Millinery Market – How to Make Your Customers Happy

It’s really important you make your customers happy. Happy customers are more inclined to leave you a glowing review, recommend you to a friend and share their experience on social media, which will help bring in more customers and sales.

But what can you do to make a customer happy?

It’s useful to consider the following formula: Happiness = Reality – Expectations.

When a customer orders a hat, they expect it to arrive on time and be as per the photos and description on your hat listing. If you meet these two criteria, you’ll have a satisfied customer as you met their expectation. However, they aren’t necessarily going to feel happy as you didn’t really exceed their expectations.

The secret sauce to having a happy customer is to surprise and delight them. Do something a little unexpected that makes them feel happy. It doesn’t have to be something major or expensive, just little thoughtful things go a long way.

Here are a few ideas to get you thinking. Have a think of some other ways you can surprise and delight your customer.

Have good communication. When you accept their order, thank them for the order and let them know what day you plan to post the hat. Let them know when you have posted it and give them the tracking number. Keep them in the loop and preempt what they might want to know, don’t wait until the customer messages you asking if you’ve sent the hat.
Have a fast response rate to your customer’s enquiries, especially if they have an issue or concern. Responding to customers within a couple of hours as opposed to a couple of days makes them feel more comfortable and shows you haven’t forgotten about them. If you don’t have the answer straight away, acknowledge their request and say you’ll get back to them.
If you don’t have another booking immediately before the customer, you can send it off a few days early and message the customer saying, “I’ve sent the hat a few days early so it has plenty of time to get there and to give you more time to try it on with the rest of your outfit :)”
Have nice packaging to give a good first impression when they unbox the hat. E.g. good condition box, pink tissue paper held in place with gold circular sticker.
Include a hand written note inside the box, saying something like, “Thanks so much for renting (or purchasing) my hat. I hope you love it! Let me know if you have any questions. I’d love to see a photo of how you style it.“
Include a small gift such as a lolly.
Include a return shipping label that has your address and the renter’s address already filled out. That way it saves the customer time and they don’t have to message you asking for your address.
Take a photo of how the hat should be packaged and tape it to the lid of the box. This will come in handy when the customer repackages the hat for return shipping.
If you are a milliner and you can swap out certain hat trims or elastic, prior to shipping you can ask what colour hair they have so you can match the elastic colour, or ask if they’d like an alternative trim colour to better match their outfit.
Where possible, try to be flexible and accomodating of any specific requests from your customer.