How can you succeed in ecommerce? By curating the customer experience and getting customers to return. More commonly known as CX, customer experience is the term used to describe how a customer navigates through their personal customer journey. We may not think about it often, but our customer experience happens every time we interact with a retail establishment, online or in real life. Understanding and optimizing the CX on our ecommerce sites and keeping it consistent throughout is a key to ecommerce success.
What is the Customer Experience (CX)?
CX is not unique to ecommerce, every business strives to create a memorable experience for their customers. From soothing music at the grocery store, to friendly airline attendants, being customer-focused is one of the musts in business. CX in ecommerce, however, presents its own challenges because the only interactions are through a screen. Where a movie theater can pump scents into the air, an ecommerce retailer is limited to only two of the 5 senses: Sight and sound.
So how do you compete with that? By leveraging the advantages that ecommerce brings and making sure your CX is comprehensive and second to none. This includes addressing the post purchase CX gap.
What is the Post Purchase CX Gap in Online Retail?
The Customer Experience for ecommerce is not just about leading customers to the shopping cart. A good CX includes the path from the buy button to their front door. The post purchase portion of the customer experience is one that most retailers overlook and, unfortunately, where it can do the most damage to your brand.
Fulfilling an order is just as important as convincing a shopper to place it. When a customer experiences a delay in their order, or gets frustrated about waiting for delivery, they can blame you and lose trust in your brand. Taking care of the post purchase customer experience gap is crucial for many reasons and every business should create strategies to improve it.
8 Strategies that Guarantee Post-Purchase CX Success
Creating a comprehensive customer experience to satisfy customers and keep them loyal to your brand means closing the post purchase CX gap. Take care of every step of the journey from when the customer clicks the buy button to when they open the packaging in their home with these 8 strategies:
1. Audit Your Carriers and Make Sure They Represent Your Brand
Whether you use an exclusive shipping carrier or many, make sure their performance metrics, their customer service practices, and their refund policies align with your brand promise. Delivery exceptions may happen because of the shipping company, but the customers will still blame your brand. Don’t risk losing customers due to a bad post purchase experience by trying to save a few bucks.
2. Offer Real Time Tracking
Many customers feel anxious while waiting for their order to arrive. Customers check their tracking information about 4-5 times per order on average. The more information you can give your customers, the better they will feel and the better their customer experience will be.
3. Proactively Resolve Delivery Issues
When a customer hears about an issue with their order from you along with a resolution via a refund or replacement before they even realize there is a problem, they will have a better customer experience. You can’t avoid delivery issues 100% of the time, but how you deal with them can make a difference between a customer that appreciates your brand and a customer that will never return.
4. Keep Customers Informed with Notifications
Regular communications between you and the customer will increase their trust in your brand. Even if there isn’t a delivery issue, keep in touch during the post purchase experience and send your customer messages that will keep them excited about their purchase.
5. Use a Branded Tracking Page
Many retailers miss an opportunity to stay on brand during the post purchase period by using their shipping carriers order tracking page. Using a Branded Tracking Page enhances the CX by offering order status information with the look and feel of your ecommerce store and personalization that drives repeat sales and increases customer loyalty.
6. Increase Repeat Sales with Personalized Recommendations
Use your customers’ order history to understand their preferences and make recommendations for upselling and cross-selling. When a customer has already done business with you, they have created a relationship of trust. Send the customer emails, texts, or communicate via a Branded Tracking Page letting the customer know that there is more that you can offer them.
7. Use Insights to Improve the Customer Experience
When a customer returns to your ecommerce site, treat them like an old friend. Create a CX for each customer based on the data you collect about their previous visits. Greet them by name and make recommendations based on their previous purchases. Information as basic as their geography can let you create personalized offers that will make the customer feel special.
8. Build an Online Community
Customers like to return to places where they feel welcome. Create an online community where customers can share information about their purchases, make recommendations, and learn alternative applications for your products. The online customer experience includes a sense of belonging; make your ecommerce store a place to share.
How WISMOlabs Can Help You Achieve Post-Purchase CX Success
The WISMOlabs Post-Purchase Platform helps close the post purchase CX gap and creates loyal customers by increasing repeat sales. The platform features fully customizable customer-facing components that match your brand, along with analytics that provide actionable insights to help you drive marketing decisions. It integrates with any ecommerce platform and can piggy-back on your existing post purchase, shipping, logistics, communication, and customer support solutions.
WISMOlabs is trusted by the most innovative and fastest growing ecommerce retailers to help them improve their post-purchase CX. Contact us today to learn how you can lower WISMO costs, increase profits, and grow your business.
