E-commerce brands prioritize communicating with their customers frequently to influence their purchasing decisions and offer a decent experience associated with the brand.
However, the situation becomes radically different when the critical post-purchase phase of the customer journey begins. This is where the brand’s efforts towards a great customer experience (CX) suffer tremendously due to inadequate customer engagement leading to irreparable problems and lost opportunities.
If you’re an E-commerce or D2C store owner, customer support, or customer experience leader; this article is for you. Here are the things we’ll be covering in it.
- What is post-purchase communication
- Issues that emanate from lack of proper communication in the post-purchase phase
- Why communicating in the post-purchase phase is essential to the brand experience
- Impact of a great returns experience on your business (retention and revenue)
- How businesses can proactively communicate post-purchase to improve the brand experience
Read through till the end if you’re looking at ways to start effectively engaging with customers in the post-purchase stage to improve the brand experience.
What Is Post-purchase Communication?
In simple terms, post-purchase communication is any sort of interaction between the brand and the customer after the latter has purchased with the former.
Any touchpoint that exists in the middle of the order getting confirmed to the order getting delivered or the returned order making its way back to the store qualifies as a post-purchase communication.
Post-purchase communication exists in many forms. Keep in mind that customers always expect brands to initiate communication hence, common forms of communication are order status notifications via emails and SMS, order tracking pages, customer support and social media interactions, delivery and returns feedback requests, etc. We’ll look at all of them in detail below.
Now that we’ve got a hang of what it means, let’s get into the underlying issues that exist in the post-purchase phase of the customer journey due to lack of communication.