Welcome to Episode 72 of the Bandhive podcast

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross, and I'm here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How are you doing today, man?

I'm doing pretty well. James has everything over there on the East Side. That is good to hear. And I'm really excited today because I mentioned that G and L A set. Last week I broke down and I bought it. And it's coming in today if UPS actually does their job and gets it here more on that later. But in the meantime, I'm very excited because I learned something. This specific model actually does have Al Niko pickups, so it sounds like a telly rather than the usual A SATs, which have I think m F D pickups and sound more like an ace at So this one really is basically a telly, as was the discussion last week.

So I'm really stoked about that, and I can't wait to play it. Knock on wood. It gets here today, and, uh, yeah, I'm pretty stoked about that. So for everybody that listened last week, you can now tell the length that James had to go to to convince himself He's literally making sure the pickup sounded exactly like the telly that he wanted. Yeah, pretty much. That was it. I just watched the comparison like, yeah, you know, the telly and the s at sound pretty different. Like the s.

That's nice, but it doesn't have that telly sound with the M F D pickups. And then I was just reading the description, like with a fine tooth comb and saw Wait, l Nico pickups. A SATs usually have m f. D. S and tell he's have l Nico's happy days. And I ordered it. He broke down everybody. I did, but I'm not going to cease all feeling you shouldn't. I think it's a good purchase. Said that was the steel That was a terrible, terrible HF Ipanema. I didn't even recognize it.

That's leaving some part to the lyrics are break down and cease All feeling. That's right, I can't sing. Apologies, folks. Make sure you leave that in. Leland. Yeah, three minutes into the episode and already got bad lyric puns anyway. I'm so sorry, everybody. I'm really looking forward to today's topic, which is close to my heart because I love companies that go above and beyond with customer service. And I hate companies that have terrible customer service who is rude and make typos and just don't care about their customers.

And guess what? You can tell which company I'm going to buy from, even if it costs a little more. Ideally, it costs less, but usually a little more. And I'm okay with that because I would gladly pay for good service versus not being treated terribly. So let's have a scenario here if Merchant A offers a product for $20 but all sales are final and Merchant B has that same product for $25 with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee, and this is a product I haven't purchased before, so I don't know if I'm going to like it.

I don't know, really. If it's going to suit my needs. Aside from what I've read online, who do you think I'm going to buy from? And in the big picture? Which merchant do you think earns more money? What do you think, man? I think it's always, always, always going to be the guy with the money back guarantee because you're in the business of satisfaction. And when you're working with a company that guarantees satisfaction, well, that's a servant's heart. Essentially, that's starting with your customer and your consumer base in mind.

Before you know saying, Well, I can make more money if I have bad customer service, I can I can charge $20. All sales are final. I don't have to hire a support team to deal with support tickets. I don't have to actually get on sign emails. I don't have to recoup damage products. These are all things that hurt your business. So I would every single time, say the company or the business or the band that is willing to bite the bullet, eat the $7 cost in order to make sure that their fans keep coming back over and over and over again.

They will always make more money in the long run? Absolutely. And this is a very basic business principle called risk reversal. And essentially, what that means is your customers. Your fans have zero risk buying something because they know that if it doesn't meet their expectations, they can get a full refund. So Amazon is an example of that. You can return almost anything for almost any reason, at no cost if you buy it directly from Amazon or even if it's fulfilled by Amazon. Now, I've learned a very good lesson there if it's sold on the Amazon marketplace, but it's not from Amazon or an F B a seller.

I don't buy it because the refund policies for third party sellers who aren't f B A is often terrible or a hassle. Plus, they're shipping is always slower. Instead of F B. A seller's where it's Amazon prime and you get it in a couple of days. The third party sellers use the slowest shipping available. It takes like a week to get your stuff. Then it shows up, and if it's the wrong thing, it's like, Oh, yeah, okay, well, you know, send it back and we'll give you a refund when we get it.

I've had the situation that it takes them a week after they get the package back, based on the tracking for them to actually say, Oh, hey, we got this. Here's a refund. Amazon in your hand for products that they sell or are fulfilled by Amazon will refund you as soon as it's scanned by ups or wherever you drop it off. Who am I going to buy from Amazon or an F B A seller every single time? And this is so important for any business, but especially for D. I. Y. Artists.

