post purchase experience Archives | Lateshipment.com

Pre-Parcel Anxiety And The Problems It Brings To Your E-Commerce Business

Sashank Ravindranath — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 06:55:13 +0000

We’re all worried about things at times. How is this day going to turn out? How is my business going to thrive with the rising competition? Will the Chiefs win this year’s Super Bowl? What is going to be my costume for Halloween? Or Where is my order?

Now each of these questions has a reason to exist. The last question — that’s because of this relatively new condition called pre-parcel anxiety that is affecting several online shoppers today.

What is Pre-Parcel Anxiety?

The concept of ‘pre-parcel anxiety’ comes with the understanding of the ‘post-purchase’ phase.

To bring this into more context, let’s picture this scenario: We’ve all placed orders in online stores, right?

That means we’ve all wondered where our orders were at some point. So, this anxiety is normal or that’s what we think. But pre-parcel anxiety isn’t that. It’s what happens later — when customers cannot determine the status of their orders with the business they shopped with.

When such things happen and customers are left in the dark regarding their orders, they tend to get anxious, assuming the worst, leading to increased support inquiries or WISMO requests.

Pre-parcel anxiety is the psychological condition a customer undergoes while awaiting their parcels that they have no direction about. It keeps customers impatient about their orders, often checking the carrier’s tracking page and bombarding the brand’s support teams with WISMO calls.

While frequent order status inquiries mean anxiety for the customer, they mean something entirely different for the merchant.

The Effects of Pre-Parcel Anxiety on Your E-Commerce Business

Let’s take a look back — pre-parcel anxiety is a feeling of unease and impatience while waiting for an online order to arrive, and can be a significant hurdle for e-commerce businesses.

As we mentioned earlier, the first sign of frustration from pre-parcel anxiety is increased support inquiries.

Repeated inquiries like WISMO can be frustrating for both customers and support staff. For instance, customers waiting anxiously for their orders are prone to leave negative reviews and complaints on social media, leading to a decreased brand reputation.

On the other hand, customers experiencing pre-parcel anxiety are more likely to contact your support team with questions about their order status. This can strain your resources and lead to longer wait times for genuine inquiries.

Support tickets with a longer resolution time can cause customer frustration and negative experiences. Ultimately, customers who have a negative experience with waiting for a previous order may be less likely to purchase from your store again.

TLDR: Here’s how pre-parcel anxiety affects your business:

Increased support inquiries
Lower brand reputation
Reduced customer satisfaction
Lost opportunities to drive repeat purchases

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to address pre-parcel anxiety and improve the customer experience you offer.

How E-Commerce Businesses Can Mitigate Pre-Parcel Anxiety And Its Impact

1. Transparency in communication

First and foremost, letting your customers know that their orders are in safe hands is a great start in your attempt to mitigate their anxiety. There are multiple actions that you can take to achieve that.

For starters, you can provide clear and accurate information about estimated delivery times on product pages and during checkout to make sure that your customers don’t feel the urgency to contact your support team with the need to get tracking information.

You can then double it down by offering real-time tracking information with detailed and regular updates to keep your customers in the loop of their orders.

P.S. You don’t have to wait for customers to hit your support reps with WISMO calls, instead, you can send proactive email or SMS notifications about their delivery status.

2. Setting Realistic Expectations

Second and most importantly, don’t over-promise on delivery times.

Be realistic about timeframes, especially during peak seasons. I.e. Delivery during peak season times like the holidays can take longer than usual, in such cases you can let the customers know about these updated delivery timelines and reasons for delays.

Setting delivery expectations right by showing order arrival dates on your website like product, cart, and checkout pages helps you improve conversions, reduce cart abandonment, and ultimately works towards building trust and boosting conversions.

Of course, you can always put these steps into action on your own but your shipping partner might not be straightforward with delays, given to not project themselves in a bad light.

On the other hand, implementing these steps is relatively simple — when you have an efficient package tracking system in place that works on your behalf.

How a last-mile tracking solution like lateshipment.com can help

LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management (DEM) is the perfect solution for you to craft order tracking experiences that boost engagement and repeat purchases — all while reducing customer service costs.

DEM can help you reduce WISMO calls by 72% by sending delivery status updates in the form of:

Automated shipping notifications proactively sent on channels like email, SMS or WhatsApp based on triggers for every step of the package journey from order ‘shipped’ to ‘delivered’ to ‘delayed’ and
Self-serve order lookup that enables customers to track their orders without any help, embed an order lookup widget on your website or chat.

Like Jane Norman of Nola Skinsentials says, “Many brands think their relationship stops after shipping the package, which is not true”. Thus, the need to make the post-purchase phase customer-friendly is a must if you plan to stay ahead of the curve.

