This page will cover everything that a CS Agent needs to know about the PerfectDraft Trade Affiliate program. It will not go into depth on how to manage Trade customers but will provide an intro and mainly focus on the common questions and contacts that we get from customers about our Returns Partners.
The PerfectDraft Trade program is part of our B2B (business to business) offering, and our way of selling kegs & machines to smaller stores in large quantities. However, the main benefit of the program is that it facilitates keg returns in a way that is very simple for us and for the customer too, as PerfectDraft Global/Interdrinks want to get as many empty kegs recycled into their system as possible, so that they don’t have to waste time & resources making new kegs. These stores order kegs by the pallet load, a minimum of 90 kegs per pallet, as it’s much cheaper and more efficient for us to ship their orders in bulk, rather than having 30+ individual parcels sent out through the courier network.
The way the keg returns for stores work is much more simple than either Yodel or Collect+, as the customer does not need to book anything, print anything out, or to box up empties at all. They just need to arrive at one of our official trade stores with their empty keg, and the shopkeeper will usually swap that for £5 out of their cash register, or give them £5 credit to spend in store. It’s that simple. There’s also a huge cost saving element for Beer Hawk as well, because our trade stores will actually put together the pallets of empty kegs themselves and they’re then brought directly back to us. This means that we don’t have to pay Yodel to collect those from individual houses or shops, and then to palletise them at the Yodel hub, massively reducing the cost.
We’ve been expanding the program since summer 2021 to increase our coverage, you can find a list of all our official trade stores at Keg Returns made easy with Official Keg Returns Partners (beerhawk.co.uk). If a customer has bought a keg from a store that’s not on that list, they are NOT an official Trade affiliate and would come under what we refer to internally as “Fake Trade.”
The PerfectDraft Trade program is very popular at the moment, and we have over 900 applicants waiting to join us and start selling PerfectDraft in their store. If a potential trade customer gets in touch with us, we have a canned response under “PD Trade: Registering Interest” which contains a link through which they can submit an application. We hope to be able to expand more and more in the coming months but there’s no official timescale as of yet.
There is also a further canned response “PD Trade: Chasing Account” which should be sent to those who have already filled in an application and would like an update on the status of this.
Trade customers have a specific list of stock to choose from which will change every single week, they then will send in their desired quantities to [email protected] for processing. Trade orders are processed through an entirely different process to orders through the site, with those all being placed manually into Magento by the PerfectDraft Trade team, in a similar way to CS reorders. These stores order by the pallet, with a minimum order being 90 kegs or 24 machines. We ship all of our Trade orders through a different courier to the B2C orders, and we won’t be able to track those in the same way as Yodel deliveries. That being said, the courier should always alert the customer when their order is out for delivery, and most stores have a good relationship with their local driver too so that they can make the necessary arrangements.
Sometimes a Trade customer will get in touch with CS and fail to mention that it’s a Trade enquiry, one surefire way of identifying a Trade order, is that it will have been placed in the “PD Trade” customer group on Magento. No other orders should be placed in that customer group, and any order not placed in that group is very unlikely to be an official Trade order.
As a general rule we advise our Trade Affiliates to get in touch by sending emails to [email protected] which will automatically put them into the correct group on Freshdesk, meaning that they should never cross the desk of a CS Agent. However, if a confirmed Trade Affiliate calls up the Beer Hawk CS line, it should be treated in many ways the same as a regular customer CS call. Ask them for the email address that their account is registered under, and a contact number that we can reach them back on. Pop as much information about the issue they’re facing in the internal call notes, and put the ticket into the PD Trade group and this will be dealt with by the PerfectDraft Trade team in due course. If their issue is particularly time-sensitive send a Slack message with the ticket number to a member of the PerfectDraft Trade team and we can normally prioritise that without issue.
If you come across a ticket from a Trade Affiliate which is not in the PD Trade group then just pop that straight into the group without a second thought, and the team will deal with that as necessary.
Normally we would want to be alerted about this straight away where possible, as the driver will not wait long at a store before having to move on with their schedule, at which point we would incur a wasted time charge. They should always have a job number which will be essential for identifying which store they are at and what should be happening. If they don’t provide this automatically, you must ask them to provide this. Still create a ticket as usual, but always alert a member of the PerfectDraft Trade team ASAP so that we can give them a call back and advise on the best course of action. We have contact details for the main office for all the couriers that we employ, though if the driver would like us to call them personally, we would need a phone number as well so that we can do so.
Fake Trade is a loose term that we use to describe any customer buying through the website for trade purposes, which is something which is very much not permitted as per clause 15.2 of our T&C’s. We do not allow this to ensure that we can provide enough stock for the customers buying through the site for their own personal use. There are a few ways to spot a fake trader, the most obvious being that they are ordering in extremely large quantities, or if their shipping address is a shop.
If you suspect for any reason that a customer has ordered for trade purposes, please move their ticket or submit a new ticket into the PD Trade group on Freshdesk and let a Team Leader know. This will bring them to the attention of the team, and we can try to make sure that their orders are stopped from that point onwards. If you spot anyone that has been sent the “Unapproved Trade Order” canned response, then that is someone that we will be aware of already, but please put a ticket in the PerfectDraft Trade group if you spot any repeat offenders like this.