Because, man, there are so many artists I see who messed this up, even on the big level. And it's honestly, it's terrible, like everybody who's listening probably knows I'm an AF five fan, a big F five fan. No, we don't know that. I know the pun. A few minutes ago didn't cover that. No, no, I don't think we've ever talked about a F I. That's a good point. I don't think we have mentioned them on the podcast ever before. Nope, not once. Well, actually, fun fact. I think that was the first F iPod I've made I think you've made one with a fire inside, but I have not made an F i pun yet.

It took 72 episodes. This is like when it took me 49 episodes to reveal I'm Straight Edge And then on Episode 50 you threw me under the bus. So I have to say it again. So, like the next five episodes, we're going to be all about a F I. A disclaimer. Yeah. Anyway, FFS Merch store is run by a third party company. I believe it's Warner merchandise. They're terrible. They're fans. Hate them. The stuff is frequently low quality. It takes forever. They ship everything separately and charge an arm and a leg for shipping for their new singles that came out, I found the same exact singles, not a different edition or anything.

Seven inch singles with the record label rise records for $2 less per record and half the cost of shipping. I literally sought out other places to buy because the official af i store is so bad and a lot of other people are doing that, too. So with risk reversal, it's talking about having good customer service. Most bands don't have a published return policy on their online merch store, which in some states might even mean that either you're violating the law or that you're de facto policy is 30 days money back.

It all depends on the states, but there are states that have laws like that. Let's say, if you don't publish a return policy, this is your return policy. By having a clearly advertised return policy, artists can sell more merchandise because fans won't worry about low quality or damaged merch. So, for example, if I saw a really cool design on the A F I store that I wanted to buy, but I was worried about the quality well, I would go buy it if there was a satisfaction guarantee, because if it came in and was this super thin, terrible quality shirt, I could say, No, this sucks.

I'm sending it back. I want to refund, But with all sales final, you're stuck with it now. Obviously, any merchant is going to replace damaged items that arrive like that. But if it's just a low quality item, what can you do if there's a no returns policy? That's terrible. Now, from the perspective of the artist who's selling merchandise refund suck. But if you can sell multiples of what you would normally because people have that satisfaction guarantee and only a small percentage of people take you up on that refund, you're going to be earning more in the long run because this is essentially a marketing technique.

Don't think of this as something that will cost you money and get you nothing. Think of this as part of your marketing budget. This will help you sell more. Now were strong advocates for being ago giver. That means think of others first, and that will help you grow your business. If a fan buys a shirt from you and it doesn't fit because you're sizing is off, they're not going to be happy. And if you say tough luck, sorry and you don't fix the problem, they're not really going to respect your band anymore.

But if you're a go giver and you send them the size shirt they need and throw in some bonuses to make up for it, or just let them keep the other shirt and say, Give it to a friend, they are going to be ecstatic about that. Keep in mind that running a business is all about building long term relationships, and that means keeping your fans happy. If you have to exchange a shirt, do it. A lot of bands have fairly consistent sizing on their merch, but for example, years ago I bought an airborne toxic event.

Hoodie and I bought it as a large, and that thing fits like a two X. It is a tent on me. But guess what? Their merch store said all sales are final. I've never bought more merch from them. I still love the band. I love their music, but I have not bought a single piece of merch from that band in. I think it's about eight years now because they wouldn't send me a hoodie of a different size. That's awful. I mean, your fans are literally your life blood and being an artist and having fans is a symbiotic relationship.

You know, you have to give them value, and in return they will give you value. And when you're focused on the other person, you know like things end up working a lot better. I remember years ago at Warped Tour, there was a young girl who purchased a shirt from me. Now normally, when we would go to sell in the mornings, we would grab a certain number of shirts of each size and go until we were sold out of them. And this one girl, she I can't remember if they were guys shirts or unisex shirts or what, but she asked for a size and I gave it to her.

And then a couple of minutes later, she came back up to me and said, Hey, like, turns out this size is a little bit too small for me. Can I get the next size up? And I didn't have any of that size left. Now anybody who's ever been to warped tour or who has sold on Warped Tour, there's this thing called the floodgates. Now the floodgates is what happens as soon as the gates to warped tour open. Anybody that's talking to people in line or selling merge, they all know that that is the time when the morning is essentially done because nobody wants to talk to you or listen to your music because they want to get inside as quickly as possible.

