E-commerce Archives | Lateshipment.com

E-Commerce Holiday Shipping: Balancing Cost And Reliability

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 05:05:06 +0000

The truth of shipping becoming a defining factor in the customer experience, especially during the holidays, cannot be stressed enough.

This is because most of the orders during the holiday season are by customers who rely on timely gift-giving deliveries. These customers are so invested in them that a single instance of delay or any other delivery issue for that matter can lead to customer churn and lost costs.

Consumers expect holiday gifts to be delivered quickly, with 29% expecting delivery within 2–3 days.

While this is an issue that needs to be addressed, shippers are also put into face with rising shipping costs (due to shipping carriers straining capacity) during the peak season that can quickly eat into profit margins.

With an overwhelming surge in orders and inevitable delivery issues, success in terms of holiday shipping is dictated by balancing managing costs and ensuring reliability.

However, given today’s highly competitive marketplace, balancing these factors is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity.

That said, there are several complexities that e-commerce businesses must navigate in holiday shipping to strike the perfect balance between cost and reliability and enjoy success. Let’s take a look at some of the major challenges and how you can address them.

Frequent Challenges of Holiday Shipping

1. Carrier capacity constraints

Customers tend to shop more during the holiday season, leading to high order volumes. This sudden influx of orders leaves carriers often struggling to meet demand, leading to delayed pickups, lost packages, and missed delivery deadlines. Customers who face the brunt of these issues are prone to hold you accountable and are more likely to churn.

2. Increased shipping costs

To manage the higher demand of order volumes, carriers typically impose surcharges on select services such as expedited shipping and oversized packages. The costs of these surcharges are borne by you, the e-commerce businesses as low-cost shipping has to be a standard offering for your customers. However, bearing these costs can result in your last-mile delivery skyrocketing and thereby squeezing your profit margins.

3. Lack of visibility and communication

Delays and disruptions are inevitable during the holiday season. However, customers are supportive of businesses that make the effort to let them know of the issue and preemptively resolve it. However, most e-commerce businesses lack real-time order tracking and proactive communication, thereby amplifying customer frustration, which leads to negative reviews and a loss of trust.

How to Balance Cost and Reliability During Holiday Shipping

While the challenges of holiday shipping are significant, businesses can take strategic steps to optimize both cost and reliability. Here’s how:

1. Understand carriers' shipping deadlines

In order to manage high shipping volumes without straining their capacity, shipping carriers come up with service deadlines (last days to ship) before important holiday season days. You can stay updated with these dates and communicate it with your customers to encourage last minute shoppers to plan their purchase accordingly.

2. Stay updated with carrier delay rates

Carriers strain their capacity during times like the holiday season. Understanding their delivery performance can help you choose the best carrier based on service types, locations, etc. Here’s an e-commerce report that delivers unbiased insights on UPS and FedEx on-time performance, highlighting delivery trends, operational challenges, and consumer expectations for speed and reliability for the upcoming 2024 holiday season.

3. Diversify carrier partnerships

Relying on a single carrier during the holidays is a risk. Diversify your carrier network to include regional and local couriers, which can often provide faster and more affordable last-mile delivery. This flexibility allows you to manage capacity constraints, negotiate better rates, and pick reliable shipping partners based on their strengths.

4. Offer smart shipping options

Not every customer requires overnight delivery. Provide multiple shipping options at checkout, such as economy, standard, and expedited shipping. This empowers customers to choose the shipping speed that suits their needs and budget, while also helping you manage costs.

5. Implement proactive communication

Customers are more forgiving of delays when they’re kept informed. Use automated notifications to alert customers of delivery updates, delays, or disruptions. Clear and proactive communication enhances the customer experience and reduces WISMO (“Where is My Order?”) inquiries.

6. Communicate delivery exceptions

Track your parcels in real time to monitor delivery performance, identify issues as they unfold, and automate resolution processes. This ensures reliable delivery while minimizing the cost of failed shipments or customer dissatisfaction.

7. Optimize packaging strategies

Carriers often base shipping costs on dimensional weight. Optimize your packaging to reduce unnecessary bulk and avoid oversized package fees. Additionally, well-secured packaging minimizes the risk of damage, improving reliability.

8. Plan for returns

The holiday season often brings a spike in returns, and a seamless return process is just as important as delivery. Offer pre-paid return labels and easy-to-navigate return portals to provide a hassle-free experience that builds trust and loyalty.

9. Audit your shipping invoices

While most carriers either suspend or extend their money-back guarantee for late deliveries, your invoice may still contain 50 other carrier errors (service failures and billing errors) that are eligible for refunds. Auditing your invoices gives you the opportunity to claim refunds for them. Remember, manual auditing can be a tedious process — make use of an automated parcel audit solution that does this on your behalf.

10. Make data-driven decisions with shipping intelligence

Regularly auditing your shipping invoices, among other things, gives you fulfillment insights such as on-time delivery performance, shipping spend analysis, etc. You can leverage these insights to make precise, data-driven decisions that enhance operational efficiency and reduce costs.

Prepare in Advance for the Holiday Rush

E-commerce holiday shipping is a delicate balance between managing rising costs and delivering a seamless, reliable experience to your customers. By diversifying carrier partnerships, leveraging automation, and communicating proactively, you can overcome the challenges of the holiday rush while delighting your customers and protecting your margins.

The holiday season presents both challenges and opportunities — those who master their shipping strategy will gain not just satisfied customers but also a competitive edge in the market.

Balancing cost and reliability isn’t just about reacting to challenges — it requires proactive planning. Less than a week to go until the holiday season to officially kick off — which means as an e-commerce retailer, you have to make use of the little prep time left to get better equipped to handle the holiday rush. Here are some tips categorized via different stages of the customer journey to help you get ahead of the curve.

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Branded Return and Exchange Portal: What Makes One And How It Works

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 06:18:13 +0000

A high return rate is a concern for any e-commerce business. However, most brands still don’t have a proper returns system in place to optimize the final leg of the post-purchase loop.

In most cases, customers who initiate returns didn’t expect things to go this way in the first place, thus, the key is to NOT make the returns process even more stressful for them. That brings us to today’s customers demanding seamless, hassle-free returns and exchanges, and your efforts to deliver on them to build customer loyalty.

To make the returns process as smooth as it can get, it is best to use a ‘Branded Returns and Exchange Portal’ that you can build for your e-commerce store. To get a better context, here are some benefits that you stand to gain from using a returns and exchange portal.

What Makes a ‘Branded’ Return and Exchange Portal?

A returns and exchanges portal is an addition to your e-commerce store that customers can use to do ‘everything returns’ from initiating to tracking. Any system that works as an app instead of back-and-forth emails or support conversations can be classified as a returns portal.

The ‘branded’ factor comes through in how the portal acts as a vital extension of your brand experience. When customers initiate a return or exchange, they’re still interacting with your brand, and it’s an opportunity to make a lasting positive impression that helps boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Here are several essential features that make the returns process seamless for customers and manageable for retailers:

1. Enhanced Customer Loyalty Access to clear and transparent return policies

Customers appreciate transparency, especially when it comes to returns. Therefore, provide your customers with easily accessible return policies directly from your portal. By ensuring that customers are aware of their options, you can ensure that they make informed decisions and thereby prevent misunderstandings and potential frustration.

In the long term, this seamless return experience reassures customers and enhances loyalty. Here’s how it works — when customers feel valued and have a positive return experience, they’re more likely to shop with you again, even if their initial purchase didn’t work out.

2. Reduction in support volume through self-service returns

A return portal makes returns self-service for customers, allowing them to initiate returns or exchanges with ease. They can select reasons for returns, choose whether to exchange or refund and print return labels — all without needing to contact customer support.

Another common pain point in the return process is the uncertainty about when refunds or exchanges will be processed. A return portal eliminates this challenge by keeping customers informed at every step, from receiving their return to processing the refund or shipping the exchange item, thereby minimizing the WISMR (Where is my return) queries.

Both of these actions play a major role in freeing up your support team to focus on more complex issues. Ultimately, this improvement not only enhances customer satisfaction but also lowers operational costs.

Lateshipment.com’s Returns Experience Management (R.E.M): Self-Serve Returns And Exchanges That Boost Buyer Confidence

There are not one but three reasons why brands who prioritize CX, opt for self-service returns

Witness an increase of up to 92% in repeat purchases from hassle-free returns
Make returns initiation 3x faster for shoppers
There’s a revenue retention of up to 40% through easy exchanges and store credits

Meet LateShipment.com’s R.E.M, a solution to help you offer return experiences that customers will truly love.

R.E.M houses a Branded Returns and Exchange Portal that works to help your customers return products without your help via:

Driving customers to a portal completes your brand experience in the post-purchase order returns phase
Allowing customers to easily start a return from the order tracking page, delivery notifications, or anywhere else in your store
Helping customers better understand your return policy by highlighting return windows, non-returnable items, and more
Enabling customers to easily initiate returns from a self-serve portal that lets them choose what, why, and how they’d want to return in seconds

That’s not all! For a customer, the return portal is where the return takes place. But there’s also the back-end side to it, that’s where automation meets unprecedented visibility. Your return portal gives you in-depth analytics that reveal return trends, common issues with products, and customer feedback.

These detailed analytics allow you to identify patterns, such as frequently returned items or common return reasons, which empower you to make product or process improvements, potentially reducing future return rates, and improving overall customer satisfaction.

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Package Delivery (and Returns) Satisfaction Ratings: Driving Customer Retention and Revenue Growth

Sashank Ravindranath — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 09:44:09 +0000

Today’s consumers have more choices than ever when it comes to their shopping needs.

With customer experience (CX) being a cornerstone of customers choosing brands to shop with, you need to go above and beyond to provide a positive delivery and returns experience in order to keep customers coming back.

Here’s what the stats have to say:

95% of customers share negative experiences online, compared to 47% who share positive experiences online
93% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase.
74% of consumers say they would stop doing business if they had a bad experience.
86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.

Fierce competition and a low threshold for customer tolerance. There’s only one way to counter both. Raise the bar with your CX and spread the word out to attract other potential shoppers. The best way to do both — simply ask them.

Satisfaction Ratings: A Metric to Measure Delivery Experience Quality

At its heart, the Satisfaction rating (SAT score) is a surprisingly simple system that allows your customers to rate their delivery experiences on a scale of 1–5.

After each successful delivery or return, these ratings give you a clear and unbiased view of customer sentiment about the quality of the experience you offer. They act as a window into the world of customer experience, allowing businesses to gauge how well they’re meeting their customers’ expectations.

These unprecedented insights stand to benefit your e-commerce business by helping you:

Measure Post-Purchase Customer Experience on Par with Pre-Checkout Customer Experience – While most businesses place a great deal of emphasis on the onsite experience they offer their customers, the post-purchase phase is inevitably neglected. While CSAT and NPS provide an idea of customer sentiment in the pre-checkout stage, DSAT and RSAT can help shine a light on the quality of your post-purchase phase

Identify Which Areas of Your Logistics Operation Need Attention – The feedback mechanism that the DSAT or RSAT system provides allows you to unambiguously identify which areas of your logistics operation need attention in order to allay customer concerns. By identifying areas of improvement and taking appropriate action, you can now address issues, rectify mistakes, and streamline your delivery and returns processes. In the long run, this leads to operational efficiency, cost savings, and improved customer experiences.

Understanding customer satisfaction levels in the order delivery or returns phase is just one part of things, the important challenge remains in the form of amplifying customer satisfaction, as it translates to increased retention and profits.

