You’ve done the first bit – arguably the hardest part. You’ve captured the customer and they’ve clicked the buy button.
Now, it’s time to wave that customer off into the sunset and hand them over to another brand.
Sound ok?
Probably not. By putting your post-purchase comms in the hands of a third-party carrier (or worse, not sending anything at all), you’ve lost the final piece of the jigsaw. The third of four touchpoints that are critical in providing a fully connected experience that drives retail growth.
This isn’t about breaking ties with carriers. You can’t do it all, and your carriers have the hard-earned experience and infrastructure to get your customer parcels from warehouse to doorstep. But they aren’t experts in your brand or your customer experience. And your shoppers see it that way too.
In fact, 83% of consumers expect regular communication about their purchases– which explains why most delivery enquiries and complaints go straight to your contact centre.
Sorted research recently found that 1 in 5 shoppers are less likely to order online after just one negative delivery experience.
Are you ready to wave goodbye to a fifth of your customers?
It’s a big problem to solve, but the solution is simple.
Here are just three of the ways that branding your post-purchase experience can add value to your business.
Give customers control: self-serve, reduced WISMO
Managing expectations and keeping customers informed – hygiene.
Things will always go wrong, and customers will always have questions. But that doesn’t mean hiring more customer service or marketing heads. It also doesn’t mean expensive development of internal IT systems.
Giving customers access to their own parcel tracking updates, in your beautiful brand, is the only way to ensure you’re protecting delivery experience without contact centres and operations creaking under the strain of growth.
From proactively communicating tracking updates via branded communications (think email, SMS, or webchat), to giving customers the power to self-serve updates on branded tracking pages… all fully automated, accurate, trackable, and low effort to set up and maintain.
This combination of proactive communication and customer self-serve keeps your NPS and CSAT scores high and your WISMO customer contacts low. Our customer musicMagpie saw a 63% reduction in WISMO queries with Sorted.
Your customer is both informed and in control – meaning you keep WISMO down and satisfaction and loyalty high.
musicMagpie achieved a 63% WISMO reduction - could you?
Get in touch with our team today, to find out how branded comms and tracking could mean a significant WISMO, WISMR and cost reduction for your business.
Take advantage of a whole new marketing tool
According to Shopify, open rates on transactional emails (such as order confirmations or tracking updates) are as high as 90%. Here, you’ve got a captive audience ready, waiting, and engaged.
These customer communications can be used to not only keep customers informed on parcel status, but they’re the perfect opportunity to serve upsell or promo content.
Drop in a link to the new product range, or shout about the flash sale. Maybe even pop a couple of #inspo pics in there, to show what accessories would go well with the new shirt your customer bought. Branded communications are a crucial point of converting customer attention into action, especially when paired with a consistent brand experience (for example, Sorted allows you to customise shipping states, so your customer sees delivery or returns updates that are consistently in your tone of voice).
Similarly, branded tracking pages offer your own ad space to a highly targeted audience too and can work just as hard for driving website traffic resulting in additional sales.
Pointing customers towards tracking pages on your domain, rather than to third parties, keeps them on your site and engaged in your brand. Or point the customer to your app and increase digital adoption and brand engagement that way. When the tracking pages show every parcel in an order – even if shipping from multiple carriers or locations – it makes things simple and there really is no need to push customers anywhere else.
Not only do these branded tracking timelines satisfy customer needs, they’ve been shown to boost click-through rate by as much as 83% for one of our retailers (which is not an insignificant metric, we think you’ll agree).
It’s not just about conversion and upsell, it’s about data too. Own your customer journey, own your insight. What can you learn about your customers? How often do they view tracking updates per shipment? What tracking page ads are they responding to? How often do they view tracking data in your app? When you keep the customer on your own site and app, you keep eyes on behaviour that is invaluable for driving change.
The power of personalised post-purchase
It’s never ‘one size fits all’, in ecommerce. And if brands and retailers extend personalised experiences right through the customer journey, much more value is realised in terms of conversion, satisfaction, and returning shoppers.
Serving customers with a tailored experience isn’t just about putting their name on the top of an email – it means making sure that they have access to the information they want, through the channels they choose. But, where to start? Data and insight can help here.
The author, researcher, journalist, and editor Miya Knights told the Sorted Retail Sessions podcast: “Retailers mistakenly think ‘omnichannel’ means they have to be everywhere. They don’t have to be everywhere. They have to be where their consumers expect them and want them to be.”
Every brand and retailer should be able to look at customer behaviour during each step of the post-purchase journey, and react accordingly. Which ads are resonating most, after the buy button? Where in the delivery journey are most customers looking for an update? Which comms are being read the most or driving the most site visits, resulting in additional upsell revenue?
80% of consumers are more likely to purchase when brands offer personalised experiences.
So by owning comms, offering on-site multi-parcel tracking pages, and in app-tracking, you can personalise your content and ads for different segments and personas – whilst learning more and more about where and when your customer is consuming delivery and returns tracking information.
There’s a lot of value locked into the post-purchase customer journey, and branded comms and tracking offer a super simple way of winning it and putting it straight into your business.
Want to see how branded comms and tracking can give you a 5* DX?
Get in touch with our delivery experts now, for a personalised run through of how to create winning comms and tracking.
