For e-Commerce merchants, finding the right balance between scalability and innovation is the key to long-term growth when faced with the threat of rising consumer expectations and logistical challenges due to COVID-19 and inflation. 

As such, we were delighted to have our Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Dana von der Heide as a guest on the “At The Coalface Podcast”. It was a literal meeting of the minds between two incredibly passionate and experienced e-commerce geeks. Dana and host, Jason Greenwood, had a rather in-depth discussion on the next level of trends to impact e-commerce logistics. 

Don’t miss this rare crossing of (s)words and insights between two experienced and extremely opinionated leaders - listen to the podcast HERE, also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Don’t have time to listen to the podcast? No worries, we’ve wrapped it up for you in 5 key takeaways.

Here are five key takeaways for e-commerce merchants from the podcast:

The need for shipping visibility in e-commerce has been more critical than ever over the past 24 months. Why is that so? 

From an e-commerce perspective, the demand for delivery visibility has become an essential part of the consumer experience due to the strains on global supply chains brought about by COVID-19. So it's not just getting their parcel on time when they order something online. It's all about the level of communication that happens around that experience, starting at the point where consumers hand over their money right until when they receive the parcel in their hands.

Both experts agreed that nothing beats the consumer anticipation for their deliveries, no matter where consumers are. Nowadays, any merchant can aspire to provide their consumers with an Amazon-like experience, and technology is undoubtedly the critical enabler in that process. 

Scaling e-commerce growth is getting more expensive, and these days, it's more cost-effective to retain a consumer within your product ecosystem than to win over a new one. As a result, we are witnessing increased investment in data-driven solutions by e-commerce merchants to aid in their cost-saving measures and capitalize on the post-purchase experience.

Both parties agreed that supply chains can be described as a 'hot mess' given the chaos brought on by the pandemic and global inflation. However, everyone now understands how crucial logistics is to the overall success of e-commerce and online shopping. Solutions such as Parcel Perform create unique delivery experiences and enable more intelligent decision-making for merchants and internal logistics teams while making their operations highly actionable, intuitive, and visible. In addition, consumers can receive proactive tracking notifications with complete visibility of their parcels. It's a win-win situation for all parties involved - from the merchant, carrier and especially the consumer.

‘Where Is My Order?’ (WISMO) requests are still one of the top requests that customer service teams have to deal with. How can merchants work towards reducing them? 

WISMO - the term that every customer service agent dreads. It is the proverbial 'canary in the coalmine' for e-commerce, signifying underlying consumer unhappiness.

Such inquiries are becoming more frequent as consumer expectations increase; these often occur when the consumer feels out of touch with their online purchases during the post-purchase experience. 

Such calls or direct messages are becoming the bane for many a customer service agent. According to Dana, this accounts for up to as much as 50% of inbound inquiries for customer care centers. There is nothing more frustrating for a consumer to navigate the gauntlet of customer service only to find out that there is no update on their orders simply because the carrier hasn't received the parcels. 

This is the opportunity where Parcel Perform comes into play. 

Since 2016, we have helped our customers like Nespresso, Zalando, and Wayfair, reduce their WISMO inquiries by as much as 45%. We achieved this by creating transparency for more seamless and intuitive end-to-end delivery experiences - from the order's creation to the aggregation of over 140+ last mile events into 36 languages. Customer service agents have access to full visibility of all shipment statuses, filtered by variables such as names and order tracking numbers, effectively driving efficiency and proactivity. 

Taking it one step further, Parcel Perform provides a unique opportunity for our merchants to anticipate and address inefficiencies in logistics and carrier performance before their consumers notice anything amiss. They can also make better choices on carrier suitability for partnerships, identifying shipments with a risk of an issue and suggesting immediate mitigation measures. One of our customers, Snocks, a German DTC brand, recently observed a 20% increase in their Net Promoter Scores (NPS) via a more proactive approach to consumer feedback.

Both Dana and Jason concurred that we should avoid WISMO altogether; consumers should be able to receive automated, accurate, and actionable tracking notifications via email or SMS with complete visibility over their shipments. Parcel Perform enables brands to become active communicators to build trust and loyalty with their consumers.

