Smooth delivery journeys are vital for seamless customer experiences

The post-purchase period can be stressful and emotional. At the same time, it is crucial to making strong impressions on customers. Most brands, however, fail to pay sufficient attention to customers’ experiences in the delivery journey. 

In a recent survey, we found that 56% of consumers are disappointed with service from the retailers and e-commerce sites they use. 60% of consumers rate their post-purchase experience as underwhelming. 

And most concerningly, 92% of buyers say they stop buying after a negative customer service experience. In short, customers expect a better post-checkout experience from your business. And they will stop buying they their expectations are not met.  

Read on to learn more about how you can increase customer satisfaction with better visibility for customers and teams during the delivery journey. 

Unlocking real-time visibility with standardized data

The key to improving the delivery experience is real-time visibility through logistics data. But just having your data is not enough. Because businesses now rely on ever more complex logistics set-ups as they grow, they have more data than they know what to do with. 

Each shipment has multiple touchpoints with multiple parties, and some firms may even provide extra granular data that maps every single touchpoint or location producing an overwhelming number of data points. 

To make things even more complicated, this data does not arrive in standardized forms. Your warehouses, first and last-mile carriers, or large logistics firms might also use different languages or descriptions for events. 

Trying to make use of this raw data would be time-consuming, frustrating, and near impossible. In order for your data to be useful, you need a tool that can consolidate and standardize this data so it can be easily read by your teams and customers. 

How to turn your delivery data into opportunity

By making data easy to use, your brand enables new opportunities. You can use it to keep customers engaged through constant updates about their orders. Customer service teams resolve “where is my order” WISMO queries in an instant, while logistics teams stay one step ahead of all shipments. 

All of these things come together to help your brand drive customer experience improvements that keep your customers happy and coming back. Here’s how it works. 

Engage customers while they wait for their orders

Real-time notifications are a crucial element of your post-purchase strategy that are also great moments to push for sales. Customers are excited to receive updates on their purchases and pay extra attention to any communication you make about them. 

Customers typically track their parcels 4-6 times until fulfillment and at least 40% of consumers report checking on the status of their deliveries daily. Sending consumers away to carrier websites during these important moments means losing valuable customer touchpoints. 

Instead, you can direct consumers to your own delivery update portal powered by integrated logistics data. Once you have them on your page, you can recommend new products or items that go well with their recent purchase to drive sales.

You can also use real-time logistics data to send timely and relevant notification emails to your customers. From pick-up to successful deliveries, customers want to hear from you so they know their deliveries are on track. Delivery status update communications have an 80% open rate, making them another high-value touchpoint for upselling or cross-selling. 

Empower internal teams to streamline the delivery journey

WISMO (Where is my order) calls put immense pressure on your e-commerce, customer success, and logistics teams all at once. Using your logistics data to power post-checkout communications, you can reduce your teams’ workloads and streamline their workflows. 

Ensure that your teams are able to access accurate tracking information quickly and intuitively. This will not only allow them to smoothly and efficiently resolve WISMO tickets, it can even reduce them by up to 45% by empowering your teams to proactively update customers before they become frustrated about their orders. 

Having near-instant access to information helps your logistics teams take a proactive posture when delays occur. Though these delays may not be in your control, your relationships with your customers are. If handled correctly, these difficult situations can become great opportunities to make positive impressions on your customers and strengthen customer loyalty.

As the service recovery paradox tells us, customers who face service failures that are quickly and smoothly resolved could develop stronger loyalty than those who did not face any issues. Reach out to customers as soon as delays are predicted to keep them in the loop and reassure them that you are working to get their purchases to them as soon as possible. 

With real-time logistics data, your customer service team can even work with carriers to drive improvements in the delivery experience. With this, they’ll be able to flag potential delivery issues before delays occur and nudge carriers to maintain the promise of timely delivery and keep your customers happy and satisfied.

Having visibility over the delivery process with real-time logistics data can be a game changer. Not only will it help you streamline customer service efforts and provide more effective service, but it can also help you work with your carriers to continuously improve the delivery experience for your customers. 

Download our "Complete Guide to Driving Customer Lifetime Value for E-commerce Brands." now for expert tips on how you can build a customer-centric business for sustainable growth.