So this was about 10 minutes before the floodgates opened. It's my last 10 minutes to sell, and I didn't have any of this shirt. I had already made this transaction and I could have just said You're like, Oh, so sorry. All sales are final, You know, you should have ordered the right size, but no. Instead, I chose to run back to my car, which was parked super far away, because you can never really park super close to or tour when you're in a city like Portland, which is where we were.

And I ran all the way back there and I grabbed the shirt. And now, by the time I got back, the gates were open and she was like maybe 500 people down the line. And so I literally just ran all the way up to the very front, and I got up as high as I could, and I said, Who is the girl that needed the larger shirt? And she was actually with her dad and her dad was so pumped. I mean, he was literally ecstatic. He was sitting there like pointing at me, screaming, yes, because he was so happy that I I ran back to my car.

I sacrificed a little bit of selling time and in turn I made this girl. I feel like she was getting the value that she actually was putting into the purchase to the sale. You know, I could have just been like, oh, later already got your money. But now the point is is I wanted to develop a relationship with this person that was based on trust That was based on goodwill that was based on faith and and honestly, like I told her, like, I'm gonna go get you this shirt now I could have fallen short on my promise.

I could have just not showing up. I could have been lying to her, but I told her what I was going to do, and I did it. And then in the long term, I have gone out and done war for so many so many years after that. And people remember me. And personally, I would say that it's because I try to do everything with integrity when it comes to selling. I love good customer service at the merch table because that is where your fans learn who you are when you're on stage.

nobody's meeting you even at meet and greets, they feel forced. And there's like an awkward tension. And there's a pressure for artists to like make sure that they're spending a lot of time with these people that they've never met before. And at the merch table. It's different at the merch table was like, You know, you can have good, long conversations with people and you can actually get to know them. You know, like on our last tour, I got to meet people from all over the country who, you know, these guys had just gotten married and these guys had just moved to Texas.

And it's a little conversations like that and little pieces of human interaction, and it's making good on your word and actually being like a part of that relationship. It sounds weird to say, but that's what pushes your merge Sales being real? Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I remember about Portland if this was the Expo that was right by the train line, was at that venue, it could have been This was a lot of years ago. This was 2012. I want to say okay, so that was before my time.

That might have been a different venue. The first year that we did Portland, it was a different venue. It wasn't like the one smack dab in the middle of the city is closer to the outskirts. But it was the year they didn't go to the fairgrounds. 2011 was the year they got banned from the fairgrounds because somebody brought like a tribute. Shay. I'm not kidding, Dude. There were two venues that banned them was the gorge because this person literally took a tribute Shay and they were catapulting flaming porta potties into the gorge.

If I can find a video of that, it will be in the show notes at Band I've got rocks slash 72 for my own sake, I hope I can find a video of that. Yeah, no joke. But now you know, the year afterwards it was it was one of those shows where as soon as the floodgates opened, it was just turbo chaos. I remember that being the only overcast day, the entire tour, and it was so nice because Utah was super hot. Then Denver was super hot. And then Vegas was super hot, and then we went to San Francisco and it was cool and it was like, Oh, the perfect break we needed halfway through the first week and then the rest of the summer was like, 100 degrees every day.

Yeah, yeah, The reason I ask is what I remember from Portland, which was the same venue in 2014 and 2015, was that they didn't let the fans line up till, like, nine o'clock. Whereas most venues let the fans line up whenever, like, they can get there at five in the morning if they want to. And you know, the people who hit up the kids in line usually turn out around 77 30 maybe eight. We usually went out around eight, I think, but that gave us a good three hours. But then there were venues like Portland or Chicago.

The amphitheater there didn't let anyone until 10 Tinley Park, so we only had an hour to talk to people. Some venues do that anyway, that's all totally aside from the point. The point is, you made that Girl's Day by getting that shirt to her. You made her dad's Day. You might have a fan and her dad. Now he might be like, Oh, yeah, that guy was so cool Like I like his band. You just made to fans right there. That's amazing. Even more than that, the next time that I go back to Portland Warped Tour and they're they're they know that my word counts for something, and that's really what matters.

