Their golden rule? A commitment to customer service and satisfaction.
When Vahan Avagyan co-founded jewelery brand WJD Exclusives in 2002, he would stand on street corners handing out business cards and fliers to promote the brand.
“We did anything we could to spread the word: online ads, social media, my personal Instagram page.”
Back then WJD Exclusives had a basic website and a handful of product listings. Today, the jewelry brand offers thousands of products and turns over millions in revenue. What hasn’t changed in that time is the brand’s commitment to customer service.
“If you take good care of your customers, in the long run, they’ll come back and they’ll bring their friends with them. We built our success by being persistent — very persistent.
“If you take good care of your customers, they’ll come back.”
“It was sometimes painful in the beginning because there weren’t a large number of orders every day. But even on the days when we didn’t have any orders coming in, we knew where we were headed.”
Putting customers first
Avagyan co-founded WJD Exclusives with the goal of creating high-quality, hand-crafted jewelry at affordable prices. He believes that the success of the business comes down to its customer-centric approach.
That’s why WJD Exclusives offers 24/7 customer service and live chat - features that grew out of a focus on understanding what customers needed and wanted, beyond just making the initial sale.
“Everything that we do is customer-focused, even if the customer is a business."
“Everything that we do is customer-focused, even if the customer is a business. Start by listening from day one to the needs of your target customers, be it excellent service or a superior physical product.”
Efficient service
WJD Exclusives handles as many services as possible in-house: not only are jewelers on staff, but product photography, video, marketing and inventory are all carried out on site.
This means the business can be quick to respond to customers. “Because we have on-site jewelers, including my business partner, we can make basic changes really fast. When a customer has a repair request, instead of sending it out to an off-site repair company, which can sometimes take weeks, we’re able to provide the service in just a day or two, maximum.
“We get a lot of happy feedback from our customers,” says Avagyan, who notes that the business prides itself on communicating well with customers. “[Customers] send in a chain and we notify them it’s here and then within two business days, they get an email saying, ‘Here’s your new tracking number, it’s on its way back.’ They’re like, ‘Did you even do anything to it?!’ Yeah, of course, we fixed it.’
“We’re much more efficient today compared to that first year. We now have a little over 13,000 product styles with various colors, materials, and measurements. We’re still focusing on building up a larger and larger quantity of products,” says Avagyan.
Why WooCommerce powers WJD Exclusives
The WJD Exclusives website uses WordPress and WooCommerce. They chose WooCommerce because of its flexibility, low startup costs, and ability to have full ownership of what they build.
WooCommerce allows Avagyan to modify and show multiple product variations and features like product images and videos, as well as quickly make back-end modifications, update SKU variations, and add custom data fields.
“There are so many good factors with WooCommerce, especially its flexibility, I think that was the main reason why we went for it,” he says.
How Afterpay assists customers
Another way to increase customer satisfaction is to offer a variety of payment options, which is why WJD partners with Afterpay.
Today, Avagyan estimates more than 30 per cent of WJD Exclusives’ traffic comes from the Afterpay Marketplace, and since activating the payment service, the company has not only seen improvements in their average order value (AOV), but fewer customer returns.
“Once that trust level goes up, your value goes up.”
According to Avagyan, Afterpay has also increased the trust level that customers have in the company.
“Once that trust level goes up, your value goes up. Customers start thinking ‘Okay, if I can trust these guys for a $20 purchase, maybe I can go ahead and get this $10,000 necklace.’”
“Afterpay is just insanely awesome. So many of our customers are benefiting from it that I don’t even want to think of a world without Afterpay. I don’t want to imagine our business without Afterpay!”
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