Don’t give companies medals for their bad packaging.

Friends, the Winter Olympics are starting. Nearly 3,000 athletes from 87 countries will compete for glory in one of the most watched events on Earth. Something that’s really striking to me is how much preparation and scrutiny is put on this one tiny moment. Consider the following:

• These athletes often dedicate their lives to training for one event that lasts for only a few seconds.
• Most of the world doesn’t care about or follow Olympic sports outside of the Olympics (admit it, the last time you watched the luge was Vancouver 2010).
• One small mistake is usually the difference between winning and losing.

Because of this, a wise athlete will never take the chance that something small like their clothing will get in the way of their performance.

Take a quick look at the uniforms Olympic athletes wear. You’ll notice that even in events like the luge and cross-country skiing, athletes wear aerodynamic, form fitting clothes that don’t have any frivolous touches (a glaring exception to this would be Norway’s curling team, but I digress). I guess you could say there’s no excess packaging here.

You could probably guess where this is going.

Just like Olympic athletes, fulfillment centers can also run into problems when they start adding frivolous materials to their packaging. Sure, it’s not going to cause them to lose a gold medal in front of an international audience. But a fulfillment center’s main objectives should be to deliver their products to you as quickly as possible and without any damage; and I would say that all too often, they let something small like packaging get in the way of fulfilling these objectives

When you realize that your average package is 40 percent empty space, it’s not too hard to see that fulfillment centers are frequently hurting their chances of getting a medal for customer service. That extra space can cause damaged goods, and it also means there is less space for your products in the back of delivery trucks.

So next time you get a poorly packaged product that’s been damaged in transit, tell that company that you’re displeased with their service. Tweet a photo of the offending package. Give them a bad review in their online survey.

But don’t stay silent.

Let’s not continue to reward companies for poor customer service.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of smaller packaging, download our white paper by clicking the link below:



//