Hi everyone, most of us dream to have a business of us, eventually we all get tired from our jobs. I am saying this because I'm 25 and i am already tired with my job and I'm literally Planning to opening my own business.

SRC

I work in ecommerce industry and willing to start a business of my own with some trending products and with the help of this post I'll also participate in the contest and try to answer all the questions with the context of my ecommerce business.

1. Are you planning any expansion of your business?

I have planned many things for my business, let's see these in details given below.

• At first I want to start the ecommerce business since I'm still working on the planning part, the first step is to get into the eyes of our targeted customers and achieve our specified sales targets. We already made a deal with a manufacturer whose product is good quality and because of referral, we will get our product at a cheaper price, which means we will be able to play it on price along with quality.

• As our brand will be new in the industry and it will be challenging to make people buy your products that too in the cosmetics segment, but here comes the price part, there are always people who buy things which are kinda cheaper and like I said above the quality is not compromised, even though to prove it we have to sell it to customer at least once, so that they can experience our product, we all know that in cosmetics the word of mouth strategy works really great for us, if your product meet the quality standards.

• Once we achieve our specified sales target, then our business will be eligible for government approved business loans for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), then we can get more funds to increase the product and buy in more bulk to reduce the price even further, when manufacturing hubs produce in bulk they each Economies of scale, so once you purchase in high bulk the price goes even lower.

• Once we get the specified sales target achieved, then we will add more products into our product line because now we have the customer base that we need, and with time we will keep getting more customers.

SRC

If you are trying to expand your business, what are your strategies?

The strategies are that first thing like i explained above is to get into the eyes of our targeted customers, obviously there will be spending through ads and other promotional activities but we have seen companies spending a large proportion of revenue on the marketing of their company.

• The first strategy is to get a government approved scheme loan, so that we can get funds at a cheaper interest rate and spend more on the tasks which are more important to the business.

• Once our business loan is approved, we have plans to increase our product line and add more trending products because till that time our brand will be visible to our targeted customers, who will be more than willing to purchase the product since it's trending on the ecommerce market places.

• We will also plan some strategic partnerships with the small or medium scale influencers to generate UGC( USER GENERATED CONTENT) for us, that will help us gain more customers as our targeted segment is mostly active on the social media platforms.

• Another important part in E-commerce is the Optimization of our supply chain to reduce the transport and delivery cost of product that will help us gain higher margin and invest more in improving the business.

• For E-commerce business we will be live with our own website and the popular market places as well Amazon, flipkart etc, and to sell on these platforms, we will need a specific marketing budget for Advertising on both Google and market places to gain more customers.

SRC

3.Are you paying attention to your customer service or planning to provide better service?

• Post sell services are most important to make a long lasting relationship with your customers, in any segment company only earn good margins when they have a good retention rate in their business, if the customer service is not good then customer won't return for the second time and will shift to another company and we will Have to spend money again to acquire a new customer!

• Next point is to provide efficient return and refund policies to our customers, as for the our segment in cosmetics, generally the products are non refundable for several exceptions like damaged product, broken seal products received by the customer. In such cases the refund can be made or a replacement can be arranged for the customer, this was about the marketplace. Though we will have more user friendly policies on the website for return and refund to our customers.

• Next is making sure a 24/7 Customer support team, setting up a chat bot also help to help answer general queries like the FAQ
  1- what's your shipping policy?
  2- what's your refund policy?
  3-what's your delivery time?

Such general questions can be easily set up in a chat bot, so that the customer care members can actually focus and help the customer who need more serious help.

• Making sure that the tracking or shipping Id are shared on time with customer, as they get notification and can track how long until their product arrives, this helps reducing the customer support request and providing more user satisfaction and taking one more step toward making our customer feel delighted.

SRC

Do you and your crew understand how to work with customers?

• For the starter, I'm setting up this business with my college friend and another old friend. One of them is Post graduate in MBA marketing with me and another one is HALF CA and Full time Advocate, I think this is the best combination that anyone can have for starting a business, a friend who can look legal aspects another who can look after the marketing and operations segment.

• Another thing can be done to provide Training and Development sessions to the team members, there are various agencies who does this work not very expensive and it's helpful since they have expertise in that specific field. So that our operations and efficiency is improved providing maximum customer satisfaction by satisfying their needs and meeting their expectations.

• Last but not the least, keeping up with our customer expectation, i have planned to setup a Feedback system as well from our customer, so that we can find out on which part we are currently lacking and fixing it on time, so that we can always meet our customers expectations and it will only happen with the feedback system so that customer at least share their problem with us rather than just leaving the brand.

conclusion

Finally I can conclude that, Setting up any business requires a lot of planning and then perfect execution, the plan should be made based on the market research, market trend, likes and dislikes of targeted customers, setting up new standards in maintaining customer relationships for a long term bond and increasing retention.

Companies spend a lot of money to acquire a customer and if the customers are not being retained then marketing budget will be wasted.
The focus should be to grow organically and acquire customers through marketing efforts but after that they should be retained.

I hope this was well detailed, I would love to hear how does that sound and what points i missed.

I invite my friends @anuragthakur @arjuskrwr @nidhu @arjunparihar @ahlawat

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