By addressing detractors like pre-parcel anxiety, you can create a smoother and more positive post-purchase CX that leads to increased customer satisfaction, improved brand loyalty, and ultimately, higher sales for your e-commerce business.

Also, while you’re there, try LateShipment.com for not just seamless delivery experiences but all your post-purchase needs. Curious about how we might work for your business? Talk to us.

The post Pre-Parcel Anxiety And The Problems It Brings To Your E-Commerce Business 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

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E-Commerce Post-Purchase CX Playbook For The Up-And-Coming Holiday Season

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 15:05:20 +0000

The Post-purchase CX Mandate

Knowing what’s coming and staying ahead of delivery and return-related issues is key to perfecting post-purchase.

However, e-commerce post-purchase issues are nothing out of the ordinary, especially during times like the Holiday Season. The impact they bring is catastrophic — wrecking customer experience, straining customer support teams, and ultimately threatening profit margins.

Regardless of who the shipping partner is, a leading carrier or a 3PL, some hard truths that you deal with are.

E-commerce post-purchase is a missed opportunity in the current state

The ‘post-purchase customer experience (CX)’ is an integral but often overlooked function in any e-commerce business. When done right, it has the potential to ensure your customers have a hassle-free ‘order delivery’ and ‘return’ experience. In the long run, this can help you boost customer loyalty, efficiency, as well as profits.

That said, let’s see why post-purchase is a huge missed opportunity for most businesses out there.

Up to 20% of shipments face issues such as late delivery, attempted-failed delivery, lost or damaged in transit
30% of customer support team’s time and effort is wasted handling repetitive delivery and return related inquiries
12% of revenue is lost because businesses don’t encourage repeat purchases during order and return tracking moments
35% of all products purchased online are returned

The link between Post-Purchase CX and Customer Loyalty

As mentioned earlier, post-purchase CX has everything to do with what happens after the customer makes a purchase.

To make things more familiar, shipping updates, order tracking, or in some cases returns and exchanges. Either way, this is the last thing your customers are going to remember about their experience with your brand. Therefore, you have to ensure that it stays memorable.

Remember, a positive post-purchase experience can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, while a negative post-purchase experience can lead to customer churn.

78% of shoppers won’t buy from the brand again after just ONE bad delivery or return experience.

Now, one might ask: On whom does the onus of perfecting the post-purchase CX really fall?

The answer is: on everyone — from marketing to sales, to operations and customer service. By bringing all business functions together and working towards excelling in both, your post-purchase customer experience and operations at every stage of the process is vital.

To help you provide a great post-purchase experience and reap its benefits, we have developed a playbook covering everything you need to know about creating an e-commerce post-purchase strategy that will improve the customer experience and boost customer retention this Holiday Season and beyond.

6 Post-purchase Plays to Dominate Customer Experience During the Holiday Season

1. Enabling real-time tracking and delivery alerts

With unprecedented visibility into the status of their order in transit, you can stay in the know of all your packages at any given moment. This also gives you the ability to gain real-time alerts and be able to identify potential issues, such as delays much ahead of the customer.

You can leverage this data to proactively address problems, such as offering solutions or even just informing customers.

Such actions can ensure that customers’ frustration levels are significantly reduced and as a result, there is a positive brand perception.

2. Engaging in regular and personalized order status notifications

Even when things are going perfectly, you can keep your customers engaged with order updates and personalized conversations by making use of the customer and order information in your hand.

Send email and SMS shipping notifications at every stage of the post-purchase package journey, i.e., delivery and return status events such as in-transit, delivered, and returned, etc, to keep customers informed at all times. This makes them less prone to getting anxious regarding their parcels, reduces the volume of WISMO inquiries, and allows support teams to focus on more complex customer issues.

Such personalized conversations also let the customers know that you are committed to delivering them a positive post-purchase experience which leads to increased customer satisfaction.

3. Leveraging memorable tracking experiences

An extension of real-time tracking and proactive order communication is making use of a “branded” tracking page that is hosted on your website, from where your customers can track their orders whenever they want to.

Apart from tracking details, your tracking page can also include additional content such as an on-brand website design (color, font, etc), a complete order summary to let customers if they’ve entered the correct details, delivery satisfaction ratings to collect customer feedback, easy returns initiation and reaching out to customer support to provide hassle-free experiences, and so on.

The best part, you can add elements such as sale announcements and personalized product recommendations to ensure an increase in cross-selling. All of this helps in reinforcing your brand identity, leaving a lasting experience, improving your brand reputation, and ultimately driving more sales.