How valuable is that in today’s world? Service quality and price competition will be the new emphasis for the next few years. To get ahead of competitors, brands must build solid strategies to work with the best partners that help them use their big data opportunities.

How does solving your carrier integration issues go hand in hand with e-commerce growth and accurately estimated delivery times for consumers?

Did you know that out of all global carriers, only 5% provide estimated delivery dates (EDDs)? This is because carriers, notoriously conservative yet compliant, tend to underpromise. This often results in primarily wrong delivery predictions and doesn't bode well for consumer confidence at checkout, let alone those WISMO inquiries! 

Dana and Jason agreed that information from logistics data remains complex and inconsistent across different time zones and stakeholders. These differing and divergent data sources make it challenging for e-commerce merchants to fully enable transparent end-to-end supply chain operations. We require data to be uniform and standardized according to a fixed number of parameters to be useful for interpretation and analysis within the fulfillment workflow. 

At Parcel Perform, we provide enriched and standardized data sets for the whereabouts of shipments and deliveries via multiple carrier integrations and event-based notifications via program interfaces such as APIs and Webhooks. In addition, we work tirelessly to bridge the gap from order creation to final delivery. Our machine learning algorithm automates and reduces the disparity between historical and real-time delivery data across multiple waypoints for merchants and their carriers at the granular level to provide the expected delivery predictions with up to 90% accuracy at checkout for over 100 million parcel updates daily.

As a result, we have seen a 20% uptake of e-commerce conversion rates at checkout for our customers, which is huge revenue by industrial standards.

Another interesting observation for Dana was that many DTC (Direct to Consumer) brands are operating multiple accounts on Shopify, which could result in inconsistent data flows. Parcel Perform ensures that merchants can automatically connect their stores to a singular Parcel Perform account. In addition, we can seamlessly integrate with 3rd-party merchant systems such as Klaivyo and Zendesk while providing event-based notifications on the whereabouts of their shipments. 

Our recommendations on enhancing their e-commerce logistics operations are geared toward delivering a positive post-checkout experience for their consumers and better margins for their bottom line.

How can data visibility empower e-commerce merchants with better understanding of their carrier performance and service level agreements? 

Jason aptly pointed out that with rich data insights, e-commerce merchants will have more competitive leverage when renegotiating rates and their Service Levels Agreements (SLAs) with carriers. Visualized data will allow them to compare carriers side by side, mainly if they are doing cross-border shipping. He appreciated that platforms such as Parcel Perform enable merchants to decide whether their carriers are in line with the SLAs based on standardized dashboards and visualized data sets across multiple markets, languages, and parcel volumes. 

Dana added that merchants using Parcel Perform can also sync their consumer NPS scores with their carrier performance for a more holistic view of the overall operational performance. On top of that, we are also working with multiple carriers such as DHL to enrich their tracking platforms. 

Parcel Perform sees itself as a completely neutral partner in this complex game of e-commerce logistics. We are an open and intuitive system; everything can be integrated via tools such as APIs and webhooks to enable our customers to leverage their data as best as possible. What would be one piece of advice that you would give merchants, whether they be new or established when they are looking for carriers to work with? 

To wrap up the interview, Dana encouraged everyone in the industry to not just look at cost and capability. Instead, double down on your customer experience, which extends to the carrier you choose. 

If you are looking at picking a carrier, don't just look at the cost associated with it; analyze and test the quality of the data and the visibility they give to your customers. With the help of Parcel Perform, merchants can get a good glimpse into the depth of information and service offered to the consumer. 

Yes, investing in logistics can be challenging on e-commerce margins. Still, looking ahead where things are getting increasingly difficult in the economic environment, it's all about differentiating yourself by giving a fantastic post-purchase experience for consumers

Finally, do consider additional options such as delivery rescheduling or acknowledgments of delivery - services that offer flexibility and empathy to the needs of consumers. 

Give yourself visibility: That truly sets you apart from the competition. That is what encourages consumers to click the 'checkout' button. 

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At the Coalface brings you the very best in global e-commerce, omnichannel and retail SaaS technology and trends. With 20 years in the industry, Jason and his guests discuss topics in simple language anyone can understand and apply to level up their business. 

You can follow Jason and the show on LinkedIn. Catch Dana’s interview HERE together with the collective wisdom of over 140 e-commerce professionals.