The Importance of Positive Customer Feedback Around Delivery and Returns Satisfaction Ratings

Satisfaction Ratings: A Window into Customer Retention

DSAT (Delivery Satisfaction) ratings provide a detailed assessment of customers’ delivery experiences by measuring key factors such as delivery timeliness, tracking accuracy, and the quality of communication throughout the shipping process.

RSAT (Returns Satisfaction) ratings provide e-commerce businesses with a comprehensive measure of their customers’ returns experience. Customers can rate their experiences based on factors such as ease of returns processing, clarity of returns policies, returns status communication, and speed of refunds.

These ratings provide customers with a platform to voice their opinions and share their experiences. By giving regular feedback, customers now feel heard and will more likely continue their association with your brand.

That’s not all! Each time a negative review is taken seriously and improvements are made, customers will begin to trust the brand with their choices. As this becomes a routine, happy customers become loyal patrons and will return time and again.

On the other hand, for your business, these ratings offer valuable insights into how satisfied customers are with the delivery and return process, helps you identify areas for improvement.

The Domino Effect: Revenue Growth

Customer retention is closely linked to revenue growth.

Satisfied customers not only come back for more, but they also become brand advocates. They recommend the brand to friends, family, and even share their positive experiences on social media.

Moreover, satisfied customers are more likely to explore other offerings from the same brand. Cross-selling and upselling opportunities increase as customers gain confidence in your efforts to improve the delivery experience. This translates directly into higher average order values and increased revenue per customer.

How E-Commerce Businesses Can Improve Delivery Satisfaction Ratings

Here are some ways your retail business can boost customer satisfaction in the last mile:

Improve on-time deliveries: One of the top-most expectations of customers when it comes to delivery satisfaction is their packages being delivered on time or even earlier. On the other hand, each time there’s an unannounced delay, there’s a possibility of a negative review that can affect your overall satisfaction scores.
Improve returns processes: Offer a seamless, self-service returns experience to customers where they can easily initiate returns, print return labels, and track the status of their refunds.
Ensure proactive communication: Delays are inevitable and almost all customers understand this. This is why, despite the underlying disappointment, they will appreciate your efforts to keep them informed about the status of their orders.
Focus on proper packaging: Ensure that the contents of your customer’s purchase are well-protected from damage during the shipping process via proper packaging techniques such as using the right box, sufficient protective measures, and fragile stickers (if necessary). During times like the holiday season, customers also appreciate receiving their packages in themed and personalized packaging.
Bring in efficiency to your customer support: The chances of all your customers’ parcels facing issues while it’s on its way to reaching their doorstep are low but never zero. In such cases, customers expect to be able to get the help they deserve from your customer support representative. By empowering your customer support team to step in before customer impact and proactively address issues, you can boost your customers’ confidence to keep shopping with you.
Invest in technology: There are a number of technologies that can help businesses improve their delivery processes, such as real-time and self-serve tracking, predictive analytics, automated ticket creation, proactive notifications, etc. These technologies can help businesses to improve on-time deliveries and to provide customers with more information about the status of their orders (delivery and returns).

In the quest for constant enhancement of delivery and return satisfaction ratings, you can adopt these data-driven strategies to take a proactive approach that not only prevents future disappointments but also showcases the brand’s commitment to providing your customers with a great post-purchase experience.

Decode customer actions in the post-purchase order delivery phase with LateShipment.com

LateShipment.com doesn’t just help you deliver phenomenal experiences but also helps you understand whether all that money, time and effort spent is working in your favor or not.

By capturing customers’ delivery and returns experience ratings, you can now learn from your customers about the experience your brand delivered. All you have to do now is to consistently direct efforts and get those 5-star ratings that promote brand credibility.

That’s not all! LateShipment.com also helps you gain insights on:

User engagement metrics – To measure how your customers are engaging with your brand post-purchase via your tracking page, emails, and SMS notifications and to know what your most effective channels are
Carrier Performance Scores – To review your carrier choices based on a detailed assessment of how your carrier’s delivery performance fares against service-specific delivery standards.

Conclusion

In the ever-evolving landscape of e-commerce, package delivery and return satisfaction ratings emerge as a critical factor in driving customer retention and revenue growth. They offer customers a voice, allowing them to shape the way brands operate. By paying attention to these ratings, businesses can build trust, enhance customer experiences, and pave the way for long-term success. After all, a satisfied customer today is an ambassador for the brand tomorrow.

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Do You Ship Fragile Items Frequently? Here’s What You Need To Know

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:51:34 +0000

Are you an e-commerce merchant that deals with fragile items such as glassware, ceramics, electronics, musical instruments, etc? Then you are in the company of businesses that are ever under threat of shipments getting damaged.

While damage is a constant worry for all e-commerce merchants, those who are frequently dealing with shipments that are fragile and tend to break easily must certainly make extra efforts to ensure that products reach customers safely without any damage.

Why Do You Need To Worry About Damaged Goods

Damaged goods are a serious issue that takes up one of the top 3 spots for delivery issues that tend to drive your customers away. Research shows that around 15% of all shipments are damaged in a year, with costs accounting for $1 billion.

These costs account for multiple areas such as the original product, shipping, and returns along with replacement and operational costs. It’s not just valuable money, each damaged shipment also comes with the risk of the customer experience taking a hit, further leading to frustration and ultimately customer churn.

These customers who defect from your business won’t stop at that and are prone to share their negative reviews that hurt your business’s reputation and demotivate other potential shoppers, ultimately hurting your profit margin.

Not to forget the existing troubles for all your teams in handling returns and replacements, issuing refunds, and managing customer complaints, all of which consume valuable time and resources.

The ‘damage’ from damaged goods is evident. So, what you need to do is safeguard your shipments during shipping to ensure that damages don’t happen and that the items safely make their way to the customer.

How To Ship Fragile Items?

Here’s a step by step guide for e-commerce merchants shipping fragile items:

1. Choose the Right Packaging Materials

The guide to prevent damage to your fragile items begins with packaging — at your warehouse. Think of packaging as the first line of defense. If this works out perfectly, then the chances of breakage are cut down to half or even much lower.

Sturdy, corrugated boxes should be your go-to. Remember, your box should be slightly larger than your product to accommodate ample cushioning
If your package’s contents are multiple items, use custom inserts for dividers or wrap each item individually — paying particular attention to corners and edges, so that they don’t stick out
For exceptionally fragile items like glassware, consider multiple layers of packaging
Secure the product firmly within the box without any movements within through bubble wrap, foam, air pillows, etc,
Reinforce the cushioning around the product by packing peanuts or crumpled paper to prevent movement within the box
Tape the box securely, ensuring the lid is firmly closed

2. Label your box clearly

Damages are mostly accidents, sometimes due to man-made incidents although unintentional. Workers at carrier sorting facilities deal with a huge volume of shipments on a day-to-day basis.

So, mishandling is a common occurrence that can be less of a concern for a retailer who sells teddy bears. But as someone shipping out fragile items, you can’t afford these chances. This is where you bring in clear and informative labeling.

Labels that say “Fragile” and “Handle with Care” labels are your product’s advocates. These labels let the handlers know of the contents and ensure your package(s) are treated with extra care.

3. Know your carriers

Major carriers such as FedEx, UPS, DHL, and USPS all have their list of suggestions and deadlines for retailers shipping fragile items.

FedEx – For fairly new merchants, FedEx provides the option to purchase standard and specialized boxes based on the item and charges an extra amount for packaging fragile items
UPS – Similar to FedEx, UPS also helps merchants with packaging fragile items such as lamps, furniture, pianos, artwork, mirrors,and vases
DHL – Apart from guidelines, DHL also offers shippers, options such as faster delivery options, special handling, and shipping insurance, all of which are charged an additional fee
USPS – Unlike other carriers, USPS has a particular service for shipping fragile items called Special Handling-Fragile that can be availed at $12.15 and works with multiple USPS services, including Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, First-Class Package Service-Commercial, and more

Final word

As a frequent shipper of fragile items, following these steps might be extremely handy to minimize the chances of damage.

However, damage like all delivery issues is inevitable, even with the best of the packaging carriers. In such cases, proactive customer communication is your best option. Be empathetic about the incident and offer a solution to mitigate their frustration.

Even if damaged shipments cannot be avoided, you still have a shot at redemption. Shipping carriers offer the option for retailers to claim refunds for shipments that have been damaged in transit. Instead of filing these claims manually, you can make use of a parcel audit solution that automates the process.

Apart from taking the hassle, an automated solution also helps you keep track of reports that enable you to continuously monitor your damage rates and identify areas for improvement (changing carriers or service types).

If you’re a business that particularly deals with fragile items, then a recommended solution would be to consider third-party shipping insurance that offers peace of mind while shipping. Here’s a guide to shipping insurance where we have covered the basics, the different options, and how to get the most out of protecting your package.

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How To Keep Your E-Commerce Store’s Return Rate In Check

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 07:17:29 +0000

Here’s the thing — returns are a great benefactor to your CX but that’s only when they’re handled right.

However, if they are left unchecked and run rampant, they can have serious consequences for your business across multiple areas.

Therefore, it is important to address a high return rate to ensure you handle returns effectively.

What Happens When Your Return Rate Is High?

To start with the most pressing issue up front, frequent returns lead to several operational challenges like increased workload and complexities for the staff from restocking inventory that is already time-consuming and expensive.

To add more trouble, a lengthy and difficult return process also has the power to hurt customer relationships and can erode your customer’s trust in your brand. These dissatisfied customers are prone to share their negative experiences, thereby hurting your reputation.

Ultimately, both these occurrences represent a loss in revenue, directly impacting profit margins. Not to forget the increase in the risk of fraudulent returns and refunds that come with them.

But there’s got to be a logical explanation behind everything right? Return rates being high is a phenomenon but why do they happen? Why do customers return their purchases, for which they’ve waited for long enough?

Why Do Customers Return Items?

According to NRF, The average return rate for e-commerce stands at around 18% — almost double the rate of returns at a physical store. When you see this and your first assumption is customers returning their purchases because they looked different online, congratulations, You’re correct!

Remember, understanding why customers return products is crucial in cutting return rates. Hence, we’ll go further on the most common reasons:

Product issues: Mismatches in sizing/color/style, faulty products, or products not simply living up to the customer’s expectations — you name it. All of the above are immediate return triggers. Customers at physical stores touch and feel the product they’re about to purchase, but since the room for this is eliminated in e-commerce, there’s a high chance that the product doesn’t live up to their expectations in terms of quality or performance.
Order issues: On the same lines as product issues, these are cases when the wrong item or quantity is shipped out, when the customers change their minds or make an impulsive purchase, or when the order gets delayed or damaged to the extent that the customer no longer needs it.
Customer issues: Hate to say it but not all returns are valid. Some customers wear items and then return them for a refund in an act called ‘wardrobing’. These customers are serial returners who don’t really intend to keep their purchase.

As we touched upon earlier, analyzing common return reasons can be a great start in implementing tailor-made strategies to address these issues and reduce return rates. But before we get to the ‘how’, there’s something more important to take note of. The stakes in a story, the motive in a crime, the science in sci-fi — why do e-commerce merchants need to cut down return rates in the first place?

Why Does Reducing Product Returns Matter?

Apart from preventing all the stuff that we covered in the part that talked about the things that happen when your returns rate is high, reducing the number of products being returned, also has other great deal of benefits for your business.

Despite manual processes, lower return rates translate to a reduction in return processing time for your customer support and operations teams
Understanding the true cost of returns helps you make cost-cutting decisions that impact your bottom line and help you save on returns-related revenue
With streamlined international operations (less time taken for returns), there is a huge opportunity to provide an enhanced return experience for your shoppers
Customers satisfied with their returns experience are more likely to return, thereby leading to an increase in repeat purchases

What – check, why – check, and that brings us to the final question — how. How can return rates be reduced to ensure the long-term success of your e-commerce business? Here are some strategies to do exactly that.

