Okay, this is one of those posts that happens because I was having a conversation with someone that sparked a tangent discussion that reminded me of something that might be useful to share. Did you follow that?

Let me tell you a little story – a fable from a long time ago in another land – marketing land…

Okay, there once was a product available for sale. It was a nice product – I still personally purchase them for my own self years later. This was a squishy, lightweight, pillow-sized product for consumer home-use. We’ll call it “the product.”

The product was very well marketed and very well received by consumers. It fit a health-need. Health and fitness are great markets to get into. They can be quite competitive but they can also be filled with a lot of schlocky products. This, thankfully, was not a schlocky product.

So, this product was so great that it was decided to give it awesome packaging that would survive shipping as well as stack nicely on the shelves at department and megamart-type stores. This product was also blessed with an equally awesome guarantee – basically stating that if you didn’t like it for any reason just send it or take it back and you’ll get all your money back. The time limit was generous, the requirements were practically non-existent (meaning that if you even just hated the color and wanted to return it – that was fine), and it was a great guarantee told customers they clearly were going to like what they got.

The rub, though, was that, although returns were few (much less than projected and significantly less than industry standards for this type of product) it was still the goal to tackle the issue of returns with the goal of making them non-existent. Of course, there will always be returns of any product but the thinking was to do everything possible to make it so the customer would have no desire to return it without tampering with that excellent, consumer-favoring money back guarantee in any way, shape or form. That guarantee to the customer was written in stone and as good as gold. The customers had to love the product and be willing to keep it.

So, the subject of returns came up at a meeting (where Reuben sandwiches and ginger ale were served for lunch). “How do we reduce the already low-rate of returns but not mess with customer confidence or the guarantee?” This was a question asked by a man wearing a navy blue suit and obligatory red power-tie – the extra wide kind, not those sissified narrow ties. This was a man who was king of all the land and his word was law and his questions demanded answers – the good kind, not those pansy answers marketing folks usually give.

The subject of reducing returns was discussed around the great, round table in the room of conferences amidst the feast of Reuben sandwiches for nearly an hour. It was a discussion that ranged from the usual ideas for reducing returns (ideas which were discarded since it was determined not to tamper with the sacred guarantee), to the absurd to, eventually, one very clever idea.

“Change the packaging.”

Yes. Change the packaging.

“What do you mean – change the packaging?” was a question asked between sips of ginger ale.

Well, since it was established, through research, that customers were overwhelmingly satisfied with the product and it was only a tiny fraction that returned it due to it not solving their health problem – but were still satisfied with the product in general – why not simply make it a little harder to return it?

I know. It seems a little sneaky but believe me, far sneakier things go on in market caves every day all over this Country. This was actually a rather thoughtful solution to a problem: still allow the money-back guarantee to be as strong as ever but make so that only people who really were compelled to return the product would do so – make it not quite so convenient to return but not in an avaricious way.

The thing was – all existing returns were showing the product coming back in the original packaging – that sturdy, folded lid box. The box was so good, so easy to simply slide the product back in and put a label on it that it was a bit too easy to return.

The solution was to ship this product in a shrunk, compressed, plastic, heat-sealed sleeve that had to physically be torn apart to release the product.

As is often the case in sales – there’s money to be made from the sale of a product, cutting the costs to produce that product, reducing costs of shipping or deployment, but there’s also money to be gained by reducing returns.

The benefit to this solution was obvious – again, it kept the very important guarantee intact, it reduced weight in shipping (and the product survived shipping fine in the new packaging within larger palette boxes), and customer satisfaction surveys indicated the same, high level of overall satisfaction and recommendation.

It was a win/win situation and one that reminds me often to think outside the box, as it were, in finding solutions to problems.

By the way – I hate Reuben sandwiches. Sauerkraut is awful stuff – and that’s coming from someone with a German family. Who ever thought of putting that in a sandwich was nuts.