You know, when Amazon gives a 30 day satisfaction guarantee or whatever, it's your word. It's their word that you're clinging to. And if they say like, hey, like you know your money back, your satisfaction guaranteed or your money back like that's peace of mind, That's what they're selling you and and for me Yeah, that was my first time I didn't have. You know, I'm not standing up there wearing a returns policy billboard while I'm selling T shirts in line. If you know you know how the Warped tour lines are your loud I mean, people bring megaphones.

Sometimes, you know, it's just like if you're out there and you're making a spectacle of great customer service, like, what does that say to the other people that are standing in line? Looking at you know, the eyes of the world are on you like like we're on the Internet. These are roads, you know, essentially, when you're when you have an online store that's sitting on the Internet somewhere, that's the same thing as you having a business on the street and you're standing outside and you're you're choosing what you advertise now.

Are you going to be the guy that's standing out there with a sign that says all sales are final? Know why in the hell would you advertise that? That is literally nothing but a weakness. You don't advertise your downfalls. You advertise the things that you're great at and the things that are downfalls. You call the herd, you trim that fat, and you get that as far away from you as possible. You know, years ago I purchased a Dell DJ. You know, this is like when iPod and Dell, the DJ, were like the only two MP three players and I ordered this, and I believe actually, my parents either got it for me for Christmas or my birthday.

I can't remember. You know, I was like, probably like, 12 years old, and it arrived broken and I was so upset because more than anything, I just wanted to load my music onto this and listen to it like my brothers. It was the cool thing. All the kids were starting to get MP three players and it was broken and I was upset. I got online and I sent an email to Dell because that's how all customer service support was done back then was via email, not live chat.

And I just said, Hey, like, you know, this was ordered for me for a birthday present and it arrived broken, and, you know, what do I need to do now? I didn't hear back from Dell at first. It's kind of like, you know, as a little kid, I was sitting there checking my email every five seconds. But lo and behold, within 24 hours of when I sent that email, I had a brand new Dell DJ sitting on my on my front porch, and this is like before the days of like, you know, Amazon drop shipping and you know, things like warehouses being built everywhere So the shipping costs are down, and it's like, No, this is like, you know, these are brand new.

These are MP three players. These are all being manufactured in one of two places in the country. So they had to overnight it, which probably meant a flight and probably meant a courier delivery service at the time. That was not like, you know, FedEx or UPS because a lot of these large companies didn't even have contract deals with them yet. And so it's like, you know, I have this yellow van pull up or whatever, but it was less than 24 hours later, I had a brand new one and with literally, just like a little thing that, you know, a little instruction manual said like Oh, you know, pop your broken one into this box and this is already pre stamped and sealed and ready to go paid for postage.

You just put it back in your mailbox and everything is taken care of. And I was like, I was 12, and when it came time for me to buy a laptop, guess what I bought. I got a Dell insp Iran, you know, be 1 30 or whatever it was called back then, and then the next laptop that I bought was another Dell, and it wasn't because they were better. It wasn't because they were absolutely, you know, like I could have got a PC. You know, I could have gotten a Mac, you know, and Max were starting to become all the rage then, too, and Dell doubled down on their customer service.

They made the experience so perfect for me that I didn't even consider buying a different computer. It wasn't even about specs. It was about who they were. As a company, I will never forget that. Yeah, that is the kind of customer service that every successful business has now not saying that every business who has that customer service will be successful. But every successful business has that level of customer service. There's an important distinction there. So now here's what artists who have online merge stores should do clearly advertise a 30 day satisfaction guarantee for your merch store.

Now, maybe you want to do 14 days or 45 days. You know you can change it up but have a reasonable amount of time and make it very obvious that you have this policy. Post it somewhere, make it big. You don't have to post the whole thing but say 30 day satisfaction guarantee. Click here for details and that's where you have the full text explaining all of this. Oh, Turtle, is he on the table now? He's just on the tiles there. There he is. Good birdie. Just running around the big.

He's getting big. Yeah, he's great. That's awesome. He likes to go out and scare my baby chicks. I'll tell you about it later. It's funny. Yeah, all right. Obviously, any items that arrived damaged should be replaced instantly, no questions asked, using the fastest shipping method you reasonably can. So now obviously, you know, if it's a $5 set of buttons that someone purchased and it costs $20 to overnight it, that's probably not great. But don't send it with the slowest possible method, like do something that will get there in like, 2 to 3 days.