How To Keep Return Rates In Check?

Product-related improvements

Make sure you try as much to replicate the shopping experience of a physical store. This can be achieved through:

Detailed information about the extensive features, the exact dimensions, the materials it is made up of, and care instructions, if any.
High-quality images and videos that showcase the product in 360 degrees across multiple angles
Accurate sizing information and recommendations (70% of all e-commerce returns are size-and-fit related)
Encouraging customers to share their experiences on a particular product to motivate others to make a decision
Major brands such as Gucci, Burrow, and Allbirds have been integrating with Augmented Reality (AR) solutions to display how the product would look at the customer’s place or how they would look in a particular outfit

Such comprehensive information about the product gives the shopper even more knowledge on what they’re getting into and prevents returns arising from impulsive decisions.

Optimizing the post-purchase CX

Did we mention that returns are a necessary evil? If not, here’s it. Returns might seem like a headache when you see them coming in initially but with the right CX efforts, you can not just minimize returns but can also ensure that your customers don’t consider returns as a ‘bad thing’ and still choose to shop with you.

Might seem like a domino effect but delivering products promptly and safely holds the power to reduce the likelihood of returns due to delayed or damaged shipments. For delays, ensure that there is transparent communication via regular shipping updates so that your customers don’t blame you for the delay in the first place. To prevent damaged goods and thereby reduce the return rate, you need to protect the package’s contents with high-quality packaging.

In the event such incidents happen despite strict measures and the return is initiated, proper and proactive support from your end can mitigate frustration and ensure that your customers give you another chance. For instance, you can start by acknowledging the mistake, ensuring that an action has been taken (refund, replacement, or offering discounts on upcoming purchases as compensation), etc.

Not just shipping and delivery but even return experiences play a significant role in optimizing your post-purchase CX. While this may seem like a long game, making improvements to your returns process indeed has the power to cut down returns.

This starts with a clear and concise returns policy that highlights return windows, non-returnable items, and more; moves to a seamless returns experience that removes any kind of hassle and makes the whole process stress-free thereby improving customer satisfaction, fostering trust and loyalty; and ultimately ends with the opportunity to collect customer feedback and gain insights into returns data that can help pinpoint issues and lead to improvements that prevents return in the future.

Promote exchange or store credits over refunds

“How is making the customer opt for an exchange or store credit over refunds/chargebacks going to help me cut down returns?” is a valid question to ask. And to answer that question, no it doesn’t. At least not directly.

While exchanges don’t reduce return rates per se, they help cut down the impact of frequent returns and make sure you’re spending much less than what you were going to.

Here’s how it works.

An exchange instead of a refund on product returns means you still have to pay for all the return-associated costs such as processing, replacements, and labor costs.

However, here’s where things get different. In cases of returns like a damaged product, a late delivery, or one from a wardrobing customer, there’s a possibility that a refund might be the last time you hear from the customer. By simply replacing money with another product, you now have an opportunity to not just keep the sale but you can also provide an even better CX to delight and build loyalty.

P.S. This doesn’t mean you simply eliminate offering refunds altogether as it can put the customer in a spot, i.e., force them to keep purchasing and result in a bad return experience. Instead, you can get creative and encourage exchanges or store credits over refunds via incentives.

What's Next?

Returns are not just inevitable but are absolutely necessary for every business. Cutting down return rates doesn’t mean you simply avoid allowing returns at all (that can do more harm than good). Instead, you can try to cut down unwanted returns wherever possible to reduce workload, costs, etc.

The steps that we’ve covered in this article should give you insights into how you can proceed with reducing your returns. Instead of manually implementing them (the hard way), you can easily take control of all your returns from a returns center that makes the initiation self-service, automates the process, provides intelligence, and retains revenue.

LateShipment.com’s Returns Experience Management helps you do just that. LateShipment.com is an incredibly simple way of managing e-commerce returns — fully self-serve and automated for you and your shoppers alike.

Learn more about how LateShipment.com’s Returns Experience Management can work for you, help you reduce your store’s return rates, and offer return experiences that your customers truly love — talk to us today.

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How To Automate E-Commerce Customer Service

Sashank Ravindranath — Wed, 01 May 2024 14:08:44 +0000

Customer service is an important aspect of running a successful business. Whether you are selling products through your e-commerce website or a marketplace, effective customer service that is 24*7 is beneficial can be beneficial to boost sales and acquire loyal customers.

96% of customers admitted that customer service is an important factor in determining their loyalty towards a brand.

For starters, leveraging automation in customer service helps you solve your customers’ queries without any involvement of support agents. It also creates opportunities for you to deliver personalized shopping experiences.

In this post, we will explore the best ways to automate e-commerce customer service and delight your customers.

But first,

What is E-commerce Customer Service Automation?

E-commerce customer service automation is the process of integrating customer service with technology to streamline operations and provide quick and consistent responses to customer queries. The focus of automating customer service is to tend to customer requests as efficiently as possible without the need for human intervention or time consumption.

E-commerce customer service automation is a must if –

Your support team spends a lot of time working on repetitive support tasks
Your support inbox is always full of hundreds of requests and queries

Before we take a look at the different ways to bring in automation into your support processes, let us explore some of the benefits of leveraging this strategy for simplifying customer interactions.

Benefits of E-commerce Customer Service Automation

Automated customer service offers a multitude of benefits for e-commerce businesses because:

24*7 Availability – It offers 24*7 support to your customers irrespective of the time zone or location they are situated at. You can resolve customer queries even when your team is offline.
Increased Productivity – With automation, you can respond to more support tickets in less time. This speeds up the entire query resolution process, allowing your support agents more time to spend on priority tickets.
Real-time & Quick Responses – Automation lowers the ticket resolution time for your customers as you deliver quicker responses to their queries. It also reduces the amount of human errors in the responses.
Reduced Costs & Overheads – It brings together multiple support channels under a centralized platform allowing you to switch between various channels with ease. You do not have to invest in multiple tools to manage customer queries. As automation takes over manual repetitive tasks, you do not need to hire and train additional support representatives to handle large volumes of customer queries.
Empowered Customers – This allows customers to utilize self-service solutions like a customer portal, knowledge base, chatbots, and more to find quick resolutions to their problems. They do not have to contact human agents or rely on them to get their doubts solved.

5 Ways to Automate E-commerce Customer Service

E-commerce customer service automation offers proactive support to customers with what they need without having to contact any human agent. Here are a few ways you can automate your e-commerce customer service.

1. Automated Ticketing Management

The next aspect of customer service that you can automate is streamlining the process of customer service ticket assignment. No support agent would be happy sorting through dozens of support tickets to find the ones that are relevant to their department.

By using an automated ticket management system, you can categorize customer queries based on the problem type or department and automatically assign them to the correct team. The system also checks for the number of open tickets, availability of support agents, and a host of other factors before assignment. This ensures that your support agents have a balanced queue of support tickets and enough time to resolve them successfully.

You can also configure auto-responders or triggers to send acknowledgment emails to customers that their request has been received by the concerned team and is being currently processed.

2. Chatbots

AI-powered chatbots have become an indispensable part of E-commerce websites these days. They help customers at every step of their shopping journey by addressing their queries around the clock. They can also handle large volumes of queries simultaneously which is impossible for human agents. From providing answers to basic questions to addressing complex queries, chatbots take your customer service to the next level by helping you forge stronger customer relationships.

Investing in AI-powered chatbots can automate your query resolution process and offer personalized assistance to customers as well. Based on the customer queries, the AI engine can detect the ones that might require human intervention and forward them to the relevant support department. It can seamlessly conduct this agent handover without disrupting the customer experience.

3. Centralized Inbox

The first effective automation you can utilize is to have a centralized inbox for managing all your customer queries. This includes incoming questions from various channels like live chats, email, social media, WhatsApp, and so on. A unified inbox gathers all these queries and presents them in a single platform for easy access and timely resolution.

As customers today look for seamless omnichannel support, it is advisable to consolidate their inquiries from various channels into a single dashboard. This enables quicker and more organized responses. Furthermore, a shared inbox will automatically alert your team about the new messages. This will ensure that no customer query goes unnoticed. Any customer queries, regardless of which channel they are received on, will have minimal response times.

Jason Mueller from a1autotransport.com states: “Having a central inbox can be handy for any type of business. As we deal with many types of car shipments coming in from a variety of different sources and emails, having it in one inbox makes customer support a breeze, and it leaves you better organized as well.”

4. Hands-free Responses

Most of the time, e-commerce customers have similar inquiries like order-related updates, returns process, refund status, and so on. Hence, instead of spending time crafting individual responses, you can automate this process by creating templates. You can import the template into your messages in just a few clicks and send responses to your customers in no time.

Templates are pre-written messages that are automatically sent to the customers as a response to their standard questions. You can personalize the messages by adding desired dynamic content fields, such as customer name, shipment tracking link, order ID, and so on.

5. Self-serve Customer Portal

Last but not least, you can set up a self-service portal that allows customers to discover solutions to their queries on their own. In fact, 70% of customers expect brand websites to include a self-service application.

A self-service portal like document360 provides customers with all the necessary information to resolve simple and repetitive issues themselves. This portal is usually connected to a knowledge base that offers the right information to customers thereby reducing the need to rely on a human support agent. This reduces the number of customer inquiries being sent to your support team.

For example, Amazon offers an intuitive self-service portal that allows customers to directly contact the team or figure out things on their own. Check out the screenshot below that allows customers to track their orders, receive assistance with respect to their Prime membership, manage their payment information, and more.

Wrapping Up

E-commerce customer service automation helps you deliver high-quality customer service at all times. It refines and streamlines customer interactions using various tools like AI-powered chatbots, self-service portals, messaging templates, and more. This reduces the workload on your support team and enables them to cater to other important tasks.

Customer service automation when done in the right manner can make every customer interaction a delightful experience. It will show your customers that you care and boost loyalty. Leverage automation to simplify your e-commerce customer service and amp up your overall customer experience.

This is a guest post by Kruti Shah

Kruti Shah is a content writer and marketer at The Marketing Drama. She loves to write about insights on current trends in Technology, Business, and Marketing. In her free time, she loves baking and watching Netflix. You can connect with her on Linkedin.

The post How To Automate E-Commerce Customer Service appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

10+ E-Commerce Memes On Post-Purchase Experiences

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 04:56:22 +0000

Not just post-purchase or even e-commerce, but most blogs that you sit down to read, either in your leisure time or on the go — tell you two things. You can either do this or do not do this. How about something different for a bit? How about sitting and just looking at memes that perfectly describe the rollercoaster of emotions that you usually go through at your work?

Well, most work memes describe conditions at the workplace or a specific situation, like a customer coming in with a weird request. How about another change? Let’s talk about memes that capture what your customers (and maybe even you!) experience in the post-purchase — shipping, delivery, and returns phases as well as decode the process they represent.

Think of this article as putting down everything you’re doing to scroll through your social account and laugh at a video of the two cats talking to each other. For people working in the hectic area of e-commerce, especially in the post-purchase phase, we’d like to call this article the digital embodiment of TGIF.

Let’s start with the most relatable memes and progress to the most thought-provoking ones.

ICYMI, here’s the first part of this article — e-commerce memes that exclusively cover just the order delivery phase.

1. Estimated Delivery Date

Meeting customers’ high expectations regarding order deliveries might not be so easy but remember, there are a lot of brands out there that would easily replace you as their choice unless you’re making efforts to give them what they want.

