Online Lost and Found- Putting Pictures on the Internet
An Online Lost and Found can be a crucial customer service tool when your attendees run into a common problem, lost property. For a process that has existed since… well, since people had the stuff to lose, you have many approaches and tools to choose from.
Pro tip: It takes a bit more than just putting pictures on the internet.
The Problem
People lose stuff typically due to misplacement, actual loss, or theft. The type of item missing determines the kind of problem for your customers. Additionally, these item types have various challenges to choose the best way of reuniting found property with the owners.
No matter the cause, your customer has a few challenges when an item is absent. Since the most commonly lost items include wallets, phones, keys, credit cards, and IDs, you lose happy paying customers when these items go missing.
Solution: Online Lost and Found
So why would an Online Lost and Found help solve your customers’ myriad of problems?
Simple. Lost and Found is a crowd-created problem, so crowdsourcing is an ideal solution. Plus, the transparent process has a wide variety of additional benefits, such as building trust, short-circuiting common questions, and even removing roadblocks for consumers in solving their problems.
But an Online Lost and Found is far more than just putting pictures on the internet as many of these items contain sensitive information or are strikingly similar in appearance. Before posting pictures of found property, consider if that action will actually be helpful and also if you’re leaking sensitive customer data.
Pro Tip: It’s not a good idea to publicly post customer data.
Common Pushback: Creating a Shopping List
Person: “Um… if you can see it, then people can steal stuff.”
Why do people assume that? Like seriously? That’s not how anything works. Ever. Phones have serial numbers (don’t give out passcodes please please please), wallets have identification cards, and bags have contents. Verifying property owners is a straightforward process.
Plus, any good Online Lost and Found, cough cough Liff Happens, should be tracking all the items coming in and being checked out, especially who is returning property and to whom those items are being returned to.
Transparency Pays Dividends
A transparent process relieves customer stress, saves time, and reduces all the confusion. Common tools like online forms, email, spreadsheets, or voicemail create a back and forth process with your customer to get basic information. Then the staff needs to check every single item. So… a colossal waste of time.
A foundation of transparency simplifies everything. Customers know what they are looking for better than anyone else. Reference the online process, and customers can self-help, plus this offloads a ton of the Lost and Found work. Then verify ownership and get that return!
A Simple Process Leads to Neat Opportunities
Customer self-help frees up a ton of time to be proactive. Lost and Found is moving from passive to active. Instead of waiting for customers to find their stuff or suffer through a bad experience, new tools let organizations notify owners when items are found.
For example, the Liff App can send postcards to owners for items that have address information, like wallets and IDs. A great customer engagement and marketing opportunity that customers appreciate.
Originally published at https://www.liffhappens.com on July 5th, 2019
