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.