Tips to Improve Your Shoppers’ Post-Purchase Experience

In online retail, most business-customer relationships go sour after checkout stage— when a customer has paid for items and is waiting for the business owner to deliver their order.

Soon after collecting payments, many retailers do less to improve their buyer’s post-purchase experience.

After the checkout stage, a buyer is anxious to receive their product. They also hate to be left without a clue on the status of their order. Shoppers have expectations (based on what you promise) and if anything goes wrong, they begin thinking less of your brand.

Your Business—Not the Shipping Company— Takes the Blame for All Delivery Blunders 

Even though the order fulfillment process involves carrier companies, the ecommerce business usually suffers the most if a customer is mad about a missing, lost, damaged or late delivery.

Why? One mistake and a customer may go mad, go rogue and leave a shocker review that can taint your brand’s name.

That’s not just one customer you’ve lost, all would-be clients who care to look at online reviews may decide otherwise if they see many disappointed shoppers than happy ones.

Customers are a sensitive bunch, so how can you ensure your shopper enjoys their post-purchase experience with your brand?

 How to Offer a Better After-Purchase Experience

1.  Don’t Leave Customers without a Clue.

Shoppers hate to be left without a clue after the checkout stage. So send as many useful notification texts messages and emails.

Send an email to;

• Confirm you’ve received the customer’s payments and order request
• Inform the customer you’ve handed over their parcel to a carrier (name the carrier and describe the packaging material plus contents in detail)
• Follow-up emails and texts from package tracking results to confirm the location of the parcel in transit
• Apology emails and texts to inform (and explain) to a customer an unavoidable delay and when to expect their parcel

 

For a better post-purchase experience, use short and detailed text messages because a shopper is likely to read those than long emails—which they rarely even check.

2. Keep to your Quoted Shipping and Delivery Time.

If you promise to deliver in 2 to 3 days, then so be it. Remember, customers prioritize fast delivery, so expedited shipping and delivery may be one of the reasons they chose your brand. Going longer than you promised is a major cause of churn among customers.

That is also to say; do not make promises you cannot live up to. An excellent idea here is to offer multiple shipping options and specific delivery times for each.

3. Offer Multiple Delivery Options.

Expectations vary from shopper to shopper. While some prioritize expedited delivery, in as little as 24 hours, others are patient and okay with 2-3 days.

More delivery options also means more customers because you are likely to meet everyone’s needs.

Letting your buyer choose when they can want to receive their item improves the post-purchase experience.

4. Give detailed product and shipment info.

Sharing detailed info relating to shipping and delivery can help keep a customer on the loop. Be ready to respond to a buyer’s queries on the status of their shipment anytime they reach out to reduce churn and increase trust.

Also share guides and details about your product to better the post purchase experience and further reinforces your business-customer rapports.

5. Offer Real-time Parcel Tracking.

Real-time tracking is becoming a must-have feature for forward-thinking ecommerce business owners.

Tracking is possible but most times they involve a shopper looking for and typing long shipment digits. Real-time tracking solutions built for ecommerce purposes is way easier and can help your customers know the exact location of their shipment in transit.

Allowing customers access to such crucial shipping and delivery info can help reduce delivery anxiety that could escalate into churn and abandonment.

To Wrap Up

Business does not end after a purchase. In essence, it begins at checkout stage and proceeds throughout order fulfillment and product delivery because that is when you get the chance to prove your legitimacy and competency as a brand.

Hopefully the above tips will help you streamline your post-purchase experience.