If you aim to succeed as a wholesale distributor or a lifestyle eCommerce brand, today’s shoppers and B2B buyers expect not only a smooth online experience but an even better post-order one.
While it’s no easy feat and requires solid technology to make it happen, the easiest path to creating a memorable post-order experience is done by allowing your customers to track their order and delivery in their preferred communication channels. Some customers are satisfied with an email order summary, and others want to receive SMS text message updates with each shipping event that occurs.
Practically every online experience today is trackable due to customer demand. Today’s denizens of the web expect to track everything from online college applications to their pizza delivery. And yes - pizza tracking is a thing. It’s also made Domino’s Pizza some serious dough. Recently, the company reported that “60 percent of its business occurs through digital channels,” according to USA Today.
While the national pizza chain might not be known as the best pizza in the world, their focus on digital has ushered in more sales and made millennials brand fans by making it possible to track the production and delivery of their order via the infamous pizza tracker.
They’ve also made it possible to order a pizza by allowing consumers to text a pizza emoji directly to the pizza chain. Or, tweet the pizza emoji directly to @Dominos and a fresh pie will arrive in 30 minutes. To help customers use their preferred channel to order pizza, they’ve even created this microsite that offers details on the 11 different ways you can use technology to order a pie.
The lesson here is that if you lack the technology needed to make it easy for your customers to order from you and get updates on when their product will deliver, your competitor down the street with the technology to do so will prevail.
Ask Your Customers to Create an Account
To capture as much buyer data as possible, give customers the option to register and create an account within your online store versus checkout as a guest. This allows you to capture additional data about your customer for future marketing campaigns but also saves their data so when they return to make another purchase; they don’t have to enter it again.
Find a Shipping Solution that Verifies Addresses
Ideally, you’re shipping software first verifies the shipping address before your customer is allowed to place the order. In the event your customer enters an incorrect address, solutions like ShipStation will help them correct the address before moving on to providing a payment method.
Your shipper should provide an estimated delivery date, which is ideal to include in the post-order email since this is often question number one for the customer. Customers may want to opt-in with the shipper to get email or SMS text alerts that provide shipment updates.
All of this eliminates the need to for your customer to call in to find out the status of their shipment and also instills trust in your customer.
Immediately Email Your Customer After a Purchase
Immediately after your customer places an order, set up an automated email that provides a summary of the order placed, including items ordered, total charge, estimated delivery date and a link that allows them to track the delivery of their order via the shipper used for that order. Ideally, find technology that allows you to connect with the API of the shipper so that you can pull that data in view for the customer on your website.
In the event that your customer places frequent orders with you, make sure the email includes an order number so that it’s easy for them to log in and track the order of interest.
If you’d like to learn more about how Systum integrates with ShipStation, read more here or schedule a demo with us.
Categories: B2B eCommerce
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