4. Enhancing packaging and unboxing experience

Receiving their orders might be the moment your customers have been expecting since they hit that ‘buy’ button. Make that moment etched into their memories with the right packaging and unboxing techniques.

Packaging plays a much bigger role than just covering your product. Firstly, a great-looking package creates a positive first impression, setting the stage for a great post-purchase experience. Following these are the branded elements that reinforce identity, good quality that ensures lower chances of damage and frustration, and sustainable materials used to improve brand image.

Following packaging, there comes the relatively new trend of unwrapping/ unboxing experience being capitalized by e-commerce brands. Ensure customers share their unboxing videos on social media as user-generated content to create larger brand awareness and attract new customers.

5. Handling returns and exchanges effectively

Your efforts to provide a positive post-purchase experience do not end with the delivery being made, as there are always chances of your customers returning their purchase.

But remember, customers don’t always look forward to returning their purchases — so, don’t make the experience frustrating for them. Keep things as seamless as you can via easy and quick returns, multiple return options (exchanges and store credits), clear returns policy, transparent return status communications, etc.

When handled effectively, returns can be an opportunity to demonstrate customer-centricity, resolve issues efficiently, build trust and loyalty, and enhance customer satisfaction and brand reputation.

6. Encouraging reviews and ratings

A great post-purchase experience is one that is constantly evolving. So, give room for it to grow and fasten the process by encouraging your customers to provide feedback on the post-purchase experience that they received.

You can start by making it easier for customers to leave their feedback — probably in the order delivered/ returned email or on the order tracking page, once the progress is completed. In case there’s a review and a place where you don’t want them leaving one, try to reach out to them at the earliest and offer a solution that they expect in order to change the emotion of the feedback from negative to positive. You can also take a step ahead and reward customers via incentives for their feedback to ensure that they leave more and spread good word-of-mouth.

By resolving their negative comments or displaying their positive review on your website or social media, you are conveying that their feedback matters and as a result builds strong customer relationships. Either way, reviews and ratings from customers provide an opportunity to make regular improvements and reach a wider audience.

How LateShipment.com Can Help Power your Post-purchase Success

LateShipment.com is the ultimate all-in-one post-purchase success platform for e-commerce retailers, D2C brands, and businesses shipping small parcels, regardless of their size or shipping volume.

Our Post-Purchase Success platform includes:

Delivery Experience Management (DEM): To build memorable order delivery experiences and boost recurring revenue during order tracking moments.
Returns Experience Management (REM): To make returns hassle-free with flexible return options and smart automations to help retain revenue.
Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds: To save big on shipping costs through automated shipping refunds and drive supply-chain optimization with in-depth shipping analytics and insights.

Also, LateShipment.com seamlessly integrates with 600+ Shipping Carriers and Business Tools that include E-commerce platforms, Order Management Systems, Helpdesks, and Marketing Automation tools to help you drive post-purchase experiences and shipping cost savings at scale.

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[Gorgias X Lateshipment.Com] Strengthening Customer Relationships With Post-Purchase Automation For 11 Key Events

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 19:20:47 +0000

Customer service in the post-purchase phase is really a hectic time for support teams. It is their time and opportunity to become sales agents, offering discounts to encourage repeat purchases, etc.

However, due to the unpredictable nature of the post-purchase phase, support teams are often forced to spend most of their time resolving customer issues. In fact, up to 30% of a customer support team’s time and effort is wasted handling repetitive delivery and return related inquiries.

Thus, the need for post-purchase customer support automation and proactive delivery issue resolution is very evident. This is where Gorgias and LateShipment.com come together to arm your support reps with the capability to strengthen customer relationships.

For those of you who are here and unaware of what we do, Gorgias is a powerful customer service helpdesk software that strives to help e-commerce merchants provide exceptional customer service and turn your customer service into a profit center. LateShipment.com is an automation platform specializing in providing solutions for e-commerce businesses to enhance their post-purchase customer experience.

Together, our integration helps businesses deliver a superior customer experience and build customer trust and loyalty in the competitive e-commerce landscape.

We developed this guide (along with a downloadable handbook!) to set up LateShipment.com with Gorgias and equip your support team to get better at understanding and responding to different post-purchase events and have meaningful conversations that drive quality experiences and ultimately impact your revenue.

11 Post-Purchase Events That You Can Automate With Lateshipment.Com And Gorgias

One of the biggest challenges e-commerce merchants face when it comes to resolving post-purchase issues and queries is the lack of information that prevents quick and efficient issue resolution.

