Bulu Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Stephanie Jarrett was invited to share some of her Top Tips as a Subscription Box Expert at SUBTA Women in Subscription in September. In this ongoing series, you’ll find 6 tips you need to navigate your own box program - pulled from Stephanie’s experience launching more than 16 subscription box programs that have resulted in over 10 million shipments from Bulu’s warehouse, earned $100 million in revenue, and an average customer rating of 4.5/5 stars per box.
Interact with your customers as much as you possibly can.
Subscription management is more than just a single retail transaction. It's an ongoing relationship. You have to interact with your subscribers regularly to manage expectations and understand the reality of their box experience.
The most successful subscription box programs we’ve worked on are the ones that offer some method for continual feedback and interactions with their customers. Feedback can be gathered in a number of ways - via surveys, outreach emails or phone calls, reviews, customer service reporting - but we usually recommend that our partners offer customer feedback surveys after each box delivery.
You don’t have to be a data scientist to manage customer feedback surveys. In fact, we recommend keeping it simple and short!
Ask the same questions each month
Choose your key consumer metrics and ask those questions in each survey to create a baseline for your customer feedback. Just remember that the more questions you ask, the less likely someone is to complete the survey. Choose what is most important to your box model and goals. Most survey platforms offer templates, with common survey metrics for e-commerce or subscription orders such as:
Net Promoter Score
Star or other numerical ratings
Perceived value, quality or condition of item(s) received
Perception of shipment time
Perception of effort to place the order
Rating of customer service interaction (if any)
Likelihood to purchase again
Utilize the feedback
You’ll put a consistent amount of effort into creating and managing customer feedback, so don’t let your hard-earned data go to waste! Most survey platforms have basic charts or analytics tools. Keep track of responses in an ongoing document or spreadsheet. Review trends with your team to identify and plan possible improvements to your brand, site and products!
Whether it’s a change to website copy that reduces customer service tickets or an entirely new product launch that generates record revenue, remember to track the outcome of the changes you make using survey feedback. Share with your team and your stakeholders to celebrate those wins!
Keep evolving
As your business grows and changes, keep in mind how your surveys can adapt to answer new questions (but don’t lose those baseline metrics!) Some of Bulu’s partner programs use more sophisticated survey platforms to gather different information based on subscriber demographics or purchasing habits (e.g. new vs. recurring subscribers or month-to-month vs. prepaid 1-year subscribers.)
Bulu Recommends
Qualtrics - best for advanced users or multiple brands
If you have questions or would like to talk to Bulu about outsourcing your customer service, send an email to us at info@bulugroup.com.