Tag: customer service

Smart Tools for Easier Buying: Leveraging Our Custom Website Tools

December 12, 2023

Are you using Book Depot’s website tools to their fullest capabilities? We’ve made the book buying process so much easier for our customers through the creation of custom tools to help them search for the books they want. Gone are the days of having to painstakingly type in authors one-by-one and juggling multiple keywords to uncover books in line with customers’ interests.

With our Custom List Creator, you set the criteria. This tool empowers you to tailor lists according to your specific needs and preferences. Save your customized lists for future use, set up templates to have them emailed to you, and choose both the day and frequency for receiving these lists. Doesn’t that sound like a time-saver?

Moreover, enhance your experience by applying advanced filters. Precision is at your fingertips as you refine results by quantity, concentrate on budget-friendly price points, identify in-stock arrival dates, specify preferred publishers, and eliminate redundancy by excluding previously viewed lists.

Curious about this tool’s secret hideout? After logging in, just click the person icon at the top, then navigate to My Lists. Click ‘Create,’ and voila! You can customize your list across various categories including:

Category
Publisher
Author
Format
Price & Quantity
Arrival Date
Demographic
Keywords
Exclude Lists

At Book Depot, we’re not just about offering an extensive book selection at great prices; we’re on a mission to make your shopping smarter, so you can maximize your resources. Say hello to efficiency with tools that put convenience at your fingertips.

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The Power of the List

November 7, 2018

With a whopping bargain book inventory of more than 60,000 different titles, it can be a daunting challenge sifting through all our books to find the titles you are most interested in. Fortunately for our sales team, computers have not replaced our ability to get creative and find new ways to help you overcome the challenge!

While I want to take a few minutes today to talk about some of the unique ways we as sales reps can present our inventory, I believe it’s important to start by giving credit to our IT team. Through our website, our developers created the ability to sort inventory by stock quantity, category, subject, dollar value, binding, plus several more categories to make your job easier. As fantastic as these resources are, there are even more available to you if you utilize our customer service team or your sales representative. While we will always encourage you to review and purchase through our website, I hope this article brings to light a few additional ways that we can help you find titles you may not have seen when scrolling through our daily new arrivals.

To highlight some of the extensive data we have available to us, I’ve prepared some examples of lists we can create for you. Keep in mind that you are not limited to these options; you can request a list any time you think of a way you would like to review our inventory.

Previously Purchased Markdowns

If you are interested in reordering titles previously purchased, we can provide you with a list of books with reduced prices. This “back in stock” list gives you an inside look at the change in pricing by flagging titles that have had a price reduction within the last three months.

Top Purchased Authors

One type of data we have access to is the quantity of titles you have purchased by any given author. If you have purchased 13 titles by the same author and we have 12 others by the same author in stock, there might be a chance you are interested in seeing them! We can even do this for you on a larger scale, by taking your top 25 (or even 50, if you want) purchased authors and running a search based on those authors’ names.

Requested ISBN Lists

Over time, we have discovered that some bookstores keep a list of ISBNs that they are always on the lookout for. The lists may consist of regional titles, top sellers, a list of titles from a particular category, etc. Rather than entering these ISBNs one at a time on our website to see what is available, we can paste the full list into our software to instantly create a list. The report can display the stock quantity for every title that is in our current inventory along with any other requested details.

To anyone who has not previously worked from a list and is uncertain of what they may look like, please see the example below. This is just one of the many formats of our lists, but no doubt is a good example worth sharing.

Please feel free to reach out to your dedicated sales representative or our customer service team for list inquiries. We are happy to help and hope to make your search an easy one!

Paul Eccles

Sales Representative

Book Depot

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5 Essential Elements of Social Media Customer Service and Why You Need Them

May 18, 2017

If your business isn’t active on social media, it needs to be.

Seventy-four percent of consumers use social networks to help them make purchasing choices. This study of more than 23,000 online consumers who interact with companies via social media found that 67% of these interactions were for customer service reasons.

What can we conclude from this? Firstly, that the impression you leave on social media is crucial to influencing your customer to buy. Secondly, if people are seeking you out on social media, it is most likely for service rather than for an interest in your marketing.

So why do customers choose social media instead of the traditional phone call or email? Convenience is the answer. In today’s fast-paced society, consumers don’t want to waste their valuable time on hold to speak to customer service. Forty-two percent of customers who reach out through social media expect a response within 60 minutes. While social media hasn’t yet replaced the telephone or email, it is quickly becoming one of the main forums customers use.