Automation takes care of the management of these areas. With the help of Tags to organize and Rules to automate within Gorgias, LateShipment.com helps you extend automation for 11 order delivery and returns events and extend your efforts to provide high-quality customer support to the most critical part of the customer journey — the post-purchase phase.

Event 1: Packages delivered with delays

Rule: Priority: Delayed Delivery

Rule description: Set a higher priority for tickets with the “Delayed Delivery” tag to ensure quicker resolution.

Rule benefit:

Set priority based on delay severity
Add internal notes for future reference
Automatically adjust the priority based on tags, allowing the team to focus on higher-priority tickets first

Suggested automations and actions:

Set up tags to automatically assigns a higher priority to tickets with the “Delayed Delivery” tag. This will ensure quicker resolution and put tickets on priority at the top of the queue..
Set up macros to notify customers when their order has been delivered late and apologize for the delay to reduce customer frustration.
Include solutions such as offering a discount or a gift card on your next purchase to compensate them for upcoming purchases in your macros to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction despite the delay.

Event 2: In transit with delays

Rule: Priority: In-Transit Delayed

Rule description: Auto-assign based on tags “In-Transit Delayed, Priority Medium”

Rule benefit:

Set response time SLA based on delay
Assign to specific agent/team based on delay
Automatically assign tickets to specific agents or teams based on tags to streamline handling

Suggested automations and actions:

Set up macros to proactively notify customers when their shipment is in transit with delays.
In your pre-made reponses, ensure you apologize for the delay and provide an updated estimated delivery date.
Set up tags that assign in-transit delay tickets to the right support agents or teams for faster and more effective resolution.
Automatically follow up with customers about the status of their in-transit shipments.

Such actions can help you keep customers updated and reduce the number of tickets you receive about the status of in-transit shipments.

Event 3: Failed Deliveries

Rule: Escalate to Tier 2 Support

Rule description: Escalate the ticket to a higher support level if delivery retries fail, ensuring faster issue resolution.

Rule benefit:

Escalate to a higher support level if retries fail
Trigger notifications to relevant parties for failed deliveries
Notify supervisors when tickets with failed deliveries are encountered, ensuring prompt attention

Suggested automations and actions:

Automate macros with potential solutions, such as scheduling a re-delivery, requesting updated delivery information, etc based on the reason behind the failed delivery
Create tags for escalating the ticket to a higher level support agent if delivery retries fail, ensuring faster issue resolution and prevention of unnecessary returns.
Guide customers through the resolution process by sending them order updates or allowing them to track their parcels

Event 4: Predicted Delays

Rule: Priority: Predicted Delay

Rule description: Assign a lower priority for predicted delay tickets to ensure timely resolution while managing expectations.

Rule benefit:

Update order status with predicted delay
Notify customers about the delay via email
Automatically send an email to customers to alert them about potential delays and offer support options

Suggested automations and actions:

Proactively communicate macros to the customer, informing them about the predicted delay, the reasons for it, and the new estimated delivery date.
Provide the customer with options in your macros to mitigate the impact of the predicted delay. This may include offering expedited shipping, issuing a partial refund, or allowing the customer to cancel their order.

Event 5: Packages Suspected Lost

Rule: Escalate for Lost Package Investigation

Rule description: Escalate tickets with “Lost Package” and “Investigation” tags to the team responsible for investigations.

Rule benefit:

Create tasks for agents to follow up on investigation
Update customer profile with lost package status
Automatically assign tickets with the “Lost Package” tag to the team handling package investigations

Suggested automations and actions:

Set up macros that acknowledge the issue and lets the customer know when they can expect to receive an update.
Assure customers of the investigation process and provide updates regularly to explain that you are actively investigating the situation.

Event 6: Lost/Damaged shipments

Rule: Send Survey After Resolution

Rule description: Automatically send a survey to customers after resolution of lost/damaged shipment tickets to gather feedback.

Rule benefit:

Auto-send satisfaction survey
Add the satisfaction score to the ticket

Suggested automations and actions:

Start by acknowledging and apologizing for the incident and assure the customer that you are actively working to fix the situation.
Offer and explain the detailed steps for compensation through detailed steps for resolution, including returns, replacements, or refunding their purchase.

Not just for delivery incidents, with the LateShipment.com and Gorgias integration, you can extend performing necessary actions in the order returns stage as well and display your commitment towards offering a superior post-purchase customer experience.

Event 7: Return Initiated

Rule: Set Reminders for Return Processing Milestones

Rule description: Automatically set reminders for key return processing milestones to ensure timely handling and communication.

Rule benefit: Automatically update inventory levels when a return is initiated to maintain accurate stock information.