If they're within the country, 2 to 3 days is a reasonable shipping time, and that's what people usually expect right now. If it takes a week that's too long to 23 days tops. If it's domestic shipment, then for soft goods, which are your shirts, your hoodies clothes, anything that's made out of fabric, accept returns and exchanges on all of that stuff, as long as it's in good, unwashed and undamaged condition with, of course, the caveat that if it was damaged during shipping, that's on you. But I mean, like, if somebody went outside with the shirt on and was climbing a tree and they tore it.

You don't have to accept a return for that, though. If you do, you'll make them really happy. If they're honest about it. Sometimes people will hit you up and be like, Hey, you know what? Like I damage this. Can I get a break on another one? Do it. Send them another one that costs a like Yeah, you know what? Here's 10 bucks off. It's usually 20 but we'll give it to you for 10 because that's what it costs us. Here you go. You just made a fan happy like Okay, you missed out on the profit from that sale, but you already have the profit from the sale where they tore their shirt climbing a tree for any hard goods except music.

Because we'll get to that. So, for example, buttons, pins, stickers, all that kind of stuff. Accept returns on anything that's re sellable. If it's a low value item, just let them keep it. That'll be cheaper than paying for the return shipping. So if somebody buys a button pack and like, one of the buttons is damaged to say, Oh, we're so sorry like here's a full refund, you get to keep them, they'll be super happy. And if they want, they can re buy it and get a set that's not damaged.

Or they can say, Well, you know what? There's six buttons and five of them aren't damaged. I'm happy with that. I'm going to keep it. Either way, you have done the right thing for that fan. For music, though, I would advocate do the industry standard. If it's new and unopened, then say we'll take a return. But if it's been opened, you can't really necessarily resell that with vinyl. It's a little easier. Not all vinyl comes sealed in the first place, but CDs are almost always wrapped. And if that's open, it's tough to resell.

And you don't know that the person didn't just rip the C D. Now with the days of Spotify that might not matter so much, but it's still something to keep in mind. I would also like to add the anecdote that if something is opened and it's returned and still in good usable condition, have everybody in the band sign it. Oh, I love that. Then you sell it as assigned used copy. Yeah, doesn't even have to be sold as used. You just say signed copy. If people can't tell that it was used, say, Hey, this is a bonus.

It's signed. That is great. There's all sorts of repurposing that you can do And we one time played a festival down in Texas and we had a vinyl out on display. Texas Sons of brutal Sun. The record warped, and we kind of figured that it would just because, like, we have a black tablecloth and, you know, we went into it, assuming that it was gonna be damaged. So at the end of it, we warped it into a bowl, literally warped it into a bowl, and I sold it for $25 which was $5 more than I sold the vinyls for.

So it wasn't because I was like trying to cheat anybody out of money. It was because somebody saw that and thought it was cool. They liked our music. They like their performance. And then they were like, Hey, that's actually cool. I can stick potpourri in there and put it on my counter. It's It's art and I wasn't gonna do anything with that vinyl. And so I had fun with it, and I turned it into something of a little bit more value for somebody else. And that's really the point.

I think that both James and I are trying to hit home is developed value for everyone else. If you are making people's lives better, you're doing that by creating value in their life. Absolutely. And you know, before we touch on anything else, I want to add one more thing, which is offered free domestic shipping in both directions. Build it into the cost of your items. You can earn more when you do this, because if the shipping cost is built into the price of your items and somebody buys three or four items, guess what.

You just got three or four times the shipping cost, but you're not going to be paying three or four times the shipping costs because when you ship them together, the shipping cost goes down. Because let's say you have a standard sized box and it costs you $7 to ship that box. Well, guess what? Now you put two shirts in that same box and it costs you $8 to ship it. But each item has $7 worth of shipping costs built into the price. You just got $14 for shipping and paid $8 for shipping.

That's great. And it's not like you ripped off a fan because they were just thinking about Hey, this is the price. They didn't think about the shipping cost at all, whereas I don't know how many times I've gone to a band's merch store and put $30 of stuff in the cart because I have $30 to support the band. And then it's like, Oh, 8, 99 shipping And I'm like, Great, What do I take out now? Like my budget was $30. Just be upfront about the pricing, say free shipping problem solved. And if you're able to sell more items, that just looks better on paper because you can say we've sold, You know, 300 T shirts in the last year, whereas if you had made fans pay for shipping, maybe you would have sold 220 shirts in the last year.