Keeping this in mind, how can you best use social customer service to benefit your business? Here are some strategies for you to consider:

1. Consistently monitor your social media pages and respond to customer inquiries ASAP

Keep your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. pages open and refresh them as often as possible. Since customers expect a response within 60 minutes or less, you will want to check frequently for any inquiries or comments, as well as direct messages. You can keep most social customer service conversations public—customers who are leery of buying online or from your company will gain confidence that your brand can be trusted when they see proof of great customer service. Any inquiries that require follow up or that involve personal information (tracking numbers, payment information, or account details, to name a few possibilities) should be moved to direct message if it is available. If direct message is unavailable (for example, on Instagram), ask the customer to send the information to you through email and make sure that the proper follow up is provided. Be sure to post your hours of availability on your pages so that customers will not be frustrated if they reach out to you outside of business hours and need to wait for a response. You will also want to have a link to your website posted so that they can look there for more information.

2. Be proactive

Show your customers that you have an ear to the ground for their needs and that you truly care. It is one thing to respond to a customer, but finding customer issues and resolving them before the customer complains provides a high level of service. For example, you can search for your business name on Twitter and bring up conversations that are about you but aren’t directly tagging you. You may also Google search your business name and keywords to bring up relevant posts (i.e.: your business name + review). If you find positive comments or discussions, it is courteous to thank them for their words. If you find a situation that needs addressing, you are able to solve the problem and impress your customers with your thorough attention.

A different way of being proactive is by preventing customer complaints through social media in the first place. You can effectively reach your followers with important messages that may have an impact on your service. For example, you can tweet and post on Facebook that you are closing early due to inclement weather before the customer shows up and leaves upset. This kind of gesture changes the framework of the customer service conversation into a positive one rather than always doing damage control.

3. Make it personal

Although customers expect quick responses, they do not want to be given a cookie-cutter or thoughtless answer. When space permits, use the customer’s name and sign off with your own. (Note that initials are acceptable on Twitter due to character limits). Ensure that your responses match the tone of the person reaching out—it’s appropriate to be more casual with social media than you would in email.

4. Surprise and delight

Sometimes it is beneficial to go above and beyond good customer service when addressing concerns on social media. Many companies have had random acts of kindness for customers go viral—this is the kind of attention you want drawn to your brand. See the example here of what Lego did for a little boy who lost his toy. While it is not feasible to offer free product to everyone who asks, from time to time you may wish to do something special for your followers to see.

5. Know when to ignore someone or delete a post

Although you definitely want your customers to see you turning upset customers around, there are times when it is necessary to end the conversation before it starts. Social media is an excellent way to reach a lot of people, but this can backfire when your customers are exposed to posts or comments that are inappropriate or insulting. Be sure to delete posts or comments that are belligerent to other customers, use foul language, or are discriminatory in any way. These people likely cannot be turned around anyways and are using social media as a way to vent and spread negativity for their own enjoyment.

While it reflects poorly on the company to ignore posts directed at you, if you are socially sleuthing and come across someone that repeatedly complains despite multiple attempts on your end to make things right, you can let it go. Some customers will become more annoyed if you reach out to them too many times asking if you can assist them, especially if these are conversations that are going on in the background and not on your pages.

The more you reliably interact with customers socially, the more likely your other followers are to reach out in the same way. You will develop a rhythm and a style that works for you and helps you to address all inquiries efficiently and effectively— and your customers will trust your brand as one that offers comprehensive and conscientious social service.

Written by:

Jaimie VanAmerongen

Book Depot Marketing Team

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What’s New at Book Depot

February 22, 2017

Two years ago while visiting a prospective university with our oldest son, my wife and I found ourselves in a men’s clothing store that we had paid a visit to a couple years earlier while in the same town. I remembered having a good customer experience the first time and thought I would just pop in for a quick look. Sixty minutes later I walked out with a new suit, two shirts, some ties, and a few other accessories. The gentlemen helping us out was someone I felt comfortable with as he previously owned another men’s clothing store that I frequented close to our hometown. He was also very knowledgeable about his product and took away every barrier for me to buy. Even when I said, “Your store is 90 minutes away and I can’t drive back here next week to pick up the new suit after you alter it,” he said, “No problem, I’ll personally deliver it to your house as I live not too far away.” Wow, now that’s a customer experience, I thought!

Perhaps you have a story of your own that matches an experience like this, or maybe you’ve had an experience that was less than favorable and you would just like to forget it. It may even be possible that you’ve had a bad experience with us somewhere in our history together, and if so, please read on to get to the good stuff and find out why you should try us again.