Suggested automations and actions:

Macros that highlight the successful initiation of the return process and outline the next steps.
Update your FAQ or knowledge base with information on what customers need to know during the return process.
If your policy includes providing return shipping labels, automate the process of generating and sending a return label to the customer.

Event 8: Return Canceled

Rule: Remove Tags and Actions for Canceled Returns

Rule description: Automatically remove specific tags and actions when a return is canceled to keep the ticket organized.

Rule benefit:

Trigger re-approval process once the return is reactivated
Adjust return processing timeline based on delay
Automatically assign tickets for return reactivation cases to the team handling return approvals.

Suggested automations and actions:

Start your pre-made response by acknowledging the ticket and informing the customer that there has been a return cancellation request from their end.
Follow up with the message that the return has been successfully canceled.
Customize this rule to meet your specific needs. For example, add information about how customers can contact you if they have any questions or concerns.

Event 9: Return Received

Rule: Notify Warehouse for Return Receipt

Rule description: Automatically notify the warehouse or inventory team when items are received as part of a return

Rule benefit: Automatically update your order history with return receipt status to maintain accurate records

Suggested automations and actions:

Inform the customer that their return has been received and is being processed.
Follow up by letting them know that the resolution is in progress.
Provide an estimated timeframe for processing their return.

Event 10: Return Approved

Rule: Create Tasks for Refund/Exchange Initiation

Rule description: Automatically create follow-up tasks to initiate the refund or exchange process after return approval.

Rule benefit: Automatically assign tickets for refund/exchange initiation to the team handling these processes.

Suggested automations and actions:

Notify the customer that their return request has been approved and is being processed.
Update them with the next course of action (the process of initiating refunds or replacement) once the product inspection is complete.

Event 11: Return Rejected

Rule: Offer Alternatives for Rejected Returns

Rule description: Automatically offer alternative solutions to customers if their return request is rejected.

Rule benefit: Automatically offer alternative solutions to customers if their return request is rejected.

Suggested automations and actions:

Inform the customer that their return has been rejected.
Provide a clear and detailed explanation to the customer regarding why their return was rejected. Include any relevant policy information to support your statement.
Be sure to provide the customer with clear instructions on how to proceed, get their doubts or questions cleared, etc.

Overall, you can use automation to resolve post-purchase issues and queries with the LateShipment.com-Gorgias integration to improve their customer experience, reduce customer churn, and ultimately build customer relationships.

To take even quicker actions, here’s a free downloadable cheat sheet filled with different post-purchase events, suggested macros, appropriate actions that you need to take, etc.

Why Using Automation To Resolve Post-Purchase Issues And Queries Is A Good Idea

Post-purchase issues and queries can be a major pain point for businesses and customers. Customers want their orders delivered on time and in good condition, and businesses want to avoid customer churn. Using automation to resolve post-purchase issues and queries can help both parties.

Here are several benefits of using automation with the LateShipment.com-Gorgias integration:

Prioritize post-purchase issues and queries based on their severity and impact on the customer. This can help businesses resolve the most important issues first, which can improve customer satisfaction and reduce customer churn.
Automatically route tickets to the appropriate support team to automate customer notifications during each resolution process and improve workflow.
Provide customers with self-service options or to automatically escalate tickets to a higher support level if needed. This is a faster and more efficient way to resolve issues and ultimately helps to improve the customer experience.
Gain better visibility into their post-purchase issues and queries. This information can be used to identify trends and patterns, which can help businesses improve their delivery process and reduce the risk of future problems.
Automating repetitive tasks such as responding to common customer inquiries or sending order status updates. This can free up support representatives to focus on more complex issues and improve efficiency.

Macro Templates for Post-Purchase Events

Inside Gorgias, macros are pre-made responses you can use to respond to your customers faster. They can be customized with specific information, such as the customer’s name, order number, and product information.

Macros are useful if a lot of your customers tend to ask similar things or comment on similar topics and can help agents decrease response times by eliminating the need to repeatedly respond to customer inquiries and complaints.

Here are some macro templates formulated by the LateShipment.com and Gorgias integration to help you automate proactive responses to delivery issues and regular post-purchase communication such as delivery status notifications and return status emails.

Use these macros to bring in efficiency to your purchase communication and provide customers with a more consistent and personalized experience.

How You Can Set Up LateShipment.com and Gorgias Integration

Connecting your Gorgias account to your LateShipment.com account lets you seamlessly stay on top of delivery events that may require your attention. With the Gorgias integration, you can have tickets automatically created for delivery events that you select.

Any updates on the delivery status for a shipment in-transit for which a ticket has already been created, are made available on the same ticket. This ensures that support agents have all the information they need around a shipment in one place.