And what's going to look better to prospective management company? A prospective label? If you can say, Hey, we sold 300 church that's almost a shirt a day. That's amazing. So avoid those nasty surprises. And on that note, I also want to say, Be very careful with who you pick for a shipping provider. Now I'm a big fan of using USPS. People complain about them all the time, but they are over and over again, the easiest company to deal with. Because every town has a local post office. You can call up the local post office and talk to someone there, your mail delivery person.

If you are home when they're delivering, you probably know them. We've had the same driver for years. His name's Todd. He's great. He knows us. He goes above and beyond. Great guy. There have been other people who have filled in for him. They're not so great. But guess what? They're only delivering one day a week on his day off. He's here every other day, doing his best, and we love the service. I bring this up because right now that guitar was supposed to be delivered on Friday ups.

I paid them free confirmed delivery time, which was, I think, between one and three. During that time, the driver was 20 miles away, nowhere near us. I was looking at the tracking all day, and UPS has this cool little feature where you can see it on a map and finally at like, 9 30 at night. He was about a mile from us. Just before 10, he was around the corner and then all of a sudden comes up this thing. Sorry, we can't deliver due to an emergency or severe weather. Well, there was no severe weather, and as far as I know, there was no emergency.

I hope the guy didn't crash his truck or anything that would suck. But my point is, if you're paying for a specific time, they should deliver. During that time, I reached out to the customer service, and basically they said, tough luck. Sorry. Check the tracking. That's useless. FedEx, on the other hand, when I've had issues with them. Their Social media team has the local hub manager call, and you can talk directly to somebody with FedEx, just like with the USPS. So as much as this might sound like I'm bashing ups, my point here is have good customer service.

Let people talk to a human being rather than saying, Oh, check the tracking. This is just another example of your customer service. Using a good shipping provider where you can get through to an actual person if something goes wrong, is what you need to do. That is how you keep customers. So use USPS or FedEx because they will help you solve the problem. Where's UPS will say Sorry, we can't put you in touch with the local, Have check the tracking. That's not good service. But for all of this, just bringing it back to the main point of the episode about risk reversal, letting your customers, your fans get what they need from you.

We're not saying you should let your customers walk all over you. Most of them won't. In fact, it's a very, very, very small percentage, a minuscule percentage of people who are going to take advantage of that. Feel free to cut people off with the return policy. If there's a pattern, if they're trying to get a refund on every single item they ever buy, you know what you can say. Hey, we're sorry. We're going to have to revoke your return privileges for the next orders. If they still keep buying from you, knowing that they can't return anything, then it's probably not intentional.

And they just legitimately weren't happy. But by being generous, even though it might seem silly, your biggest fans are going to have more confidence in you. Your biggest fans are the people who will actually buy your merch. You don't want to lose a dedicated fan over a shirt that cost you $5 to print. If you make that fan angry, they will never support you again. Like when I didn't buy an airborne toxic event hoodie again because they wouldn't swap the size for me. But if you make the fan happy, you will gain far more than $5 over the years because they will come back and buy again and again and again.

Mhm, mhm. Mm. That does it for this episode of the Bandhive podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening. We really appreciate it. I would love to see all of your merch stores. Please head on over to the Bandhive Facebook group, either by searching for a Bandhive on Facebook or putting this link into your browser Bandhive dot rocks slash group again that is banned hive dot rocks slash group. If you put that into your browser, you'll automatically be sent to the Bandhive Facebook Group and then find the post for this episode Number 72 drop a link to your merch store in the comments, because I want to see what merch you have available and what kind of policies you have.

And you know, I mentioned a hoodie a couple times. It's been a while since I got a new hoodie. It's been like a year and a half, so I'm in the market for a new hoodie. So if I see you, how do you like I'm going to be buying? So please go drop your merch store links in our post for this episode within the Facebook group. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back with another new episode next Tuesday at 6 a.m. In your favorite podcasting app. Until then, have a great week stay safe and, of course, as always, keep rocking.