Sashank RavindranathWhat is DTC? Why Do You Need to Look into it?
DTC has been making ripples in the ecommerce world owing to the fact that it has enabled brands to have direct access to their customers and cater to their specific needs head-on, rather than dealing through monopolized third parties.
Traditionally successful brands who have tried their hands at DTC have now found themselves their most profitable revenue churning method in DTC. Whether big or small, a renowned brand or a new one venturing into the world of ecommerce, DTC has given a place to all to shine.
But with increasing opportunities comes increased competition. Major brands like Nike and Dollar Shave Club have witnessed humongous success in a single channel since they’ve stepped into DTC, turning all heads towards this mode of business.
And one often overlooked competitive advantage you can have over the millions of other brands in DTC is to focus on your post-purchase phase.
Why Focus on Post-purchase?
You might have asked yourself this question while looking at the topic of this article. Why focus on something that I have no control over and left to the care of the shipping carrier?
That’s exactly why you should focus on your post-purchase.
The order peacefully making its way from the warehouse to the customer’s doorstep is only 50% of the total order experience.
The other (better) half consists of customer experience and revenue opportunities with shipping, tracking, delivery, returns, reviews, and more.
However, the truth is that when DTC brands leave out tending their post-purchase, it results in a big CX gap that strains your customer relationship and also puts a dent in your wallet.
The Big Post-purchase Gap That DTC Brands Face
Having a lack of control over your post-purchase works when the order reaches your customers on time. But what happens when the order is facing an issue and you are unable to notify the customer of it?
Let’s start with the first and foremost challenge. When you have no real-time visibility over parcels in transit, you are put in a situation where you are unable to reach out to your customers and better handle the situation.
This brings us to the next challenge. It is YOU who should be informing the customer about issues in the delivery and not the other way around. However, without said visibility, you cannot resolve issues even before they impact your customer.
Even when everything seems to go alright with your customer’s parcels, irregular delivery status updates can lead to tons of WISMO (Where Is My Order) calls from anxious customers who are clueless about their parcel whereabouts.
Once the delivery is made, your customers may wish to return their product after delivery. In such cases, a vague and complex returns process can lead to a poor return experience.
That’s not all! The existing post-purchase gap can result in further negative consequences for your DTC business.
Don’t let these issues scare you. Turn the tide in your favor by delivering phenomenal post-purchase experiences.
The post-purchase is a goldmine for brands that ship and comes with a host of benefits when rightly done. To help you enjoy just that, here are the ways for DTC brands to provide customers with a memorable CX after checkout in order to boost revenue, improve CSAT scores, and reduce returns.
What DTC Brands Can Do to Provide Post-purchase Excellence
1. Keep customers in the loop after their orders get shipped
Communicating effectively with your customers in the post-purchase phase helps in reducing WISMO inquiries and support tickets to a great extent.
This can be achieved by sending shipping updates for major events such as Order Shipped, Delivery Attempted, Order Delivered, Order Delayed, and more.
You can also send customized notifications for customers facing uncommon delivery issues with their orders such as weather-related delays.
That’s not all. Post-purchase notifications on shipping updates also have higher open rates and click-through rates leading to more sales opportunities.
2. Build a Personalized and On-brand Tracking Experience
Did you know that customers track their orders 4-5 times per order?
This gives you all the more reason to drive delight and boost repeat purchases with custom order tracking pages.
Delight your customers by making your tracking pages go from boring to beautiful. Add brand elements such as font, logo, color scheme, etc to extend the brand experience even in the post-purchase order tracking phase.
You can also double your chances of driving repeat purchases by leveraging the real estate on order tracking pages with product recommendations and promotions.
3. Solve Post-purchase Issues Even Before Your Customers Notice
Proactively communicate to mitigate the negative impact of delivery issues.
This helps you with plenty of benefits for your customers and your business.
Your customers are no longer worried about delivery issues occurring, as they have increased trust in your brand due to your commitment to resolving issues.
And for your business, your support reps will thank you as they now spend 70% less time & effort dealing with customer queries on order delivery issues.
4. Create an Easy Returns Experience
Provide a memorable returns experience for your customers by making returns easy for them.
- You can start by reducing the time taken to initiate returns by keeping it less than 2 minutes
- Follow up by taking the hassle out of returns by offering multiple return methods such as exchange and store credit options apart from refunds
- Make the returns experience seamless via reduced support interactions and increased self-serve options in the form of returns status updates.
All of this can help you redefine returns as a growth driver for your DTC brand by reducing unwanted returns and increasing repeat shoppers.
5. Let Data Drive Your Shipping Decisions
Get the actionable data and insights you need to make better shipping decisions.
Understand whether all that money, time, and effort spent on shipping are working in your favor or not by collecting customer feedback and intuitive shipping carrier reports.
You can then use the data to decode customer actions post-purchase and evaluate carriers’ performances.
This can help you perfect your post-purchase strategy and make shipping — cost and operationally efficient.
6. Hold Shipping Carriers Accountable
Did you know that your shipping carriers might owe you refunds for late deliveries, lost and damaged packages, billing overcharges, and more? And by not submitting refund claims for them, you are definitely overpaying them by 3-8%?
To make matters worse, these refunds are not automated and you need to manually file claims with each shipping invoice. Also, keep in mind that filing these claims is tricky and time-consuming.
So, what is that you can do to hold them accountable for their service failures?
You can start by auditing your invoices to identify more than 50 service failures, overcharges, and discrepancies that are eligible for refunds and proceed to save on your shipping costs.
Thus, the verdict is clear. Your customer experience does not end with the buy button and a great post-purchase experience gives you a competitive advantage.
It is now time for you to implement all the above strategies and enjoy post-purchase success.
If you’re wondering how to do this all by yourself, you can make use of a solution like LateShipment.com that helps you unleash your potential.
How Lateshipment.Com Can Help DTC Brands Enjoy Post-purchase Success
LateShipment.com is a unified platform that powers memorable delivery and returns experiences, lowers shipping costs, and improves fulfillment efficiency.
Here’s how our ultimate post-purchase suite can help you with different metrics that matter such as customer satisfaction, engagement, operational efficiency, and conversion rates.
1. Customer satisfaction
- Increased (90+) CSAT score on the order delivery and returns experience
- Reduce support tickets (delivery and returns related) by more than 60%
2. Customer engagement
- 75% higher open rates on emails and SMS
- 5% Increased click-through rate
3. Operational efficiency
- Reduce the occurrence of delivery delays by 12% and lost/damaged packages by 0.5%
- Up to 20% reduction in shipping costs
4. Conversion rates
- 25% Lift in repeat purchase rates
- 4x Returns converted to repeat purchases
That’s not all!
LateShipment.com also seamlessly integrates with all the tools you use such as:
- Shipping carriers (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc)
- E-commerce platforms (Shopify, Big Commerce, Magento, etc)
- Helpdesk platforms (Gorgias, Freshdesk, Zendesk, etc)
- Order management systems (Linnworks, Shipstation, Zoho Inventory, etc)
- Email and SMS automation tools (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend, etc)
And help you gain post-purchase superpowers.
Bottom Line
The best part is that 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.
Interested? We at LateShipment.com can’t wait to help you grow your fanbase, savings, and business.
Get in touch with our expert or write to us.