Getting started with connecting LateShipment.com with Gorgias can be done with simple steps.

‍ Login to your LateShipment.com account.

Click on the Settings icon.
Select Connect Helpdesk
On the “Select your Helpdesk” dropdown, pick “Gorgias”
Enter the email ID that you’ve connected with your Gorgias account.
Against the events for which you would like tickets created, turn the toggle “ON”
Hit Submit to complete the setup.

The post [Gorgias X Lateshipment.Com] Strengthening Customer Relationships With Post-Purchase Automation For 11 Key Events appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Relationship marketing and its benefits with examples

Raksna Anand — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 12:36:56 +0000

We now live in a relationship economy rather than a transactional economy. What is relationship marketing? Relationship marketing is the kind of marketing in which you work to retain customers and maintain long-term relationships with them.

It is a well-known fact that returning customers spend a lot more than your new customers. This is because the returning customers have already experienced the true essence of your brand through your pre-purchase and post-purchase journey. They know what values your brand holds. This trust that you install in those customers, makes them spend a lot when returning.

And you should have known by now that acquiring new customers is a lot more challenging than retaining the existing ones. And moreover, these existing ones drive revenue, so why not build a strong relationship with them?

Steps in relationship building

Omnichannel messaging

With the rise of the digital presence, there are so many channels in which customers prefer to browse. Even TikTok has this new feature through which you can purchase products through the platform itself. It is always necessary to analyze which channels your customers are predominantly on and leverage those channels to efficiently reach your customers and provide tailored messaging or tailored ads according to their preferences. Even some brands do omni-channel customer support through these platforms. Have an integrated customer support system and target all channels.

Post-purchase Customer service

Brands often think that the customer journey ends with the buy button, but the post-purchase customer journey is a very important journey that cannot be compromised and sets the entire stage for retention. Customers could have a number of questions about the order, Make them self-serviceable so that the customer’s general questions are answered right then and there. Beyond that, if the customer has any questions, arm your customer service team with the necessary information required to fulfill the customer’s needs. Set the tone right for your customer service so that the customers aren’t disappointed with the answers they receive, even if things go wrong. Don’t forget to set up FAQ pages!

Collecting their feedback

Customer feedback can be a powerful way of knowing what the customer wants. Give your customer a voice and listen to them. If things go wrong and if an experience was particularly bad for your customer, you can always reach out to them and make them feel valued or listen to them by knowing what went wrong. And often offering them coupon codes or discounts or special codes would at least help them feel better about the brand. And providing a voice to the customer can go a long way.

Customer retention activities

Customer retention activities could be a number of activities with which you can stay in constant touch with your customers and build a relationship with them. Brands can leverage personalization to achieve this. Messaging or emailing during the customer’s birthday and giving them special offers, letting them know if there’s a special discount going on, if there’s an annual sale going on, exclusive access to loyal customers who’ve already purchased from you. At this moment, you can cross-sell and up-sell. There’s a lot of things with which you can do this. Brands often can create an exclusive customer club in which they can gather all the customers and host exclusive events for them, which could mean something to them, which could add value to them. Making the customer feel special is one of the customer retention activities that you can do to build a relationship.

Loyalty programs

Many customers go back to a brand because of their excellent loyalty programs. For example, take Starbucks. You often get a free drink when you get consecutive 4-5 drinks from the vendor. This is an excellent opportunity to make your customers come back to you and providing exclusive access to your high-value customers could increase your loyalty.

Benefits of relationship marketing

Increased customer lifetime value
Increased loyalty
Raise in brand awareness
Reduced marketing costs
Word of mouth marketing
Cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
Long term growth

Examples of relationship marketing

Made in - relationship building through educational content in branded tracking pages

Made in is a cookware brand in the US. This brand realized that they had a gap in the post-purchase experience. The brand started posting educational content in their branded tracking pages. Educational content like how to wash their pots and pand, quick recipes from renowned chefs, and easy how-to videos. This helped them drive a lot of engagement in the branded tracking pages and they recorded a lot of click-through rates also. This traffic was tracked back to their website.

In just one month, Made In saw 16.2% of customers who visited the tracking page click through to the Made In website, driving highly qualified traffic back to its store. They also saw 8.1% of customers click through on product care-specific marketing assets as customers continued to indulge in content that elevated their experience. (Forbes)

Peloton and it’s excellent relationship building activities

Peloton is an equipment and media-based company. The whole concept of Peloton is to sell their exercise equipment to the customers and build a relationship with them by engaging with them through media.

