purchase on their own, or you help them find the justification they’re looking for. Doing this can be done with a gentle nudge like a follow-up email after their purchase or an additional gift like an e-juice sample that allows them to use the new vape pen they purchased from you right away.
While it’s always great if a customer can overcome buyer’s remorse on their own, you should be worried about what you can do to help them do it. Not only because you want to avoid a potential return, but also because you want your customers to find the value in the product you just sold them.
When your customer is unhappy with their purchase it will reflect badly on you and your vape shop. If your customer is happy with their product, then it will make you and your team look great, and will probably motivate the customer to buy products from you again.
9 Tips on How to Prevent Buyer’s Remorse
Nobody knows for sure how to stop buyer’s remorse, if that were so, it wouldn’t even be a subject we had to write a whole article about. The positive side to this is that there is always something you can do before and after making the sale to prevent it from happening.
1. Recognizing What Caused It
Buyer’s remorse often happens because a person feels like they didn’t make a good decision by purchasing a specific product from your online vape store. Feeling this way may lead to a return.
But recognizing what is causing that remorse is a whole different story. You’ll need to understand your customer first, this implies communicating with your customer in a way that generates trust and allows you to find out what is truly causing it.
Recognizing what is causing buyer’s remorse will also help you optimize your sales strategy in the future.
2. Help Your Clients Understand the Value of Their Purchase
A happy customer is happy with the experience delivered by the product they purchased. While this sounds fairly simple, it’s also extremely difficult for every client to understand where the value of the product they bought is coming from.
For instance, if a customer buys a disposable vape pen from you but they were expecting the vape pen to be a refillable device, they most likely will feel buyer’s remorse when they realize disposables are meant to be used once. It probably doesn’t mean that they are unable to see the value in a disposable pen, it probably just means that your staff or product description online was not clear enough when explaining the advantages of a disposable vape pen.
You’ll want to make sure that clients understand where the value of certain items is before they buy them. To continue with the disposable vape pen example, you’ll want to show your customers that buying disposables might be beneficial for road trips or short stays where they don’t have to travel with a bottle of e-juice, or perhaps you can show them that disposables allow them to try different flavors and brands often. So instead of seeing this as a negative, they’ll begin to interpret these facts about disposables as advantages.
3. Educate Your Customers Before the Purchase
Educating your customers is similar to recognizing the value of a product but it’s not the same thing. By educating your customers, what you’re trying to do is getting them to a point where much less explanation is needed when selling a product to them.
For instance:
You might not need to explain to your customer where the value of a disposable pen is if they already know what a disposable product is used for. But for this to happen, you’ll need to make sure that the information you provide through your website or customer service agents is extremely accurate and clear.
4. Set Realistic Expectations
Another similar but entirely different tip is setting realistic expectations. In this case, your customer may already know what a disposable vape pen is and where its value lies, but they may not understand the reach it has.
For example:
Some disposable vape pens give the user the option of recharging them if there is still some e-liquid left in the tank. While other disposables come with a predetermined battery charge and when that’s over it’s time to throw out the disposable. If so, you’ll want to make sure that the customer purchasing the product understands it before making the sale and risking buyer’s remorse.
5. Communicate Often and Effectively (Follow Up Post-Purchase)
Part of setting realistic expectations, educating your customers, and helping them understand the value of their new purchase all fall under the same umbrella. When customer service agents communicate clearly (this includes call center agents and on-floor salesmen) or website landing pages are written out accurately, you can expect all of these mistakes to be less prevalent and it all counts as clear communication.
6. Sell An Experience, Not Just a Vape Pen
The first time a person buys a vape pen they are not purchasing a simple device, they are investing in the ability to consume their favorite e-juices anytime they want. Some of the common attributes that vapors usually look for on devices are portability and convenience, just to name a few.
This is exactly what you are selling to them. Not a brand, a new design, or a new technology, on the contrary, they are investing in what those attributes bring them. It’s up to you to sell them that experience, this will not only help you make the sale without pushing it, it will also help you maintain a happier customer.
7. Make Sure Online Information Is Clear and Accurate
We’ve already touched on this tip a little bit, but it’s so important that it deserves its own subtitle. If you run an online vape shop, it means that most of the contact you have with your customers is indirect. To add to that, most online buyers are not looking to talk to the store directly, they want to be able to find out everything they need to know about the product they are buying without having to pick up the phone or text anybody.
That’s why making sure the information you provide online is extremely clear. If a customer doesn’t find the information they need to feel comfortable with their purchase on your website, they’ll just look for another website to buy from.
8. Employ Expert Customer Service Agents
Customer service agents are your vape store’s other key point of contact with customers. By employing expert customer service agents that know their way around a vape pen and e-juice brands, you’ll ensure that all the information being provided to your customers is clear and accurate. Therefore preventing buyer’s remorse.
9. Don’t Push the Sale
We often hear the term “pushing a sale”, and while sometimes some sales requiring a little pushing, doing it too much may hurt you in the long run. Remember, you want your customers to be happy with their purchase after they take it home, so your website and staff’s job is to provide them with all the information they need to hear to be naturally motivated to make the conversion. This way you’ll ensure that they know why they made the purchase in the first place and don’t end up returning the item.
Conclusion
Buyer’s remorse is the feeling customers have after purchasing an item they are not satisfied with. Buyer’s remorse alone is not dangerous, but what it triggers can be extremely dangerous for any business; returns, bad rep, etc. This is why companies need to take steps to learn how to prevent buyer’s remorse among their customers.
