Improve Response Times, CSAT and CLV by Automating Order Tracking

As shoppers all over the world embrace a more digital approach to engaging with brands, there’s something that can be lost buying online vs in store ‘retail therapy’. After the excitement of making an online purchase, there’s the inevitable wait for it to arrive. All customers can do is watch the journey their packages are taking; from tracking it at the depot to watching a map showing how many stops the delivery driver is from your address.

Without necessarily realizing it, consumers hugely appreciate the experience of knowing where their purchase is at every stage from the minute they make the order. It’s a time of high engagement that brands can capitalize on by leaning into the power of private messaging channels.

The example of automated WISMO (where is my order) above is just one example of customer engagement post-purchase. WISMO is often only seen as an aspect of customer service, but with messaging channels, it opens up a multitude of possibilities for great customer experience across the lifecycle.

The 3 Benefits of Using Messaging Channels in Post-Purchase Engagement

1. Existing customers are up to 70% more likely to buy again 

The time between purchase and delivery is the ‘new moment of truth’ for online shoppers. A Harvard Business Review article describes there being an ‘experience gap’ where brands have an opportunity to deepen their relationship with customers whilst they are anticipating the arrival of their purchase. It’s the best opportunity to retain buyers and extend their CLV (customer lifetime value). Existing customers are  60-70% more likely to buy from you again and 6x cheaper to retain than new ones. It’s achieved by post-purchase engagement; 80% of consumers want brands to directly communicate with them after a sale, and are more likely to buy again as a result.

2. Open rates on messaging channels are 25x higher than emails 

Using private messaging platforms is the most effective way to engage with post-purchase customers. Push notifications have an average open rate of up to 75% vs around 1-3% for emails. On top of traditional requests for CSAT or NPS ratings, messaging also offers the opportunity to upsell products. The  80% of customers wanting consistent post-purchase communication, combined with higher engagement rates seen on messaging channels creates a huge opportunity.

Messaging channels allow for increased personalization, so brands can understand the time and manner of each customer’s engagement, allowing for a customized re-engagement strategy. If a brand is able to send out a reminder, product or deal the customer actually wants, it becomes a virtuous cycle. As a customer engages and makes more purchases tailored to their needs, more data and insights can be gathered, resulting in increased customer loyalty.

3. Automating purchase tracking frees up agents

Contact centers see a lot of the same requests every day. The fact that they’re common and potentially mundane makes them no less important, but they don’t always need a human brain to handle them. Messaging channels are designed to work at scale, making them perfect tools for tracking orders. Building a bot specifically for order tracking makes the process so much smoother than talking on the phone or even over messaging with a human agent. It frees up agents to deal with the less common issues that require the empathy of humans over the scalability of bots.

Post-purchase engagement isn’t purely a customer service tool. It’s incredibly useful for helping customers feel well-informed about the status of their order, but is a time in the customer lifecycle that marketers and CX managers can utilize to cement a stronger brand/customer relationship.