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Enrage Your Customer, Part 3: Stockouts
This is the third installment in a parody series about doing bad business. The content herein should not be taken seriously. CommerceBlitz is in no way liable for the stupid consequences of following this stupid advice.
“Do you have this product in stock?” It might be the most basic lay-up of a question a customer has ever asked you. Whether it’s in a brick-and-mortar store or online in a live chat, if someone asks you if you have a particular SKU, it usually means they’re ready to try it or purchase outright. But you don’t want a happy customer, do you? No! You want to infuriate them! Prove that neither you or your staff know what they’re doing by making this obvious opportunity for a sale into a living hell for everyone – just by following these easy steps.
First, make sure you invest in a cheap, flimsy warehouse management system that can’t sync your inventory accurately across channels. When a flood of Amazon orders stocks you out, who’s going to make sure that your Wayfair stock is updated? Let the customer give them your money for a product they think is in stock but actually isn’t, then send your worst customer service reps to clean up the mess. Maybe if you wait long enough, they’ll give up on trying to get their money back!
Hire an extra person to make incorrect inventory adjustments between your ecommerce and your warehouse instead of having a reliable sync function, and leave the process vulnerable to constant error. In fact, why make software a solution at all? Just pay for a team that you can pay 5x more than a computer to do the process wrong – and as an added bonus, they’ll need three days to do it.
Next, you’ll want to make sure your operation is leaky as all hell. Don’t bother with a security system, cameras are creepy. Don’t create an inventory process that ensures accountability either – why would you want to keep record of who’s near your precious merchandise at all times when you can just trust a temp you barely know? If someone steals, forgive and forget! They probably needed that product more than you did.
Never try to forecast demand. After coronavirus, who knows what they’re talking about when they forecast, anyway? You might as well just leave your quantity levels up to pure chance and if the customer gets an out of stock alert, too bad for them! You don’t need their money. Calculating safety stock would be a great way to solve that problem – but math is for nerds. You came here to win, baby!
Write bad copy. Hire your sister’s 7th grader who
can’t pass a Don’t work with your suppliers to
provide restock estimates. You work harder than
them and can’t be bothered. The customer has it
too good! Even if they practically beg you to let
them pay you, don’t offer a digital funnel that
notifies them of a restock. It’s the luck of the
draw, and if they don’t want to check your website
every day, twice a day, for that Totoro pillow case,
well that’s just too bad. Plenty of fish in the sea!
Finally (and this is our favorite): stay out of stock for months. It’ll make your customers angry for awhile, but as soon as they figure out you’re not good for what they want, they’ll just leave you altogether and make a mental note to never come back.
What? Isn’t that what you wanted? After all, they kept bothering you all the time! Now you don’t have to deal with them anymore!
The techniques we’ve gone over are sure fire, guaranteed ways to enrage your customer – but if you need more, consider losing their shipment or misleading them online.
This headache-inducing nightmare scenario brought to you by CommerceBlitz, the warehouse and wholesale software that makes you – and customers – happy. CommerceBlitz prioritizes simplicity and ease of use, so you can concentrate on the most important parts of your business, earn those positive reviews, and never lose a package!
