Rohan Rinaldo Felix
Sashank RavindranathThe Big Post-Purchase CX Gap in the Order Delivery Phase
Picture this.
A shopper visits your website after a friend raved about one of your products or after clicking a compelling ad on social media. They casually navigate through the essential products section and decide to make a purchase. Your checkout process is seamless with limited navigation, thanks to your focus on providing a great user experience on your site.
Thereafter, the shopper hits “buy” and selects their preferred payment and shipping options from the choices on your checkout page. You send them a well-crafted order confirmation mail that is to their satisfaction and then proceed to pick, pack, and ship the order out.
Your shipping partner then shares a tracking URL with you, which you share with the customer. Beyond this point, the customer periodically checks their order delivery status on the tracking page of the shipping carrier.
So far so good.
But not beyond this point.
Beyond this point, there exists a BIG customer-experience gap in which you unwittingly neglect post-purchase experience.
This gap is on account of the fact that your post-purchase phase is outsourced to your shipping carrier, a third party who likely does not share your commitment toward providing your customer a standout delivery experience.
Because of a lack of control over your customers’ post-purchase experience:
- You’re unable to resolve customer issues proactively — The post-purchase phase is extremely error-prone with 1-in-5 parcels being routinely delayed. A lack of real-time visibility into shipments in transit makes you incapable of foreseeing delivery issues and offering a proactive resolution.
- You’re not in a position to communicate adequately to reduce customer anxiety — Customers are always anxious about their parcels and are known to check the status of their orders frequently. When you’re not in control of the most anxious stage of your customers’ journey, you jeopardize your relationship with a lack of communication.
- Your shipping carrier’s brand rather than your own is prominent in the customer’s field-of-view in the post-purchase phase. This is a lost upsell and cross-sell opportunity for you.
A loss of control over the post-purchase experience you offer has even more consequences.
Read till the end for a way to delight customers with a standout post-purchase CX.
Consequences of a Lack of Control in the Post-Purchase Phase
Here are some of the more damaging consequences of a post-purchase phase that is not in your control:
1. Increase in customer disloyalty
51% of customers will stop shopping with you after just one bad delivery experience.
The reason? Quite simple.
Customers want their orders delivered how and when they expect them. And they expect to be kept in the loop consistently.
In the case of a broken post-purchase experience, you’re unable to fulfill this expectation of a customer. Consequently, they are more likely to switch over to a competitor who can provide a more reliable delivery experience.
2. Damaged brand reputation
Frustrated customers don’t merely stop shopping with you. They further escalate the situation by dropping negative reviews on social media and by word-of-mouth thereby damaging your brand reputation.
This is significant because 93% of customers say online reviews impact their buying decisions. Negative reviews add to your woes by deterring potential customers from shopping with you.
3. Lost opportunities to monetize post-purchase tracking moments
On average, customers track their orders 6–8 times on shipping carrier tracking pages.
This is a lost opportunity on your part to place your brand in front of customers during parcel tracking and leverage the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell.
4. Increase in customer service inquiries
Not enabling customers to effectively track their parcels leads to a high volume of customer service inquiries around deliveries.
Shipping carriers often withhold information regarding parcels running late to prevent them from being shown in a bad light.
However, this leads to anxious and angry customers bombarding YOUR support team with WISMO (Where Is My Order?) calls, consuming all of their time.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom. With the right measures, you can turn the tide in your favor.
6 Ways to Improve a Customer's Post-Purchase Delivery Experience
Here are 6 ways to improve your post-purchase delivery experience and delight customers.
1. Proactively resolve customer issues
Proactively extend assistance in the post-purchase phase.
Enable your customer-support-reps with a solution that provides real-time shipping information for timely delivery issue resolution.
When you have real-time visibility into your shipments in transit, you stay on top of parcels in transit, particularly those likely to face delays.
Resolving a delivery issue preemptively before it impacts a customer sets you up on track to provide a great post-purchase experience.
2. Engage meaningfully and effectively at all times to reduce customer anxiety
How do I resolve uncommon delivery issues, you ask?
Here’s how. Meaningfully engage via timely order updates tailored to specific customers or situations to mitigate anxiety.
Engaging with your customers in the most anxious stage of their journey helps you build trust and fierce brand loyalty.
3. Reduce customer service inquiries with delivery status notifications
Notify customers of important order updates automatically via email and SMS.
When you keep your customers informed of order status, their anxiety is eased and they’re less likely to bombard your support-reps with WISMO calls.
This saves support-reps’ time and enables them to focus on other important things like tending to product-related concerns.
4. Offer custom branded tracking experiences
Extend your brand identity into tracking moments by offering customers the ability to track their parcels on a branded tracking page. Additionally, utilize self-serve order tracking widgets on your website and order shipping emails.
Providing on-brand delivery experiences creates brand-immersive experiences and post-purchase moments of delight.
5. Maximize sales by monetizing tracking moments
Use post-purchase touchpoints as a means to drive sales.
Make use of a service that allows you to host a tracking page on your eCommerce site.
Use the real-estate on your order tracking page to run relevant promotions and campaigns and create upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
6. Get customer feedback on delivery experiences
Capture user feedback around customer delivery experiences to understand the detractors of a great post-purchase experience.
Understanding your customers’ delivery expectations, make necessary operational changes to ensure customers who bore the brunt of bad delivery experiences are given greater attention.
LateShipment.com: Post-Purchase Solutions for Supercharged CX
LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management platform helps you craft outstanding post-purchase experiences and build long-lasting customer relationships.
Our groundbreaking post-purchase solutions help businesses effortlessly bridge the post-purchase CX gap and discover new ways to delight and retain customers.
Our high-impact post-purchase offerings allow you to:
- Stay on top of order deliveries, particularly those facing delays
Track in-transit shipments in real-time across multiple carriers on a single dashboard.
Receive predictive alerts about parcels facing delivery delays & take remedial action.
- Over-communicate and reduce customer anxiety post-purchase
Proactively identify and communicate with customers facing delivery issues.
Automate order status notifications via eMail or SMS throughout the delivery lifecycle.
- Reinforce your brand identity with custom order-tracking assets
Provide brand-consistent order tracking pages to customers & drive repeat purchases.
Embed self-serve order tracking widgets on your website and order-related emails.
- Leverage order tracking moments to increase sales and reduce returns
Increase sales with personalized product recommendations on your tracking page.
Reduce returns by providing relevant product usage information on tracking assets.
- Know if customers were satisfied or not with their delivery experience
Capture customers’ Delivery Satisfaction (DSAT) rating after every order delivery.
Measure the average DSAT score of every customer to optimize shipping & delivery processes.
- Access data-rich reports
Gain critical insights about your shipping spend and carriers’ delivery performance across service types and geographies to take data-driven decisions and make shipping efficient.
That’s not all!
Bonus: Save up to 20% on Your Shipping Spend
LateShipment.com also allows you to have your monthly shipping invoices automatically audited for 50+ shipping carrier service failures and claims refunds on your behalf. The claimed amount is directly deposited into your account. This can save you up to 20% on your overall shipping spend.
Our automated shipping refunds solution:
- Audits your monthly shipping invoices
- Submits refund claims to your carrier(s) on your behalf
- Deposits the refunded amount directly into your account
How good is that?
The best part is, it takes less than 2 minutes to see LateShipment.com in action without any change to your existing workflow.
The value we add to businesses is most evident when experienced first-hand. Try LateShipment.com now.