To keep up with the rising competition, you need to constantly create an opportunity for the customer to trust your brand.

A great way to start your efforts is to set them with the right delivery expectations and show that a great post-purchase experience awaits them. You can do this by showing the estimated order arrival date on multiple areas of your website such as product, cart, and checkout pages.

Knowing the delivery timeline, keeps their expectations in check and helps you improve conversions and reduce cart abandonment. Just make sure to not break their trust.

2. Lack of Updates

A situation where all of us as customers would have definitely been at least once. That really speaks volumes about the relatability of this issue, we might say.

We place an order, it gets confirmed, we get ecstatic… Then what? We’d have to wait 2-3 business days until the package to be mysteriously delivered. This happens in most cases and should be highly avoided if you’re the merchant.

Because, here’s what happens — On average, 1 in 5 parcels shipped face delivery issues, such as delays and getting lost, and customers are aware of this — making them constantly worry that their package would be one of them. This puts them in a perpetual state of anxiety, causing them to bombard your support reps with WISMO inquiries, thereby consuming all of your support team’s time and leading to increased costs.

3. Issue Resolution

The post-purchase phase is notorious for issues that have the potential to hurt customer satisfaction if left unattended and when one such incident happens, all your efforts to provide the customer with a great shopping experience won’t matter if a subpar post-purchase experience is all your customers are going to remember about your brand.

You don’t have to do anything new or special. Just include proactive shipping notifications for events such as delays, lost in transit, failed delivery attempts, etc, and assure the customer that efforts are being made to rectify the issue at hand. This prevents customer frustration and thereby complaints and bad reviews.

With customers satisfied, you can follow up by sending a replacement or issuing coupons for upcoming purchases, whatever they prefer to exceed the expectations of your brand.

4. Complex Return Policies and Procedures

Everything went well with the delivery process and the customer is excited to open their package. But it was not what they expected — the order was of the wrong size or color, then there’s no choice for the customer but to return their purchase, the one that they’ve waited for all this time.

Contrary to the myths, returns are not a bad thing. In fact, they open doors for new CX opportunities in the post-purchase phase. But that doesn’t mean customers are excited to do returns each time, so make sure the experience isn’t even stressful for them.

Simplify returns for them with your policies and procedures:

Make your return policy easily accessible on your website
Clearly outline the return window, eligible items, refund options (full, partial, store credit), and any restocking fees
Make initiating returns easy via a self-serve returns portal
Allow returns to multiple locations (stores, drop-off points) or offer pick-up services
Provide customers with real-time tracking information for their return shipment
Just like delivery status notifications, send timely email updates on the status of the return and refund.

5. Customer Service Nightmares

Let’s assume a brand missed out on doing each of the aforementioned steps or even just one of them.

What do you think happens next?

All of your support reps’ time is wasted tending to customer queries and complaints, preventing other important stuff like product-related inquiries from getting addressed. This leads to additional costs in the form of unwanted support tickets.

Also, too many support inquiries to handle, results in slower response and first resolution times, and ultimately putting your customer in a state of outrage.

By making use of a real-time tracking solution like LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management, you can provide support agents with order status info inside your helpdesk to enable fast resolution of delivery issues. Overtime, this enables a better control to measure and improve support operations and post-purchase CX with accuracy & speed.

6. High Shipping Costs

One of the major reasons behind cart abandonment is customers facing the shock of high shipping costs as they’re about to checkout (48%). When this becomes repetitive, you have no option but to absorb these costs, giving up a percent of your profit in return for conversions.

There’s a better way to do this with not one, but multiple solutions — explore regional fulfillment centers to shorten distances, offer BOPIS options, negotiate better rates with carriers, and offer transparent shipping options with clear cost breakdowns.

Additionally, you can consider offering free shipping and return shipping as a marketing tool to attract customers and boost conversion rates.

7. Benefits of Insuring Packages

Adding to increased shipping costs cometh the costs associated with order delivery issues such as lost and damaged incidents that are more frequent in occurrence than you think.

This is where shipping insurance comes in. If you’re an e-commerce merchant who regularly has to ship out parcels with expensive content, try getting them insured.

Shipping insurance gives you financial security against potential loss or damage and allows you to ship out parcels without worrying about significant losses due to said delivery issues. The best part, despite its numerous benefits, insurance is easier to get than most people think.

Especially with third-party, merchant-led insurance options like LateShipment.com — you can bring in comprehensive coverage options, automate insurance based on custom rules, and effortlessly manage claims.

8. Refunds for Carrier Errors

Apart from loss and damage, there exist over 50 carrier errors including delivery issues such as late deliveries and billing errors such as unwanted surcharges that go into your shipping invoices.

The issue? These costs (although smaller in isolation), are common and severe in the long run, adding an extra 20% or so on your shipping bills.

But as with all other problems mentioned above, we also have a solution for it. Start auditing your parcels and claim refunds for 50+ service failures and save on shipping costs.

However, it may not be easy as manually auditing all your shipping invoices is an exhaustive task. Thus, get your hands on automation to submit refund claims and recover every dollar that is rightfully yours.

9. Optimizing Shipping Processes

Regularly auditing your invoices and claiming refunds also shows you which areas of your shipping and delivery need improvement.

For example, what delivery issues or billing errors are a more common sighting, which carrier performs with the most inefficiencies, how much are you spending on shipping, etc.

All these insights can help you negotiate better carrier rates, make better shipping choices, and ultimately curate your most profitable shipping strategy.

10. Savings on Returns

Another great way to start saving on shipping costs is to reduce as many returns as you can.

One approach is to mention all return details correctly in your shipping policy, ensure products are of the highest quality, etc, and cut down on unwanted returns. Another approach is to make sure that not all returns are refunded but instead opportunities for repeat shopping.

For example, you can encourage customers to exchange and store credits over refunds to secure the sale and make customers shop with you again.

11. Post-Purchase Branding

You might think savings are the best thing to come out of your post-purchase.

But what if I told you there’s something better? And that is post-purchase being a revenue channel of its own when put to maximum use.

The first step towards that course is to replace traditional order tracking in carrier pages with custom-built branded tracking experiences.

For instance, populate the tracking pages built on your domain and shipping notifications with your branded elements such as color, font, etc, to keep customers in a brand-immersive experience and ensure your brand remains on the top of the customers’ minds.

12. Post-Purchase As A Marketing Channel

Customers track their order 6 to 8 times before delivery, that’s 6 to 8 lost opportunities to generate more sales during order tracking.

Once you’ve made sure your customers have had a positive experience and your brand recall game is done right, the next step is to transform tracking moments into recurring revenue opportunities with effective cross-sell techniques.

A great way to do that is to include personalized product recommendations, discounts, and other sales promotions on your tracking page and shipping notifications to double your chances at driving sales.

Final Word

So, there you have it – a glimpse into hilarious (and relatable) post-purchase memes. While laughter is certainly the best medicine, remember, these memes aren’t just for amusement. They hold valuable insights into your customers’ minds and experiences.

So embrace the meme, embrace the feedback, and keep creating an e-commerce experience that’s anything but meme-worthy (in a bad way, that is)!

The post 10+ E-Commerce Memes On Post-Purchase Experiences appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Post-Purchase Experience And Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Relationship Goals

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 08:26:56 +0000

The success of an e-commerce business depends on a lot of factors — venturing into new markets, net profits made during a quarter, rapport shared with customers and the general public, offering quality products and services, etc. As a merchant, you initiate and perform a list of activities that contribute to said success — be it by improving the shopping experience, coming up with offers, or leveraging tools.

Success may be a very broad topic but there are narrow, definite ways to measure the outcome of success for particular aspects of your business. One such measure is Customer Lifetime Value, which provides insights into aspects like customer satisfaction, repeat shopping, and revenue generation.

Understanding Customer Lifetime Value

Just like the name says, Customer Lifetime Value is the total amount of money that a customer spends in the time they were doing business with you. In other words, a.k.a. industry terminology, Customer Lifetime Value is a metric that represents the total revenue a customer generates for their business throughout their relationship with your company. Both CLV and CLTV are common acronyms for Customer Lifetime Value and are interchangeably used.

Talking about CLV, it’s a calculation used to assess the long-term financial value of a customer. Take this scenario, you possess a Netflix subscription that you renew for $22.99 every month. Now, if you’ve been a subscriber for more than 9 months, your lifetime value would be $206.91.

The idea behind using Netflix as an example is that CLV is easy to calculate for a subscription-based business. But when it comes to an e-commerce business where product values and consumer spending differ, there is no actual guarantee on the specific amount or time of the customer’s next spending.

However, with a little ‘extra’ effort, you can ensure an assured increase in CLV. But before we get into the efforts, let’s look at how CLV actually spells ‘success’ for your business.

How CLV measures the success of your business

CLV is not just a metric that talks about revenue but also gives you insights on various metrics that spell long-term success for your business.

Profitability: By subtracting Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) from CLV, a business can determine the profitability of acquiring and retaining customers (a metric known as adjusted CLV or CLV to CAC ratio).
Retention rates: A non-subscription model and higher CLV often translate to better customer retention rates, i.e., an indication that they are satisfied with the products or services.
Long-Term Strategy: CLV encourages businesses to focus on long-term success, thereby promoting strategies that prioritize customer satisfaction, loyalty, and even brand advocacy.

It is clear that CLV is a powerful metric that measures the success of a business by assessing its revenue generation, profitability, customer retention, etc. So, what do e-commerce businesses generally do to improve their business’ CLV?

The impact of post-purchase experiences on CLV and other metrics of growth

ICYMI, the post-purchase experience comprises of all customer interactions that take place once the order has been shipped until it reaches the customer’s destination or in some cases is making its way back to the warehouse. It makes up 50% of the overall order experience, meaning that when done right, it is a goldmine of opportunity to increase retention and so much more.

However, most businesses (like you, probably) neglect the customer experience after checkout. This may not be a good move, considering the post-purchase, when unattended is a time that is marred by frequent issues such as delays and customer rants on support channels that have the power to jeopardize the CLV.

Customers don’t care much about the workings of the parcel behind the screen. What matters is that customers have a low tolerance for delivery issues and will shift to a competitor after one poor experience. This brings us to the first metric, retention rates.

Customer Retention Rate (CRR) – A measure to identify if your customers are indeed happy and are still shopping with you at the end of a period compared to at the start of it. Remember, increasing your customer retention rate even by 5% could lead to increased profits of between 25% and 95%.
Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) – In simple terms, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the cost of convincing a potential customer to purchase your product/service. This includes the cost of marketing and sales. When businesses have low retention rates (thanks to poor CX), their immediate choice is to look after new customers. What they don’t realize is that it is 5x to acquire a new customer than retain an existing customer.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – Low retention rates and high acquisition rates are a direct sign of low CLV because naturally, the longer a customer chooses to buy from a business, the greater their lifetime value. High CLV rates are a must for businesses as loyal customers are worth 10 times as much as the value of their first purchase.

The message is loud and clear. For a higher CLV, you have to create a great post-purchase experience and that brings us to the focus of this article and the question in your head — what should I be doing to my post-purchase if I need to increase my CLV?

We’ve heard you and drafted a list of post-purchase techniques that you need to follow if your focus is CLV.

Post-Purchase Strategies to Boost CLV

1. Data-driven personalization

Data-driven personalization in Customer Experience (CX) refers to leveraging data analytics and technology to create highly customized and relevant experiences for each customer such as tailoring interactions, product recommendations, and other content based on their past behaviors, preferences, and demographic information.

In a report by Salesforce, 52% of the consumers said they would switch to a different business if the CX was not personalized.

