Sashank RavindranathWe’re all worried about things at times. How is this day going to turn out? How is my business going to thrive with the rising competition? Will the Chiefs win this year’s Super Bowl? What is going to be my costume for Halloween? Or Where is my order?
Now each of these questions has a reason to exist. The last question — that’s because of this relatively new condition called pre-parcel anxiety that is affecting several online shoppers today.
What is Pre-Parcel Anxiety?
The concept of ‘pre-parcel anxiety’ comes with the understanding of the ‘post-purchase’ phase.
To bring this into more context, let’s picture this scenario: We’ve all placed orders in online stores, right?
That means we’ve all wondered where our orders were at some point. So, this anxiety is normal or that’s what we think. But pre-parcel anxiety isn’t that. It’s what happens later — when customers cannot determine the status of their orders with the business they shopped with.
When such things happen and customers are left in the dark regarding their orders, they tend to get anxious, assuming the worst, leading to increased support inquiries or WISMO requests.
Pre-parcel anxiety is the psychological condition a customer undergoes while awaiting their parcels that they have no direction about. It keeps customers impatient about their orders, often checking the carrier’s tracking page and bombarding the brand’s support teams with WISMO calls.
While frequent order status inquiries mean anxiety for the customer, they mean something entirely different for the merchant.
The Effects of Pre-Parcel Anxiety on Your E-Commerce Business
Let’s take a look back — pre-parcel anxiety is a feeling of unease and impatience while waiting for an online order to arrive, and can be a significant hurdle for e-commerce businesses.
As we mentioned earlier, the first sign of frustration from pre-parcel anxiety is increased support inquiries.
Repeated inquiries like WISMO can be frustrating for both customers and support staff. For instance, customers waiting anxiously for their orders are prone to leave negative reviews and complaints on social media, leading to a decreased brand reputation.
On the other hand, customers experiencing pre-parcel anxiety are more likely to contact your support team with questions about their order status. This can strain your resources and lead to longer wait times for genuine inquiries.
Support tickets with a longer resolution time can cause customer frustration and negative experiences. Ultimately, customers who have a negative experience with waiting for a previous order may be less likely to purchase from your store again.
TLDR: Here’s how pre-parcel anxiety affects your business:
- Increased support inquiries
- Lower brand reputation
- Reduced customer satisfaction
- Lost opportunities to drive repeat purchases
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to address pre-parcel anxiety and improve the customer experience you offer.
How E-Commerce Businesses Can Mitigate Pre-Parcel Anxiety And Its Impact
1. Transparency in communication
First and foremost, letting your customers know that their orders are in safe hands is a great start in your attempt to mitigate their anxiety. There are multiple actions that you can take to achieve that.
For starters, you can provide clear and accurate information about estimated delivery times on product pages and during checkout to make sure that your customers don’t feel the urgency to contact your support team with the need to get tracking information.
You can then double it down by offering real-time tracking information with detailed and regular updates to keep your customers in the loop of their orders.
P.S. You don’t have to wait for customers to hit your support reps with WISMO calls, instead, you can send proactive email or SMS notifications about their delivery status.
2. Setting Realistic Expectations
Second and most importantly, don’t over-promise on delivery times.
Be realistic about timeframes, especially during peak seasons. I.e. Delivery during peak season times like the holidays can take longer than usual, in such cases you can let the customers know about these updated delivery timelines and reasons for delays.
Setting delivery expectations right by showing order arrival dates on your website like product, cart, and checkout pages helps you improve conversions, reduce cart abandonment, and ultimately works towards building trust and boosting conversions.
Of course, you can always put these steps into action on your own but your shipping partner might not be straightforward with delays, given to not project themselves in a bad light.
On the other hand, implementing these steps is relatively simple — when you have an efficient package tracking system in place that works on your behalf.
How a last-mile tracking solution like lateshipment.com can help
LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management (DEM) is the perfect solution for you to craft order tracking experiences that boost engagement and repeat purchases — all while reducing customer service costs.
DEM can help you reduce WISMO calls by 72% by sending delivery status updates in the form of:
- Automated shipping notifications proactively sent on channels like email, SMS or WhatsApp based on triggers for every step of the package journey from order ‘shipped’ to ‘delivered’ to ‘delayed’ and
- Self-serve order lookup that enables customers to track their orders without any help, embed an order lookup widget on your website or chat.
Like Jane Norman of Nola Skinsentials says, “Many brands think their relationship stops after shipping the package, which is not true”. Thus, the need to make the post-purchase phase customer-friendly is a must if you plan to stay ahead of the curve.
By addressing detractors like pre-parcel anxiety, you can create a smoother and more positive post-purchase CX that leads to increased customer satisfaction, improved brand loyalty, and ultimately, higher sales for your e-commerce business.
Also, while you’re there, try LateShipment.com for not just seamless delivery experiences but all your post-purchase needs. Curious about how we might work for your business? Talk to us.
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