As soon as a customer purchases a product from Peloton, Peloton usually sends out an email to the customer urging them to join their Facebook group or other social media groups. Customers can keep score of what they achieve through these Facebook boards. They can even compete with other players through these Facebook leaderboards which encourages customers to participate more in the activity. When a customer participates in live workouts with an instructor and when this customer achieves a specific milestone like the 100th ride or 50th ride, this customer is often given a shoutout from the instructor and Peloton sends a free t-shirt to the customer acknowledging them for their achievement. This creates an emotional connection between the customer and the brand, humanizing the brand and creating a very positive image about the brand. This is how Peloton builds its relationship with its customers.

Final word

Gone are the days when customers went back to brands just because they have a lot of variety and very low prices. Still, variety and price remain a factor which is considered by most customers, but customers expect brands to build a long-lasting relationship with them. Customers expect brands to send them personalized messaging and many brands out there have set the bar high for other brands in creating a relationship with the customers. It is vital that you, as a brand, stay ahead of the curve by building a relationship with your audience. Remember that returning customers are the revenue builders for your brand, so don’t go cold on your customers. Relationship marketing is the way!

The post Relationship marketing and its benefits with examples appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Nola Skinsentials – A skincare brand that went from a humble beginning to 200k+ community

Hemalatha Sekar — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 13:22:07 +0000

If two things could define the last two years other than the pandemic, it is the rise of TikTok marketing and conscious consumption of skincare products.

Jane Ormon, a young entrepreneur has taken advantage of both and has built a rapidly growing skincare brand that has grown beyond double its production value in the past year alone. She and her fiance have put in their educational background, personal experiences, and love to create a community to create Nola Skinsentials.

We sat down with Jane herself to know the secret behind the exponential growth of Nola Skinsentials, and their secret to building a loyal customer base turned community. Here’s what Jane had to say about it.

Could tell us a little bit about yourself and your role in the company.

Yeah, so my name is Jane. I am the CEO of Nola Skinsentials. I pretty much handle the entire team. Anything that’s associated with admin, marketing, and customer service, I have my hands on all of that.

We love talking to leaders who are very hands-on with their business as that's where we get the most lessons from. Tell us a little more about Nola Skinsentials, where the idea came from, and how the business has developed from there?

Nola is where my fiance and I, who’s also my business partner, met at a seafood cafe when we were vacationing. We eventually became friends and later started dating. He’s a cosmetic chemist, I was going to school for pre-med. That’s how we got to the idea to start a skincare business with both of us as partners.

That's a really cool story! One thing we noticed about your brand is that you have created a skincare plan that is focused on melanin-rich skin tones. Could you tell us about that and how you pick that particular category? I'm assuming there's a personal connection with that.

Yeah, definitely. Back when I was a college student who was dealing with hormonal acne, there weren’t a lot of skincare products on the market that were compatible, products that were created specifically for women of color, and their skin tones.

Everything was marketed for all skin types and skin tones. And you know that that’s not true. Darker skin tones have different skin ailments and skin concerns than lighter skin tones. We deal with a lot more hyperpigmentation cases, we scar differently. We would need products that cater to our skin tones. We saw the need there and a big gap. So we went ahead and kind of created a solution for that and that’s kind of how Nola Skinsentials originated.

Skinsentials is just a play on the skin, obviously, and essentials. The things that your skin needs. So Nola has what your skin needs and just all that good stuff.

Awesome. Again, we love the effort that you're taking to make beauty and beauty products more inclusive. We see your business doing really well through Instagram marketing. Any tips for brands looking to grow a following on Instagram?

When we first started our brand, we by default created pages on all social media platforms. But the initial engagement we received was from Twitter. It was organic and conversational.

We could be our authentic selves there and create a community. I’d credit our brand’s initial success to Twitter. This made it easy for us to create an Instagram presence.

Even before we started running ads on Instagram, we had good word-of-mouth community building going on. We also started working with influencers and did paid promotions, which were also fruitful.

For newer businesses that are just starting out on social channels like Instagram, what would you offer as advice to them to be successful in these areas?

Starting a new business is no easy feat. It’s definitely super challenging and I feel like it’s even more challenging now because there’s so much competition, there are so many new platforms, and there are so many things that you have to do to be a successful brand.

For people that are just starting out, I would say, focus on your why you’re starting your brand. What is your reason for the mark? Like, why should somebody buy your product, and live by that? Don’t compare yourself to other brands, believe in your brand. Focus on the why. Once your customers understand your why and believe in your products, you’re going to be successful and grow.

Don’t focus too much on paid social, as you wouldn’t be able to create an organic community through plain paid promotions. Fixate on building an organic and engaging community and getting people to understand and what they can benefit from your product. And definitely put your customers first, they’re going to be the backbone of your products.