Here are some examples of data-driven personalization in post-purchase CX.

1.1 Leverage Customer feedback to improve post-purchase engagement and operations

There’s no better way for businesses to gain insights into their customers’ experiences and preferences than actively seeking and analyzing customer feedback. Know what your customers think of your post-purchase operations, what their expectations are, etc, and work on meeting exceeding them.

Here’s how customer feedback contributes to data-driven personalization and improving CLV:

Engagement analytics: Leverage insights from post-purchase engagement KPIs like tracking page visits, open and click-through rates on notifications to include personalized and branded elements that put your brand on top of the customers’ minds.
Optimize fulfillment (delivery and returns) operations and post-purchase CX: Gain access to a goldmine of data in the form of customer satisfaction feedback on delivery and return-related experiences to make post-purchase enhancements.

P.S. Apart from customer feedback, regularly tracking your customers’ parcels in the delivery and returns phases also gives you shipping intelligence on aspects such as on-time performance, returns trends, and other insights, etc, that help you unlock opportunities that improve your post-purchase operations.

1.2 Repeat purchase strategies

Providing a great post-purchase CX is 90% of the work done to ensure your customers keep picking your business over your competitors. All they need is a little encouragement in the form of product recommendations & promotions that double the chances.

Personalized product recommendations: Convert visits to your order tracking page into repeat purchases with personalized product recommendations based on your customers’ recent purchases.
Targeted marketing campaigns: Use your tracking pages and email campaigns as real estate to drive more sales through targeted campaigns, discounts, and sales promotions.

2. Effective post-purchase customer engagement

Personalization in post-purchase marketing is an essential part of keeping customers really excited about repeat shopping with you but it doesn’t work unless your customers are happy with the delivery experience they’ve received. And trust me, this is an important hurdle to cross as the post-purchase is a phase where issues are frequent and have the potential to create bad experiences that demotivate customers from choosing you.

This is where an effective post-purchase engagement strategy that nurtures customer relationships, drives additional sales, and creates a positive feedback loop comes into place.

Proactive notifications: Make use of a post-purchase automation platform that sends out proactive alerts for delivery issues and enables you to proactively notify customers. Even if you are unable to take measures to correct the course, your customers will appreciate your efforts and thereby give you a chance to avoid a bad delivery experience.
Timely shipping updates: Even if everything seems to be going well, you can still capitalize on the post-purchase opportunity to engage your customers with timely email and SMS shipping notifications that keep them in the loop of their orders and mitigate their anticipation.

3. Seamless returns experiences

Most e-commerce merchants often assume returns to be a bad thing for their e-commerce business but that’s only when they’re left unattended. When taken care of in the best possible way, returns are the perfect opportunity to turn a potentially negative interaction into loyalty and growth.

Here are some ways businesses can provide a returns process that builds customer trust and contributes to CLV growth.

Easy returns: As the first step to making returns hassle-free, you can begin with an easy initiation process and follow up with return status updates and self-serve return status tracking.
Promoting exchanges over refunds: Not all returns have to be refunded and end in a lost sale. Instead, you can offer convenient exchange and store credit options that encourage customers to confidently shop with you again.

Final word

A great way to measure the success of yours is the strong customer relationships that are created from positive customer experiences, fortified by your post-purchase phase efforts such as hassle-free returns, hype-personalization, and effective customer engagement.

These are no secret ingredients but something businesses like yours have unwillingly neglected over the years for multiple reasons. So, if you’re looking to supercharge your post-purchase strategies and improve CLV, LateShipment.com is your one-stop solution.

With LateShipment.com’s suite of solutions, businesses can seamlessly provide seamless post-purchase experience that customers crave and ultimately boost loyalty and revenue.

Interested to know more? Check out the different ways in which LateShipment.com can work for your e-commerce business.

Still have queries? Talk to us

The post Post-Purchase Experience And Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Relationship Goals appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

5-Point Checklist To Reduce Post-Purchase Customer Inquiries

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 10:22:21 +0000

The post-purchase is an exciting phase for your customers, as it is the last station before they get to their destination called happiness from collecting their orders. However, with most e-commerce merchants not having much awareness about the post-purchase phase and unwillingly neglecting its events, the ‘exciting phase’ is also one of the ‘most anxious’ phases for customers.

This anticipation of order deliveries facing issues (understandable, as 1-in-5 parcels shipped face delivery issues) leads to customers bombarding your support team with WISMO or Where IS My Order? Inquiries.

WISMO requests alone make up approximately 50% of the overall customer inquiries.

Stats highlight that customers’ expectations when it comes to delivery and returns experiences are only becoming higher, yes — but when you think about it, here are some of their primary expectations:

“I’d like to stay in the know of my package at all times”
“If there’s an issue with my package, I’d like to know it beforehand”.

It sounds quite reasonable if you ask.

However, there is an increased frustration among customers because most businesses they shop with fall under the category of not meeting their “bare minimum” expectations.

Forget the stats for a moment — as an e-commerce merchant, you would’ve witnessed countless times, when a customer contacts your support team demanding to know the status of their orders as they grew increasingly anxious about its arrival.

Not just for the sake of your customers, even your support reps would agree that frequently tending to post-purchase issues and pacifying disgruntled customers only consumes all of your support team’s time, thereby preventing them from tending to other important tasks at hand.

30% of the customer support team’s time and effort is WASTED handling repetitive delivery and return-related inquiries

The good news is that with the right course of action, post-purchase queries can be contained extensively so that your support team now saves quality time and you can improve customer satisfaction by mitigating frustrations.

Here’s a checklist containing steps that you can take to reduce customer queries (particularly WISMO) and provide a great post-purchase customer experience. Without further ado, let’s get started.

5-Point Checklist To Reduce Post-Purchase Customer Inquiries

1. Keep customers in the loop of their orders via delivery status updates

A. Automate important shipping notifications

In the era of instant gratification, the only thing that keeps customers from bombarding your business with order status inquiries or ‘WISMO calls’ is your initiative to keep them constantly updated on their orders in transit.

The best way to do this is to automate notifications for important shipping events such as order confirmed, shipped, out-for-delivery, etc. Such notifications assure the customer that their order is making its way and give them the confidence to keep shopping with you.

Remember, the key is to keep these notifications proactive and cover multiple channels such as email, SMS, or WhatsApp to reach customers where they are most active.

B. Make order tracking self-service

Another opportunity that you can create to keep your customers aware of their orders at all times is to simply enable them to track orders on their own.

Here’s how it can be done: once the order gets shipped, you can notify customers with a ‘track your order’ link or embed a button on your website or chat.

By tracking orders on their own, your customers can look up the status of their deliveries any time they need and thereby are less prone to get your support team’s help.

2. Fix delivery issues before they happen

A. Receive alerts for critical issues

Staying reactive and doing damage control for delivery issues is an option. However, this may not be the best option, given that the customer is already impacted by the issue.

Here’s the thing about just being reactive to delivery issues: on the one hand, support reps are tired of constantly hearing angry rants from customers and tending to them. On the other hand, manually checking all of the customers’ parcels for issues and personally catering to them is an exhaustive and almost impossible task (especially if your shipping volume is a bit high).

A great way to get started on dealing with these two birds with one stone is to make use of a real-time tracking solution that triggers alerts for critical delivery issues like delays, lost in transit, failed delivery attempts, etc, and enables your support team to take proactive action.

B. Proactively resolve delivery issues

An extension of automated notifications and real-time alerts is the newfound ability to proactively reach out to customers whose parcels are facing critical delivery issues and take appropriate measures to course correctly.

Even if you are unable to fix the issue in the end, your customers will be appreciative of your efforts to rectify the issue and provide them with a positive experience.

Ultimately, this helps you not only mitigate their frustration levels but also create an opportunity to make them choose your brand again despite a delivery issue incident.

C. Integrate your help desk system

One of the major reasons for slow response times amidst a high incoming volume of queries, leading to poor satisfaction levels in customer service is the lack of sufficient data and the right tools to empower staff to help customers better.

For instance, in the case of a delay, your support representatives have to go back and forth on the carrier’s tracking page for package information and the help desk tool to fix the issue. However, this process is inefficient and as mentioned can negatively impact your Average Handle Time.

Instead, work with a real-time tracking solution that empowers support agents with information related to customer order delivery and return status inside your helpdesk so they can quickly respond and proactively resolve post-purchase issues without switching between tools.

3. Extend the capabilities of order-tracking

A. Share the estimated delivery timeline information

The customer gets curious about their order and asks you about the status. You can share a link to the carrier’s tracking page, where the customer tracks their order as it gets periodically updated. This is how order tracking has traditionally been done. But what if there’s a better way to do this?

Display estimated order delivery dates on your product, cart, and checkout pages to let the customer know when their order might be reaching them even before the order is placed. This way, your customers will be less prone to check with you for WISMO inquiries.

You can also add an order countdown timer to create an urgency. Ultimately, this can help you improve conversions and reduce cart abandonment.

B. Include options for the customer to easily access things directly from the tracking page

Another way to achieve a great post-purchase customer experience in the order phase is to include elements such as options to exchange or return, contact customer service, view offers of similar products that go along with their purchase, and much more.

By putting your focus on customer convenience via easy access, your customers are less likely to require your help while requiring an answer for frequent post-purchase queries such as “how to initiate a return?”.

A great CX paired with branding in the post-purchase helps in brand recall and increases the chances of repeat shopping.

4. Initiate steps to reduce post-purchase inquiries even before an order is placed

A. Include all necessary information on the shipping policy page

Not just a quality order tracking experience but much more can be done on your part, even before an order is placed which can reduce customer inquiries to a greater extent.

For starters, make sure to include information such as available shipping methods, international shipping options, and other FAQs such as how to edit order details such as updating the cart, changing delivery address, etc. on your shipping policy page.

P.S. Make sure these page(s) are frequently updated from time to time to prevent any miscommunication.

B. Let customers know about uncommon delivery-related news

E-commerce is an uncertain space where there can be instances of uncommon delivery delays such as supply chain crises and weather-related incidents.

While such incidents happen outside of your control, you can still minimize the damage by notifying your customers of such incidents happening on your homepage and email campaigns.

Proactively addressing the issue builds trust and prevents customers from needing to reach out to you worried about their parcels. Also, with your customers staying informed, you can manage their expectations to a large extent and ease potential frustration.

C. Automate responses via a chatbot

A great option to reduce the burden of frequent post-purchase customer inquiries is to make use of automated chatbots on your website.

These chatbots can be programmed to proactively reach out to customers after their purchase to confirm orders, provide estimated delivery times, and offer tracking, return and exchange information.

The best part is that these chatbots can provide immediate answers 24/7, even outside of your business hours, reducing customer frustration and wait times.

5. Make the process of returns and exchanges seamless

A. Self-service returns and exchanges

Post-purchase customer inquiries don’t stop when the order has been delivered. In fact, they continue through order returns and exchange processes as well.

Don’t just stop by highlighting return-related information such as policies but carry it through until the end of that order experience via hassle-free returns.

The first step is to enable shoppers to initiate and proceed with a return/exchange requiring the most minimal or zero help via self-service returns that guide them with detailed shipping instructions, generate downloadable labels, etc.

B. Returns tracking and notifications

Once your customers have successfully initiated a return, make sure they are in the know of their return status until it is completed, be it reaching the warehouse or even getting denied from your end.

Similar to the order delivery phase, you can ensure seamless tracking in the returns phase as well via

Personalized, proactive return status updates via email and SMS
Enabling customers to look up real-time status updates on their returns on their own
Present real-time status updates and detailed information on your return tracking pages

By providing a hassle-free returns experience, you can ensure that an order return won’t be the last you hear from the customer but they keep shopping with you for a long time to come.

