Boutique online furniture store, Luxo Living experienced unprecedented growth at the height of Covid while navigating supply chain disruptions and shipping delays and the effects on distribution and quality control.
On Christmas Eve 2021, Luxo Living founder, Winston Tu was alerted to a warning from Fair Trading due to a spike in customer complaints, despite the brand providing reports, insights and resolutions to the issues.
The business focus shifted completely to ensure immediate improvements to customer service, and as a result, customer complaints reduced by 75% and annual turnover reached $22 million.
The changes included restructuring and retraining product specialists and customer service teams with incentives based on customer satisfaction, as well as creating a world-class customer support system, which was integrated with the brand’s ERP, website and other IT systems.
The team also developed an Augmented Reality (AR) website feature that has increased conversion rates and reduced already low return rates because it allows customers to see what the product will look like in their space.
However, logistics and supply chain is an ongoing challenge for the business, according to Tu.
“There have been so many changes in the landscape during the last few years that we have to keep updating and adapting our systems, even changing the carriers we use and adjusting prices of our products and delivery fees to make sure we remain competitive and have the right offers for customers,” he told Retailbiz in a recent interview.
“Errors will always happen. You want to avoid and reduce as many as possible, and one way of doing this is to develop good systems that are easy for people to follow and take each error or complaint as a lesson. Errors can also be expensive, but if you learn something from each error which can improve your business in some way then this cost can be considered a training expense.”