Sashank RavindranathThe Current State of Delivery Experiences
Did you know that 1-in-3 customers abandon a brand after just one incident involving poor delivery experiences?
Therefore, it is important to deliver delight with every shipment and exceed your customers’ expectations.
However, if you’re like any other e-commerce business, you’re unwillingly neglecting what comes after the customer hits ‘buy’ — the post-purchase phase. You need to understand that the customer journey does not simply end with the buy button.
To improve your customers’ overall delivery experiences, you can start leveraging post-purchase touchpoints by managing delivery experiences. They don’t just have to be the bare minimum. Craft it near perfect to exceed your customers’ expectations and indeed delight them.
Cutting to the chase — here’s what you need to create delivery experiences that delight customers and also understand what you can gain from them.
The Post-purchase Actionable Plan You Need
1. Effortless shipment visibility
How would you feel if it was ridiculously easy for you to keep a watch on your shipments in transit and identify issues around deliveries?
That’s exactly what effortless shipment visibility stands for.
Track your customers’ packages in real-time and constantly pinpoint their whereabouts as they unfold. You can use real-time tracking data to inform your customers of potential delivery delays on the product page itself. This can prepare your customers and yourself to face the incoming delay and reduce the odds of them blaming you.
2. Proactive delivery issue resolution
While letting your customers know that their packages are about to be delayed is good, you can make it even better by preemptively resolving such issues before it impacts them.
The first step in proactively resolving delivery issues is to enable your support agents to easily spot shipments that may face issues and initiate contextual communication with your customers regarding the same.
You can follow up with the customer by offering solutions based on their expectations such as re-shipping the order via an expedited shipping option, a discount, or a refund on their next purchase.
Your ability and effort to proactively resolve delivery issues can thereby instill confidence in your customers despite facing a delay.
3. Leverage order tracking moments
Customers track their packages often – way too often (6-8 times). Now, that’s valuable time with your customers you cannot miss.
You can leverage these touchpoints by offering branded tracking assets such as a widget that takes them directly to a tracking page from the customized email and SMS notification for each shipping transactional event.
You can make complete use of these tracking moments by building your brand, increasing sales via upselling and cross-selling, etc – all while putting a big smile on your customer’s face with live updates of their package.
4. Reduce delivery inquiries
Customers’ anticipation is at its peak when they are waiting for their packages. This can lead them to repeatedly bombard your support reps with WISMO calls, consuming all of your team’s time.
You can avoid this scenario by keeping your customers in the loop about the whereabouts of their order with the help of
- Automated shipping notifications and
- Self-serve order tracking, etc.
When your customers are constantly staying in the know of their order status, their anticipation is changed to satisfaction over being assured of their order reaching them on time.
Also, with considerably reduced delivery inquiries, your support team is now freed up and has time to focus on more pressing issues.
5. Decode your customers’ post-purchase needs
In order to provide phenomenal delivery experiences, you need to understand what works and what doesn’t in your delivery management process.
And one way to do that is by capturing customers’ engagement and delivery experience ratings. This enables you to decode customer actions post-purchase, and evaluate your carriers’ performances to help you perfect your post-purchase strategy.
By understanding your customers’ needs, you can constantly make better shipping choices and improve brand credibility.
6. Gain post-purchase superpowers
Extend the capabilities of all the aforementioned points by integrating your delivery experience management with your existing tools such as
- Shipping carriers such as DHL, FedEx, and UPS
- Order Management systems such as Linnworks and Zoho Inventory
- E-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and Woo-commerce
- Helpdesk solutions such as Zoho Desk, Freshdesk, and Gorgias
- CRM platforms and Email marketing tools such as Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Zoho CRM, etc
And improve your efforts to provide your customers with delightful delivery experiences by multifold.
Bottom Line
Don’t stop with a great delivery experience. Do bigger things with your post-purchase by combining stellar delivery experiences with easy, seamless returns — all while significantly reducing your shipping spend by auditing your invoices and recovering eligible refunds from your carriers.
Make use of a unified cloud solution like LateShipment.com to provide everything post-purchase from delightful delivery and return experiences to automated refund recovery in one place.