Implementing all the steps mentioned in this checklist can be easily done in no time but we’d like to make it even easier for you. Instead of manual action, you can make use of a solution like LateShipment.com that automates your post-purchase tasks while helping you reap the benefits of a great post-purchase customer experience.

How Lateshipment.Com Can Help You Reduce Post-purchase Customer Inquiries

In the context of seamless order delivery and returns experience, LateShipment.com helps craft great experiences that boost loyalty and revenue for your e-commerce business.

Via effective automation techniques, LateShipment.com also guarantees a reduction in support tickets by up to 72%.

Here’s how LateShipment.com’s post-purchase solution tackles frequent customer inquiries:

Automated notifications to keep customers informed and reduce their need to reach out for updates.
Proactively identify potential delays and inform customers before they arise, thereby managing expectations and preventing frustration.
Self-service portals to look up order statuses and initiate returns and exchanges to reduce reliance on support for these common actions.
Delivery and return feedback to gain insights into customer behavior and identify areas for improvement in post-purchase communication strategies.

By making use of LateShipment.com for your post-purchase needs, you can significantly reduce customer inquiries and reduce the burden on your support team and provide a smoother post-purchase experience for your customers.

The post 5-Point Checklist To Reduce Post-Purchase Customer Inquiries appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How To Exceed Your Customers’ Expectations For The Holiday Season

Sashank Ravindranath — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 08:15:47 +0000

Want to truly stand out in this competitive e-commerce landscape and enjoy the fruits of holiday season success?

Easy. Give your customers what they want.

What customers want

The increase in e-commerce-based technology, changes in the status quo of online shopping, ever-dynamic trends, etc have all turned customers’ wants into needs. Don’t forget, these interests keep on changing YoY.

Sure, you can do the bare minimum and just meet ends. But that doesn’t cut through today’s landscape.

You really need to understand your customers’ mindset, go the extra mile, and give more than what they want

To help you do that, we’ve tried to cover some of the most crucial things your customers expect from your brand and how you can exceed their expectations.

How To Exceed Your Customers' Expectations For The Holiday Season

Here are several strategies and tips that can help you not only meet but exceed customers’ expectations to ensure that your e-commerce business shines during the holiday season.

Let’s delve into these techniques and make this holiday season one to remember.

1. Store, marketing, and the holiday spirit

Let’s start with one of the early expectations for customers when choosing an e-commerce store to shop with during the holiday season — a trustworthy and interesting store.

Imagine ending up on a website or application for your particular holiday season needs and finding it outdated. It really makes one question the authenticity of the store and keeps it easy to move on to the next option.

So, what can you do to prevent this from happening to your business?

Populate your store’s website with a holiday-themed design that includes banners, icons, graphics, colors, and imagery
Consider incorporating interactive features such as holiday-themed quizzes, interactive product showcases, and other virtual experiences into your marketing campaigns to engage customers
Set up personalized email campaigns to prevent abandoned cart incidents. You can also take this up a notch and include holiday-special offers to motivate your customers even further
Offer branded tracking pages to improve convenience for the customer with seamless order tracking and brand recall

2. Gift guides, bundles, and special initiatives

Moving on to our next holiday-specific initiatives — 36% of holiday season orders are gifts for someone else. Here are some ideas for you to capitalize on this opportunity and maximize your selling capabilities.

Create gift guides tailored to different recipient types or occasions, such as “Gifts for Pet Lovers” or “Holiday Party Essentials.” Organize these guides on your website for easy access
Offer bundled product packages that combine related items at a discounted price
Provide optional holiday-themed gift-wrapping services during the checkout process to add an extra layer of convenience
Allow customers to add personalized notes and gift-giving options to make the unboxing experience exciting

3. Shipping, fulfillment, and timely deliveries

Thanks to the growth of e-commerce, apart from looking across products and choosing a brand to buy them, today’s customers also have high expectations when it comes to order deliveries.

Their need for timely and intact order deliveries is understandable and somewhat from their perspective, the bare minimum.

However, with shipping carriers straining capacity during each holiday season to deliver a huge volume of packages, tasks like getting orders out on time become an uphill task.

Optimize your order fulfillment process to reduce processing times. Consider using automated systems to streamline order handling
Offer multiple shipping options such as BOPIS and expedited shipping options for customers who need their purchases urgently
Collaborate with multiple shipping partners based on their pros and cons to ensure on-time delivery and minimize the risk of shipping delays
Consider free shipping (with certain conditions such as order value or for exclusive members) to spur shoppers to spend more

4. Communication, engagement, and positive CX

Not just during the holiday season, something to always keep in mind with your customers is to prevent unnecessary frustrations from bad shopping experiences.

The bad news is that there are a lot of instances that arise from high customer expectations that can result in these bad experiences.

The good news is that proper communication can help you mitigate customer frustrations and ensure a positive customer experience.

Clearly outline your holiday shipping and return policies on your website. Include information about shipping deadlines, costs, and return windows
Communicate your customer support hours during the holiday season. Provide multiple contact options such as live chat, email, and phone support
Proactively resolve order issues before your customers become aware of them in the first place
Offer real-time order tracking, delivery and return status updates so that customers can monitor the progress of their purchases

5. Feedback, gratitude, and a personalized touch

One of the best ways to exceed your customers’ expectations apart from your regular offerings is to connect with them on a personal level.

In the current e-commerce landscape, where almost all of your competitors offer the same products, it is the experiences that you offer that give you an advantage.

Encourage customers to leave feedback and reviews after their holiday purchases. Express your appreciation for their input and use their feedback to improve your services
Send personalized thank-you emails to customers after their holiday purchases. Express your gratitude for their support and include a heartfelt message. You can also consider including handwritten thank-you notes in packages to add a personal touch. These notes convey your appreciation and make customers feel valued
As a token of your gratitude, offer exclusive discounts or promotions to loyal customers. This not only shows appreciation but also incentivizes repeat business
Include personalized order recommendations based on customer history in your tracking pages and delivery notifications to improve cross-selling opportunities and covert order tracking into a separate revenue channel.

Final Word

By implementing these comprehensive strategies and tips, you can not only meet but exceed your customers’ expectations during the holiday season.

Remember that the holiday season offers an opportunity to create memorable experiences and foster lasting customer relationships that extend beyond the festive period.

Wishing you a joyful and successful holiday season filled with happy customers and thriving sales!

The post How To Exceed Your Customers’ Expectations For The Holiday Season appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Empowering E-commerce: Essential free marketing tools to outshine your competitors

Raksna Anand — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 15:22:29 +0000

There’s fierce competition everywhere, especially in the e-commerce industry. Every e-commerce business has a unique value proposition that comes out from meticulously analyzing market gaps and caters to every need of the customer. In today’s bustling scenario, it’s important that you stand out from the crowd. But how can you achieve this edge? You need to keep an eye out on your competitors. Monitor and analyze their moves which could give you valuable insights that you might be missing out on and also helps you identify any gaps in the market with essential e-commerce marketing tools.

Here’s compelling reasons why keeping tabs on your competitors is important:

Analyzing Market Gaps: There’s always new needs rising in your market. But by knowing what your competitor offers, and what they don’t, you can find a gap in your market and fill it with your own products and services.
Improving Marketing Strategies: Marketing can be one of the most expensive parts of your business. Analyzing your competitor’s marketing methods and learning from their success and failure can be a huge cost saver for you. You can fine-tune your own marketing strategies for maximum impact.
Enhancing Product Offerings: Tracking your competitor’s product offering and new product launches could inspire you to create new products and offerings with unique propositions which could be comparatively better than your competitor’s.
Keeping Pricing in Check: To stay competitive in the market, you need to offer unique, high quality products with amazing pre-purchase and post-purchase experiences. But never forget the important factor which plays a key role in the buying decision – price. Match prices with your competitors during the holiday season and drive sales.
Customer Retention: Keeping tabs on all the retention strategies of your customer users, you can outbid them on the bottom-of-the-funnel marketing too. Remember that retaining customers would always cost less than acquiring new customers.

Essential free e-commerce marketing tools to outshine your competitors

1. Milled.com

Every brand does email marketing. Email marketing is often done to let customers know about the new product launches, offers and on-going promotions, abandoned cart emails, back to stock emails and so on. This channel remains as a constant form of communication between the customer and the brand. By analyzing the emails being sent to the customers, brands can keep tabs on promotional tactics, market trends and customer engagement. But this often is concealed between a customer and the brand.

Introducing Milled.com, a game-changing free e-commerce marketing tool that acts as a comprehensive newsletter search engine.

Features:

Unprecedented insights on your competitors email marketing campaigns
Access to landing pages
Frequency of emails being sent
Visual representation of the newsletter

On exposure to the competitor’s newsletter, brands can gain access to various information like the layout being used, educational content that is reaching the customers and the unique benefits of the brand being highlighted. . Armed with these powerful insights, e-commerce brands can craft compelling and innovative email campaigns that resonate with their audience, drive engagement, and ultimately lead to increased customer loyalty and conversions.

Here’s a tutorial of how you can use this powerful tool.

2. Meta Ads Library

E-commerce brands often face the challenge of investing in advertising campaigns without certainty of their success. The cost of running ads can quickly escalate, and without knowing which strategies will yield results, it becomes a daunting task to optimize the budget effectively.

Enter Meta Ads Library, a game-changing free ecommerce marketing tool that takes the uncertainty out of the equation.

Features:

Access to creatives
Access to landing pages
Data on how long the ad’s been running
Insight on captions being used
Insights to CTA
Information on the types of meta platforms the brand uses

By leveraging this powerful meta ad library, e-commerce brands can make informed decisions, refine their advertising tactics, and allocate their budget to the most promising campaigns. Eliminate the guesswork, harness the potential of data-driven competitor analysis, and discover the winning formula to stand out in the competitive advertising landscape with Meta Ads Library.

Here’s a tutorial on how to use this free e-commerce marketing tool.

3. Visual Ping

Monitoring competitors’ websites allows brands to identify potential opportunities, track pricing adjustments, and even discover new product launches in real-time.

Visual Ping, a powerful free e-commerce marketing tool, empowers e-commerce brands to achieve precisely that.

Features:

Real-time Change detection and monitoring
Alert sent to email if change is detected
Track changes at scale

By leveraging Visual Ping, e-commerce brands can gain a strategic advantage, swiftly adapt to market changes, and make data-driven decisions to outperform competitors.This remains as an indispensable tool for this internet era.

Here’s a video tutorial on how to use this tool.

4. Google Ads Transparency centre

Google Ads play a pivotal role in the success of e-commerce brands by placing their businesses in front of potential customers actively searching for products or services they offer. With Google Ads, brands can drive targeted sales, leads, and site traffic, making it a powerful tool for gaining visibility and boosting conversions. However, to truly stand out and excel in the competitive digital landscape, keeping a vigilant eye on competitors’ Google Ads campaigns is crucial.

Enter the Google Ads Transparency Centre, a free e-commerce marketing tool that empowers brands to achieve this competitive advantage.

Features:

Comprehensive view of google ads
Insights on keywords used
Access to creatives, placement and price points
Access to landing pages

Leveraging the Google Ads Transparency Centre, e-commerce brands can maximize their advertising ROI, drive targeted sales, leads, and site traffic. This powerful tool acts as a beacon of knowledge, guiding businesses to stay ahead in the dynamic digital landscape and reach potential customers who are actively searching for products or services they offer on Google.

Here’s a video tutorial on how to use this tool.

