The post purchase experience is an area where if anything the customer experience has deteriorated for so many due to challenging decisions placed on businesses such as charging for returns or maximising refund windows for cash flow purposes. Challenging considering, according to our 2023 State of Returns report, 91% of customers will not buy from a retailer again if the experience is poor. One of the teams therefore most heavily impacted by this and arguably one of the most important is the brands’ customer service (CS) team.
At Reveni, one of the main end beneficiaries using our solutions are exactly these teams. Of course, because of the revenue opportunities we create, our conversations typically start with eComm or digital teams, even finance but the teams impacted potentially in the best way with immediate effect are customer services. Why? Well, it’s simple, because of our instant services, specifically instant refunds and instant exchanges.
The reality is, if a customer contacts a brand after returning something it’s essentially guaranteed to be related to their refund. If the CS team don’t respond promptly or with the right message then customers are rightly (not always!) frustrated, pushing them towards review sites and the dreaded 1 star.
Consider this, if a brand we’re working with uses all our refund and exchange services then all customers receive their refund or exchange immediately. Therefore, the reality is that ALL ‘where is my refund or exchange’ interactions literally stop immediately.
One COO at a customer recently told us that over 50% of their total CS interactions with customers were specifically linked with the post purchase and now any customer interaction with the team related to returns or exchanges is negligible.
So how can brands quantify the impact? Consider these scenarios:
Brand 1:
- Online revenue = £15m
- Average Returns Value = £50
- Returns Percentage = 30%
- Total Returns = 90,000
- Average number of post purchase interactions with customers = 15%
- Total post purchase interactions = 13,500
- Average time to respond to interaction = 15 mins
- Total time taken to respond to all interactions saved = 3,375 hours
So, by implementing instant options and therefore removing 3,375 hours of time spent removed that = 2 x FT Employees*
*UK average of 35 hours per week = 1,680 hours per year assuming statutory 20 days holiday.
Brand 2:
- Online revenue = £150m
- Average Returns Value = £150
- Returns Percentage = 30%
- Total Returns = 300,000
- Average number of post purchase interactions with customers = 15%
- Total post purchase interactions = 45,000
- Average time to respond to interaction = 15 mins
- Total time taken to respond to all interactions = 11,250 hours
So, by implementing instant options and therefore removing 11,250 hours of time spent removed that = 6.7 x FT Employees*
*UK average of 35 hours per week = 1,680 hours per year assuming statutory 20 days holiday.
All this time saved can serve many purposes:
- Increase focus on strategic initiatives where CS play a key role.
- Supporting growth without having to increase headcount.
- Redistribution of time to other business critical customer areas such as outbound, sizing, product etc.
At the same time, consider the impact on time spent responding to customers via reviews sites such as Trustpilot. Responses that are public and have such a considerable impact on conversions as well as brand perception. How many 1-star reviews have you received in the past week, month or year that are linked to the post purchase experience. Going forward these are almost entirely removed and therefore the perception of the brand receives a significant boost.
The short of the story is that there are solutions out there that can have an immediate impact on the brand across multiple functions that don’t come with complex integrations or high costs. For various eComm platforms such as Shopify you can be up and running in just a day or two.
Smaller realistic steps that impact the business cross functionally, critical in 2024…