Your relationship with a customer doesn’t end after they’ve made a purchase. Their shopping experience needs to be cared for at every stage before, during, and after that point – and that includes delivery.
In this blog, we’ll be showing you 5 ways that you can effectively engage with customers in the post-purchase phase. With these tips, you’ll build fierce brand loyalty and keep customers more satisfied than ever before. Let’s begin.
The post-purchase stage is a largely untapped marketing channel that drives customer engagement and satisfaction. Unfortunately, from a retailer’s standpoint, tapping into post-purchase experience isn’t as easy as it sounds, as it is under the control of a third-party shipping carrier.
Retailers have exclusive control over the customer experience they offer from the point a customer is browsing on their website up until the moment the product is shipped. However, after that, offering a frictionless customer experience becomes a challenge, with the onus being on the shipping carrier to meet your expectations from a customer experience standpoint.
Shipping is mostly looked at as a third-party function, with retailers considering their job done once a parcel has been handed off to a shipping carrier. However, there is a lack of visibility into their functioning, resulting in the absence of service-level accountability. This creates a situation in which customer experience ultimately takes a hit.
Not providing transparency with your customers’ order deliveries leads to:
In the post-purchase phase, on average customers track their parcels 6-8 times before delivery, making this the most anxious stage in the customer journey.
That’s why offering custom order-tracking experiences put you in control of your customers’ most anxious post-purchase moments and helps you engage with them while building strong brand loyalty.
Before moving ahead, one of the most important things to understand is the importance of real-time visibility for your in-transit parcels.
Gaining real-time visibility is not just about staying in the know about parcels that are on schedule, but also gaining timely visibility into those that are bound to be delayed. This sets you up to offer a great post-purchase experience to customers.
While most businesses let customers track their parcels on a carrier's webpage, the question is, should businesses rely on a shipping carriers’ tracking page?
The answer is a resounding NO.
Here’s why.
Directing shoppers to a shipping carrier’s tracking page comes with a host of disadvantages for an eCommerce business like yours. Disadvantages that can have a telling impact on customer experience in the short term and brand recall and retention in the long term.
Here are the limitations you are likely to face by relying on a shipping carrier’s tracking page:
This lack of control and accountability in place leads to 94% of shoppers blaming you, the retailer, for a bad delivery experience rather than the shipping carrier. That apart, 47% of customers stop shopping with you following a bad delivery experience.
In order to fix the above-mentioned situation, retailers should get a handle over their post-purchase phase, particularly after parcels are handed off to carriers. That is why a solution that allows you to provide custom order-tracking experiences is critical.
Here are some key benefits of being in control of your customer’s post-purchase experience:
Now that we’ve familiarized ourselves with the what and the why, let’s take a look at how businesses can offer custom order-tracking experiences.
Build fully customizable, on-brand order-tracking pages for your customers to improve your brand’s recall and sales.
A branded tracking page contains all the necessary information about a package, such as carrier and service information, shipped and delivery date, the current status of the package with location, and the latest updates about it.
Existing Shift4Shop users can also enable their customers to see additional details about their packages such as order number, weight, and more.
The average customer tracks their parcel on the shipping carrier’s tracking page at least 6-to-8 times post-purchase. Leverage this to build your own custom branded tracking page aligned to your brand language, logo, color, etc. and imprint your brand identity in the minds of customers.
You can also use your tracking page as added real estate to boost the value of your existing customer base. This can be done by promoting sales campaigns and products, which open up upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Your tracking page can make use of a scoring system by which customers can rate your delivery performance. This, in turn, can help you measure your carrier’s delivery performance against service-specific delivery standards and make better shipping choices.
Ratings provide you with an unbiased quantitative idea of your customers' satisfaction level with your brand's post-purchase delivery experience.
You can also consider linking your tracking page to your Google Analytics account for an even better idea of how customers perceive your brand.
Mitigate your customers’ parcel anxiety by sending them an order-confirmation email, and augment it with an embedded clickable “track button” within the body of the email. This makes it easier for customers to check parcel whereabouts.
You can also customize the email and CTAs with your brand elements to make order tracking an extension of your business’s shopping experience.
Provide your customers with a seamless tracking experience from right within your website.
A tracking widget can provide your customers with single-click access to their order delivery status.
Now that we understand how focusing on custom order-tracking experiences allows you to make the best possible impression on your customers, let me introduce you to an integration that will strengthen your order-tracking experience game.
As a growing online retail business with a store on Shift4Shop, you can manage processes starting from inventory management and maintaining a customer database to handling orders up until dispatch.
However, there is an information void after an order has been shipped. You cede control of your last mile to your shipping carrier, a third-party service that is prone to service failures like delays and parcel damage, and which does not share the same sense of urgency about your parcel.
This is where Shift4Shop’s integration with LateShipment.com can help you.
No matter which shipping carrier you use, take advantage of the Shift4Shop–LateShipment.com integration and seamlessly integrate your Shift4Shop account to extend your capabilities within LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management platform.
Let's take a look at what you can do with this integration.
LateShipment.com provides you the ability to build your own custom order-tracking page as a simple plug & play tool. You can seamlessly create your order-tracking page without having to make any changes to your existing workflow.
The custom order-tracking page comes with a host of features that can help you create delightful on-brand delivery experiences.
Enable customers to track parcels from over 400 shipping carriers. You can embed the widget onto your page simply by adding a small snippet of JavaScript code that is required to customize the widget based on your preference.
Make order tracking easy for your customers by simply embedding a ‘track order’ button into your order confirmation and other customer-facing emails.
The above benefits aren’t the only ones that you’ll see after integrating with LateShipment.com. This integration offers you more than just the ability to offer an on-brand tracking experience. Here are other benefits of integrating with LateShipment.com.
At the end of the day, providing a memorable post-purchase delivery experience can markedly boost customer perception of your brand.
While many businesses push the envelope on things like design and marketing, they neglect the post-purchase experience.
By providing a stellar experience to your customers that extends beyond checkout, you can enjoy the benefits of increased brand recognition and retention.
Shift4Shop’s integration with LateShipment.com is a simple system that allows eCommerce businesses like yours to do just that.