5. Similar Web

Understanding where competitors generate their website traffic provides valuable insights into their marketing strategies, audience engagement, and potential untapped opportunities.

Enter SimilarWeb, a powerful free e-commerce marketing tool that revolutionizes competitor analysis. This traffic analysis site empowers e-commerce brands to achieve just that.

Features:

Information on top marketing channels
Insights on display ad traffic, referral traffic
Comparison with competitors

With SimilarWeb, e-commerce brands can stay informed, refine their SEO and marketing strategies, and capitalize on competitor insights to drive targeted traffic to their websites. By unlocking the secrets behind successful traffic sources, brands can elevate their digital presence and make informed decisions to outshine competitors in the competitive online marketplace

Here’s a tutorial on how to use this tool.

Bottom Line

In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, embracing these free tools allows brands to remain agile, adaptive, and always one step ahead of the competition. With the right tools and the right mindset, e-commerce brands can pave their path to greatness, cement their position in the market, and emerge as trailblazers in their industry. The journey to outshine competitors starts today, and these free tools are the guiding light to unlock unparalleled success. So, harness the power of data-driven competitor analysis and embark on an exciting journey of e-commerce excellence!

Want to catch up on more such hacks, follow us on our social media channels to grab them fresh!

The post Empowering E-commerce: Essential free marketing tools to outshine your competitors appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

3 D2C Brands Setting the Bar High on Instagram

Raksna Anand — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 16:01:36 +0000

Has marketing changed over the past few years? Yes, drastically. It’s important to realize that the change in consumer behavior has led to this drastic change. People have access to all the knowledge in the world with just a single click. Customers make well informed decisions before buying a product. People get influenced by social media a lot. With the rise of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, companies have unlocked unprecedented opportunities to captivate and engage millions of users worldwide.

Social media has become an integral part of their business strategies, influencing purchasing decisions of consumers by a staggering 73% (Oberlo)

Why instagram specifically?

Let’s just simply agree that everyone’s on instagram. Everyone includes individuals, businesses and even pets! And instagram is a great place to discover brands. 71% of US businesses are on instagram (Oberlo.com). It gets really difficult for brands to market themselves on this platform due to heavy competition. As social media became more integral to a brand’s business, some of the savvier brands began to unlock a new way to use these new platforms. Below we list a few social media profiles that could inspire you to build a unique social media strategy to appeal to your customers.

Instagram Inspiration - 3 Brands Setting the Bar High

Glossier (@glossier)

Glossier with a whooping 2.7 million followers on instagram has created a cult for itself through community building. They have done so, by understanding and mastering their consumer persona and aligning their aesthetics with it. They utilize user-generated content featuring every day women that use their products and they post relatable humorous memes keeping the audience engaged. Glossier tries to keep their brand approachable and authentic appealing to the general mass. They use the social media strategy of prioritizing personalities over product placement.

Strategy used by Glossier: Unique brand identity, fostering engagement, and embracing a sense of community.

Gif on the Left: “Get ready with me” reels by an influencer showcasing a casual woman getting ready with glossier’s skin product. Also, they have tagged the product making it easy for the viewer to shop the product

Image in the middle: Visual aesthetics, Diversity and posting relatable memes to keep the audience engaged

Gif on the right: “You look good” campaign, creating a positive vibe around the brand creating a unique brand identity

Black (@blvckparis)

Black, an all-black lifestyle luxury streetwear brand has a very appealing instagram profile.Their visual aesthetics speaks for itself. In order to build momentum, the brand organizes frequent giveaways on their social media handles, even before the product is actually launched on its official website. And they only sell a limited number of merchandise which creates a sense of urgency when launching these giveaways. This lifestyle brand even curates and regularly updates a spotify playlist with songs that match the lifestyle of their consumers. That’s how committed they are towards giving a black inspired luxury lifestyle to their consumers and followers . And their frequent collaborations with other brands whilst maintaining consistency in branding is top notch.

Strategy used by Blvck Paris : Visual Aesthetics, Consistent branding, and Keeping the hype up always

Example of Visual aesthetics embracing the what the brand stands for

CEO of blvck paris, Julian O’ Hayen “Be creative don’t underestimate the power of storytelling and marketing. Blvck Paris has accumulated just under 600k followers in two years with an exceptionally high engagement rate of 8-10% (as an average, 1-2% is considered to be good). This is thanks to posting high-quality content and always thinking outside the box in order to stand out”

Patagonia

Patagonia is an outdoor wear retailer known for its various environmental sustainability efforts. It does things differently on its instagram. Social media has been salesy for a while. But when it comes to Patagonia, their content has always been void of anything that shreds light on their products. They always focus on how people can save the environment and embrace nature. Patagonia stays away from using influencers and instead they often feature hikers and explorers and their instagram and share quick snippets of how they were able to achieve their goals. (for example, a reel of a hiker hitting the road) From day one, patagonia has been incorporating this strategy which has allowed this brand to crack even the most difficult subcultures

Strategy used by Patagonia : Voicing Values, Future led content, Location specific social media accounts

Key takeaways

Authenticity: Brands should remain authentic and stick to what they stand for. Featuring user generated content, showcasing real-life experiences, and maintaining a transparent brand image are key to keeping up authenticity.
Community building: Understanding the audience, capturing their persona and posting content around it and building values would fosters dynamic relationships and cultivates brand loyalty
Storytelling: Compelling storytelling is at the heart of their Instagram presence. Through visually appealing posts, videos, and captions, Brands can effectively communicate their brand story, values, and mission.
Visual Aesthetics: Consistency in visual aesthetics is a hallmark for all brands. From one glance at our profile, people should be able to guess what your brand voice is and your brand personality is. First impressions are always the best impressions.

Staying Ahead

Social media marketing is constantly evolving, and businesses must stay ahead of the curve to remain relevant. In 2023, augmented reality, live streaming,gamification, influencer marketing, social media stories, and personalization are expected to be the top trends in social media marketing. By incorporating these trends into their social media strategies, businesses can create more engaging and personalized experiences for their customers and stay ahead of the competition.

Any other Instagram Profile that is awe-inspiring? Comment below!

The post 3 D2C Brands Setting the Bar High on Instagram appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How Businesses Can Use Emerging Technology To Extract Value From Social Media

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 30 May 2023 08:45:50 +0000

While the COVID-19 pandemic did slow the economy down amidst a lot of problems, it also led to an e-commerce surge and accelerated digital transformation by 5 years. What was considered futuristic is now being experienced in the present and businesses who haven’t implemented them are considered outdated. This is because, with growing advancements, comes increasing competition that keeps brands on their toes to constantly adapt to this ever-changing playing field.

Even if your products are the best in the market with minimal competition, there are things that are needed from your end to make your products reach your target audience. And one such channel that can be the best choice for you in the current scenario is your social media game. But if you’re wondering “There are a lot of options like email and SMS marketing, why particularly focus on social media?” Here are some stats that should convince you.

Now that it’s clear why social media is important, let’s move on to how businesses can use social media not just for the sake of it but for its utmost potential. This is where the impact of digital transformation comes into play. With technological advancements happening throughout the e-commerce space, there are also several up-and-coming innovations in social media that businesses can take up to stay competitive. Here are some of them that are currently in the trend.

5 Ways Businesses Can Use Emerging Technology To Extract Value From Social Media

Businesses can leverage emerging technologies to extract value from social media in several ways:

1. Social Listening and Sentiment Analysis

In general terms, social listening is an extension of brand monitoring (where you can keep track of every social mention of your brand), along with each and every necessary social media conversation that includes products that you sell and competing brands.

Primarily insights from social listening are used to identify trends, customer pain points, and sentiment analysis on similar topics, all of which can be used to make data-driven decisions for improvement.

Sentiment analysis is a subset of social listening. While social listening monitors related mentions, sentiment analysis gives insights into the emotions surrounding those mentions and helps you pick the right context for your customers’ conversations.

For example, by understanding customer sentiments, trends, and feedback, you can work on identifying customer needs, improving products and services, and enhancing the overall customer experience.

If you’re wondering where to start, there are several social listening tools such as Hootsuite that you can make use of to do the research on your behalf.

2. Social Media Advertising

Social media ads are a really straightforward but great way for businesses to reach their target audience with relevant messages. With proper research and techniques, ads can be your most efficient option to generate leads, drive sales, and increase brand awareness.

But advertising isn’t just posting about your brand on social media, it has several depths to it that make it relevant. To help you understand things better, let’s look at the two trending forms of social media advertising for now.

Influencer Marketing: The lockdown phase was a blessing in disguise for a lot of individuals who began their careers as ‘content creators’, spending time on social media doing what they enjoy the most. With a fanbase growing for them, they grew into influencers relevant to particular industries. By collaborating with influencers, businesses can reach a wider audience, increase brand awareness, and drive customer engagement.

Personalized Marketing: With insights such as customer preferences, behavior, and interests, you can send out personalized messaging that caters to specific customers. With recent technological advancements and increased customer expectations, you have no option but to embrace personalization in your social media marketing tactics. Advertising campaigns that are tailored to the right customers help you create individualized experiences and spur more sales.

3. Social Commerce

Not just for advertising purposes, recent integrations have enabled social commerce, where shoppers can not just view but browse and shop directly from social media platforms.

Social commerce retail earnings are predicted to reach nearly $80 billion by 2025 in the U.S.

With shoppers spending a lot of time on social media for their personal stuff or for looking at brands, social commerce can be seen as the best option for businesses to enable seamless shopping experiences (where shoppers can directly purchase from social media sites without having to visit your website).

Not just direct selling, social commerce also enables:

Social sharing – Leverage user-generated content to drive conversions and sales
Customer engagement – Easy support interactions and insights into brand content performance, etc.

4. Chatbots

Social media has come a long way from just content sharing to AI-powered chatbots to engage with their customers across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp.

The purpose of these chatbots covers three essential parts of your business’ needs — customer service, customer engagement, and social media marketing. But using conventional techniques is just the bare minimum. With the help of automation, you can extend the capabilities of chatbots by a huge margin.

Let’s start with the most persistent problem of an e-commerce business, post-purchase issues, and customer queries around their order status. With over 40% of support tickets created around the post-purchase, it is understandable that customers are worried about their orders going haywire during the shipping and delivery phase.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead of waiting for your customers to take the first step, you can take a proactive approach to engage with them regarding their order details from time to time. This simple action just stands to provide multiple benefits for your business by improving customer relationships and brand loyalty while reducing costs and the time taken.

5. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)

Thanks to technological development over the past few years, VR and AR, classic science-fiction tools can be experienced today, in our lifetime. With fierce competition from multiple directors, e-commerce brands too couldn’t stay far from such technology and have started to use VR and AR primarily in advertising to create immersive experiences that can help businesses connect with customers in new ways.

Virtual product try-on tools and augmented previews can be extremely beneficial for the apparel and accessories industry to convince customers who are sitting on the fence over the doubt of the product working out for them to go for the buy,
Brands can partner with social media applications like Instagram to create filters that users can use for fun in their content. This can really boost your efforts to spread the word about your brand and increase engagement rates.

Overall, integrating VR and AR into social media platforms helps in engaging users, driving conversions, and providing unique and interactive shopping experiences.

Final Word

With growing technology, social media will continue to evolve. To keep up with the ever-changing conditions, you will need to adapt your strategies in order to consistently stay ahead of the curve.

In conclusion, by using techniques such as social listening, sentiment analysis, social media advertising, social commerce, VR and AR, etc, you can extract valuable insights, enhance customer engagement, optimize marketing efforts, reach new markets, and drive business growth in the digital landscape.