What’s New

So what’s new at Book Depot? Over the last 6-7 years we have spent millions of dollars investing in our customer experience. It started with a major overhaul of our 450,000 square foot warehouse, as we retrofitted it with over one mile of conveyors to move product efficiently around the warehouse and ultimately out the door to our customers. The impact of this automation has been nothing short of dramatic for the customer experience—we have the best fill rate in the industry at 98.96% and also the fastest order turnaround time, with most orders being shipped in 3-4 business days.

In 1997 we launched the first bargain book B2B website, and today we have the most user-friendly website with the largest selection of bargain book titles anywhere in the world. When the site was redesigned over three years ago it was important that we made the site responsive so that all our customers, no matter the device they were shopping on, would have the same great experience. If you have not been on our website in the last three years, please take a look; I know you’ll be impressed with what you see and the ease with which you can shop for bargain books all from the convenience of your office (or wherever life takes you!) on your PC, smartphone, or tablet.

As I said in the opening part of this article, I was impacted by a particularly amazing team member of the men’s store I visited. I know that today we have the team at Book Depot that can provide that same amazing experience to you. Two years ago we invested in our sales and customer service team and held a two day intensive sales training with John Asher Sales Training. Today, our sales team has a combined experience in the book industry of over 80 years, and along with that comes a wealth of product knowledge. Maybe you’re someone who would rather not shop online—no problem. Give us a call at 1-800-801-7193, ext. 229 and ask to speak to a member of our sales team. Or perhaps you enjoy shopping the website but need some occasional help from a member of our customer service team. Give us a call and I guarantee you’ll be impressed with the level of service you will receive, as we have completely revamped our customer service department by adding new team members and training and empowering them to help our customers. Last year we continued our investment in the sales team with the launch of Salesforce, which will give our people even more tools to grow and maintain excellent customer relations.

As you can see, Book Depot continues to take the long-term view on the bargain book industry. We wouldn’t be investing millions of dollars in our company if we didn’t believe in the future of books or in the future of our company. Rather than taking out as much of the profits as possible, we continue to invest for the long term in order to deliver the best customer experience in the industry. I’m excited to say that we continue to push the limits of technology, and this past year has been no exception as we launched and completed one of our most exciting projects to date. New automated sortation equipment (watch video) enables us to sort more books, process them quicker, and assist us in providing you with an even better selection of titles. However, all the infrastructure and systems are worthless if we couldn’t offer you the quality product that we have. We have agreements in place so that shopping here gives you access to bargain books from all the major publishers and many smaller imprints. During the past two years we added some key new suppliers that have complemented our mix to the point where I am confident in saying that our selection has never been better in the nearly 32 years of being in this business.

Maybe you’ve just had a bad experience with bargain books. If that is the case, consider with me the following for a moment. There is continued good news in the industry about printed book sales being up, the decline of eBook sales, and the overall positive outlook by independent booksellers. We are hearing encouraging reports from many of our customers that business is growing and their customers are delighted to have a local bookstore where they can browse, shop, and generally spend a few hours “hanging out.” As the owners of one retail bookstore ourselves, we have experienced the same trend with year-over-year sales being up strongly. What are we hearing from our customers? They love the personal service—the experience of touching and feeling the printed book while being able to get assistance from our knowledgeable customer service team. They love the ability to just browse around and find new favorite authors or titles they would never have thought to buy online. Oh and most of all, they love the bargains.

Everybody loves a bargain right? As a bookstore owner there’s no one who should love a bargain more than you. As mentioned above it is very encouraging to see revenue growth in the category, but ultimately as business owners you need profitable growth. Top line is vanity, bottom line is reality. Let’s face it, double-digit sales growth is fantastic, but if the bottom line is not moving at the same pace, you’re not happy. And you shouldn’t be. This is where bargain books can help you. With a margin that is often double the margin you can achieve with new books, you cannot afford to be without bargain books in your store. With the advance of smartphones, tablets, and eReaders, we’ve seen many changes in the industry and in our business over the years. However, one thing has not changed: booklovers will never lose the appreciation for the tactile experience of the printed book.

If you’re a long-time customer, thank you for your loyalty and for the trust you have placed in us over the years. If this is your first time back after many years, I would encourage you to spend some time browsing our website so you can see for yourself our large selection and the changes we have made to our business. I’m confident you will find that shopping with us is a way to save time and money, and those are powerful benefits in today’s market. If you would rather not shop via our website, please call us and ask to speak to one of our experienced sales representatives, who would be happy to assist you by tailoring a list of products for your specific needs.

Book Depot is the single best seller in bargain books. Our vast selection of titles and fast processing times make us a valuable one-stop shop, cutting down on your purchasing time and overhead costs. More choice. Less time and cost.

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