It’s so hard to get someone to shop at your brand for the first time. But it’s so much easier for repeat customers to keep coming back to you. And they refer their friends.

I'm sure anybody needing this or hearing this is going to appreciate that. How did the pandemic affect your operations as a business? What are the challenges you had to face and how did you overcome them?

One of the things we struggled with was supply chains.

A lot of our packaging and inventory materials come from overseas. So when the pandemic first hit, luckily, our packaging orders were in transit on the way to the US. It just was delayed. But anything after that was super delayed.

We really weren’t able to place large orders like we generally did with our suppliers to get anything done. Because at the same time, while we were struggling to send out our orders, we were growing exponentially. A lot of people migrated to online shopping, and black-owned businesses were getting a lot of support from the social movements.

Meanwhile, the work from home mandate made us lose a lot of employees and the job market was extremely hard to find like top talent. But the main outcome from the pandemic was definitely growth for us.

I'm sure you're expecting even more of a growth spurt as the holiday season rolls those boots. So what are your strategies to combat that spike in shipping volumes? How do you plan for a busy season like that?

First thing is to be super transparent with your customers. If there’s ever an issue, we always are super transparent with them. We’re starting our holiday sale a little bit earlier this year to alleviate the expected delays with shipping to help our customers out.

We were informed by USPS and UPS that there could be massive shipping delays, and with only four weeks between like Black Friday and Christmas. We realized we had to equip ourselves to make all ends meet. Thus we stocked up accordingly and hired additional staff in our warehouse to get things going smoothly.

Can you tell us about the efforts you take on the post-purchase side to ensure that your customers have a great experience? Even after the auto-ship?

Yeah, for sure. A lot of things that I’ve learned just about customer service and post-purchase CX are from the reviews and complaints on the website or social media of our competitors.

Many brands think that when a customer orders from your website and you ship the package to them, their relationship and the service stops which is not true. Because if they’re coming to you for something, it’s our duty as a brand to ensure that they get their items.

We, at Nola Skinsentials, tend to stay in contact with a customer for at least two or three weeks after their order has been delivered because we truly want to know what’s going on and how our customers are benefitting. Thus we focus a lot on our post-purchase phase and make sure that they’re getting the best service that they can possibly get.

As an extension of this, if there are one or two important takeaways from your experience that you would like to leave behind for any new young brands reading this?

Number one is to realize from the very beginning that you cannot do everything all on your own and build a solid team to grow your brand. Building and finding a core team is an investment, and also mentally healthy for an individual as an entrepreneur, and in turn, brings a better return on investment.

Number two, even though you may be an expert in your field and expert in some of the things you study, you never ever stop learning. There are always new things coming out on the market, new platforms, for instance, new-age platforms like tick tock you may not be as well versed in. Open yourself to learning, listening to people, and getting advice, to become the best version of yourself.

We see that your mom has played a very important role in you becoming an entrepreneur. We’d love to hear more about her role in your success.

Coming from a Caribbean background where people take the traditional routes of profession like teachers, doctors, or nurses; my mom never imposed such expectations on me. I never wanted anything traditional even back when I was a kid, and my mom never forced me into anything.

She got me thinking life is full of endless possibilities and gave me the confidence to explore less trodden routes. Thus, I went to pre-med school, started my own skincare brand, and today also own a spa. Had she limited my potential, I would’ve never gotten this far. And I think everyone needs a support system like that to succeed.

That’s inspirational. Do you have any closing comments on how Lateshipment.com has enhanced the customer experience at Nola Skinsentials?

Yes, definitely. Lateshipment.com is one main enabler for us to be transparent about shipping updates and delays, and be in touch with our customers in general as I mentioned before.

I found your app on an integration page of Klaviyo and had my mind blown by the fact that someone was making the post-purchase phase of the customer cycle to be customer-friendly. It also eventually led us to be ahead of the customer service curve, curbing our helpdesk ticket volume.

Before we partnered with LateShipment.com, we were using a different platform that required a lot of money and manpower to ensure our deliveries were made at a maximum of five-day windows.

Since we send an automated email through Gorgias integration on shipping updates, we’ve had so many customers thanking us for being proactive in communicating shipping delays and such. All this wouldn’t have been possible without LateShipment.com.

So again, on behalf of all our readers, and me personally, it was an absolute pleasure to talk to an owner and a business that is very tuned in to the community of customers, and also offering a product that not only meets quality requirements but actually stands for something right. It was a pleasure to talk to you in that regard.

Interview with LateShipment.com CEO, Sriram Sridhar. Transcripted by Hemalatha Sekar.

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