The post How Businesses Can Use Emerging Technology To Extract Value From Social Media appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

5 sustainable brands that would encourage you to go green

Raksna Anand — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 09:01:14 +0000

Our world is undergoing a significant transformation. Recently, millions of people throughout the world took to the streets to demand stricter climate regulations, causing tectonic shifts in both governments’ and businesses’ perspectives on sustainability.

The concept of sustainability branding has sparked an interest among consumers. Sustainability is a subject that will be around for a while, and its significance is also increasing, so let’s go into what sustainable branding is, why it is becoming more important, and how to include sustainability into the brands you create. First, what does sustainability mean for a brand?

The practice of focusing on and incorporating recognised environmental, economic, and social issues into a business’ operations is called sustainability branding. These sustainability initiatives today include developing, sustaining and presenting a brand that gives sustainability benefits to both consumers and the environment. In today’s world, consumers are more aware of what’s happening and which companies are causing environmental harm. Sustainable, mindful businesses are leading the movement to break this cycle, satisfy this growing need and fulfill the growing appetite for those customers.

Why is sustainability branding important?

Finding practical solutions to the global environmental, economic, and social problems is a concern that people have greater than ever. Today’s consumers demand brands to become more sustainable in their business operations, and only those brands that embrace these ideas will have a long-term impact. More eco-friendly firms are developing that prioritize the needs of the earth over profits. Since consumer purchasing patterns are changing, customers are increasingly pressing corporations to do more to protect the environment.

Here are some important stats that you should consider ….

The purchasing patterns of consumers are evolving

Most of us like to assume that we would put our money where our mouth is, and this is the situation with consumers and sustainability. Consumers today look for goods and services that help address issues they care about, including using renewable energy and buying environmentally friendly goods.

But it is not enough for a business to merely support sustainability. You must effectively convey your dedication to tackling climate change and other environmental problems. Companies that are proactive in their communication and take a statement on social problems will easily capture the hearts of their customers.

“Saving our planet 🌎 is now a communications challenge.” – Sir David Attenborough

Ways to effectively Communicate Your Ecommerce Sustainability Actions

Always tell the truth
Incorporate your sustainability messaging across all your channels
Keep it simple
Leverage eye-catching creatives to spread your message
Align your sustainability goals with your business purpose

5 Sustainable brands that will inspire you to go green

2023 is the year to achieve a net zero economy, to find solutions and policies in the sustainability space, ideas that will truly move the goalposts of how we can create a “nature positive future”. Here are five brands that would inspire you to go green.

Pela

Why we love this brand: climate neutral certified brand

Pela is the world’s first compostable phone manufacturing company. Pela thought that an average person uses their phone for 18-24 months but the cases being manufactured for those phones mostly last for 100 years (since they are made from plastic). That’s when the founder of Pela decided to manufacture a product that wouldn’t harm the environment. They measure, reduce and compensate for all of its emissions from making and delivering its products and services.

“We’re considering every step of the process, from offsetting carbon emissions of production factories down to deciding between air or ocean shipping, Shipping our product via air travel has a higher environmental impact than ocean travel, and even if it means shipping is a little slower, we’re going to choose the most sustainable option every time.” Gareth Everard, Pela Case’s chief marketing officer.

Laagam

Why we love this brand: On-demand, Zero stock brand

“The Dark Side of Fast Fashion is that, It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year” (source: earth.org)

We all know that fast fashion is one of the major contributors to pollution.

This international e-commerce brand seeks to make affordable and sustainable fashion. Everything is hand-made to order in Spain and Portugal. Most significantly, they only produce what is ordered, substantially lowering production waste from unsold goods. They push you to sell something you no longer want in exchange for each item you order. Additionally, they distribute leftover materials to independent fashion firms and reduce their carbon footprint. This innovative stockless fashion brand is growing rapidly, averaging a 100% yearly growth rate.

Mud Jeans

Why we love this brand: Promotes circular economy

A circular economy is an alternative from the traditional linear ‘take, make and waste’ system. Fabrics are never wasted in a circular economy because they are used to their fullest potential and then recycled back into production. Mud Jeans motto is ‘ Everyday jeans, made with tomorrow in mind’. Their jeans currently include up to 40% post-consumer recycled cotton in them.

“The sky is not the limit for us; we constantly work to improve our offerings. Our objective is to introduce 100% post-consumer recycled cotton jeans first.”

Thrive market

Why we love this brand: zero waste certified

Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them. In addition to this, thrive market also has been carbon neutral. The company transports packages through ground, which emits 82 percent fewer carbon emissions than shipping by air. Their fulfillment centers use wind energy, LEED-certified construction materials

‘We see our next task as going beyond sustainability — which aims to minimize negative environmental impacts — towards an approach that preserves, heals, and actually improves the planet. Simply put, we’re trying to leave the Earth better than we found it.’

Kimono my house

Why we love this brand: Does mindful deliveries

Utilising a shipping carrier with sustainable credentials and paying a little bit extra for each cargo to support their efforts to become carbon neutral are examples of mindful deliveries. Every kimono sold helps offset carbon emissions from production in some little way by planting a tree. Paper is used for all of the packaging and is locally sourced for Kimono My House in Devon.The most incredible aspect? To encourage customers to fix their clothing and extend the life of their purchases, they include a repair kit with each kimono. This kit is called ‘ the Sashiko repair kit’

Bottom Line

E-commerce sustainability is essential to the way society operates today. Every choice we make should be based on protecting our world. The e-commerce industry is a pioneer in bridging digitalization and sustainability in global business. Future sustainable solutions are being pioneered by businesses, and they are also influencing how we shop online. from selecting the ideal partner, how retailers package their goods, how these goods are processed in distribution locations, how they are transported to your door, and how these goods are given a second life. To improve policy making, sustainability must become the norm and knowledge must be shared.

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How to get repeat customers in 2023?

Raksna Anand — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 14:33:44 +0000

Is your business future ready?

The e-commerce industry is continuously changing, so being up to date is crucial. In order to provide a seamless and engaging consumer experience across all touchpoints, including mobile commerce, beacon technology, and CTV advertising, the future of commerce must be fully omnichannel. Businesses must adopt a pipeline strategy, relying on data analytics and dynamic creative optimisation to boost conversions and produce an easy-to-use website experience.

The era of transactional e-commerce is no more; today’s consumers demand relational e-commerce that fosters creativity and discovery. Customers have the choice to begin their journey online and end up in physical stores, or vice versa, thanks to Google Lens and other tools.

Businesses must provide the best value proposition, convenience, loyalty programmes, and other services in order to meet customers’ expectations in 2023 and get repeat customers.

Why do you need repeat customers in your business?

Getting new customers is expensive and time-consuming: Getting a new customer typically costs five times as much as keeping an existing one.

Repeat customers are receptive to more: They’re eager to test out new goods and services from a company they already know and respect. (repeat customers spend 35% more per purchase than first-time customers`)

Keeping loyal customers can improve a brand’s reputation because happy customers are more inclined to tell their friends and family about it.

Customer retention should be the top aim for any wise brand in the fiercely competitive industry of today

3 strategies to get repeat customers

1. Offer omnichannel customer support

The best wingman for both transactional and relational e-commerce is omnichannel customer support. Companies may design a seamless and “omni-awesome” client journey by swiping right on a variety of touchpoints, including calls, emails, social media, text messages, mobile apps, and more.

For example,

Lululemon, a retailer of athletic wear, offers customised video consultations with fitness professionals to assist customers in making purchase selections. A video can be scheduled by users with a fitness expert to get personalized recommendations and advice on which products to buy.

“According to research done by the Aberdeen Group, companies that provide a consistent service quality across multiple channels retain 89% of their customers.”

A seamless message approach that is cohesive is necessary to maintain consistency across channels. This strategy offers a customised message that matches the client journey across several channels, improving the potency of a business’ value offering and striking the proper chords with the target market.

In order to provide your customers with a complete omnichannel experience, you might begin with

Recognizing the platforms that your customers are most likely to use.
Providing a consolidated platform for customer assistance that integrates channels.
Communicating consistently to foster trust.
Providing opportunities for self-service, such a knowledge base or FAQ area.
Training customer service representatives to respond to inquiries from all channels.

2. Offer the most convenient experience

Online mattress and bedding retailer Casper is an example of an e-commerce company that puts its customers’ convenience first. Customers may test out their mattress at home with Casper’s 100-night sleep trial and return it for a full refund if they’re not satisfied. Also, they perform all of the labor-intensive lifting. When you place an online order, they bring the item to your home and pick it up if you decide to return the mattress. Customers may easily buy and return things thanks to their free shipping and returns policy. In addition, Casper offers a 24/7 chatbot on their website to assist users with any queries or worries they might have. Casper has been able to give customers a more seamless and delightful purchasing experience by putting convenience first. .

Convenience is king

Checkouts using a mobile wallet are another example of how businesses can make their consumers’ lives more convenient. Customers can quickly and securely conduct purchases without using physical payment methods by adopting this feature. In actuality, Apple Pay now accounts for 48% of mobile wallet checkouts in-store. For instance, Casper’s new one-click experience lets users purchase their favourite mattresses without first creating an account, substantially streamlining the purchasing process.

The new voice search e-commerce trend is another thing that e-commerce firms can accomplish. As more and more customers utilise virtual assistants like Alexa from Amazon and Google Home from Google, voice search is becoming more and more significant in e-commerce.

As you can see, advanced technology greatly contributes to convenience by streamlining the purchasing process, providing a variety of payment options, offering quick and free shipping, implementing a mobile-friendly design, customising the shopping experience, providing round-the-clock customer support, and integrating with voice assistants.

Customers must come first for businesses, and this means putting themselves in their shoes and foreseeing their demands. Companies may offer a more convenient and Personalised service that satisfies the constantly changing needs of modern clients by adopting a customer-first mentality.

3. Educate your customers where necessary

Customers are overwhelmed with options as internet buying expands, and trust is getting harder to come by. This is where taking on the role of a champion for a cause is useful.

Building trust with your customers can be accomplished by educating them about your product and the sustainability practices you employ (given that 75% of US consumers are concerned about the environmental impact of the products they purchase). Customers are more inclined to buy from you again and recommend your business when they have faith in you.

Educating your clients could boost your profitability while also fostering a sense of trust with them. Customers can make better selections if you educate them about your goods and services. Also, they are less likely to return the item.

How can you inform your audience? Consider utilizing cutting-edge methods like augmented reality to assist buyers in determining whether the product is a good fit for them. For instance, a stove manufacturer could utilize AR to check whether a customer’s kitchen will accommodate the stove perfectly.

Here are two actual companies that educated their clients while increasing profitability.

In order to ensure that customers discover the ideal fit and style, the eyewear firm Warby Parker uses a virtual try-on tool

The cosmetics company Lush has launched a “Naked Packaging” programme to lessen their usage of single-use plastics. With emails, social media posts, and in-store signage, customers are made aware of this programme. . Lush has been able to grow its customer base and revenue by informing their customers about the value of decreasing plastic waste.

(According to an Edelman study, two thirds of consumers buy based on beliefs. This means brands can no longer remain neutral, but you need to back up your values with action.)

Thus, remember to effectively inform your customers of whatever environmental good deeds you undertake going forward

Bottom Line

Too often, businesses that only concentrate on acquiring new customers miss out on the hidden revenue that exists within their current customer base. Yet, businesses may position themselves to gain from building and nurturing a return client base by putting a few strategies in place. Ultimately, maintaining and keeping your current clients is more efficient than acquiring new ones.

Crunch some numbers, see how your company is fairing, and update your retention strategy today.

The post How to get repeat customers in 2023? appeared first on Lateshipment.com.