Proactively Addressing eCommerce Delivery Delays Improves Customer Experience

If you manage an eCommerce business, do you know if your shipments are on time? Do you know if your shipments are delivered at all? Andrew Chan, chief marketing officer and co-founder of AfterShip, once asked those questions at a conference, and found that no one could answer.

“Everyone assumed the shipments are delivered, and delivered on time, but of course we know that’s not the reality,” Chan told PYMNTS.

Too many businesses are focused on customer acquisition and advertising rather than what happens after the purchase, Chan said. In addition, businesses have not had a single place where they could go to find delivery information, so it’s been difficult for them to track the delivery performance of all their carriers.

“It’s time to change because the acquisition cost is so high,” Chan said. “So, it’s a big shift of the trend for the top merchants to focus on retention, loyal customers, brand recognition — all those things.”

Focusing on Retention, Loyal Customers and Brand Recognition

On March 10, AfterShip launched a new OnTime Report tool that helps businesses monitor shipments and delivery times across more than 900 carriers worldwide.

This new feature joins the company’s post-purchase and tracking platform that offers branded shipment tracking, notifications, returns and exchanges. The platform is used by anyone who has shipments, including eCommerce retailers, brands, business-to-business (B2B) sellers and third-party logistics (3PL) firms.

Businesses should be aiming for an on-time delivery rate of 80% to 85%, Chan said. However, many find their rate is more like 35%, 40% or 50% because of the COVID situation and the way it has disrupted the delivery process.

AfterShip gauges on-time delivery rates by taking either the time the business promised the customer or the time the carrier promised the business and comparing that to the time the first delivery attempt was made.

Identifying and Proactively Solving Problems

When an order is delivered late, many customers simply don’t return to the merchant. Often, merchants don’t know why they’ve lost these customers because while customers often leave reviews about product quality, they’re less likely to do so about the delivery experience.

When eCommerce businesses have access to their on-time rate, they can identify problems and take steps to mitigate current ones and prevent them in the future.

One strategy businesses use when a shipment is running late is to proactively notify customers even before they complain. These businesses let customers know that the product is running late, but on its way, and refund the shipping fee. That’s especially common if the product is of high value and the customer is a VIP.

“It’s just kind of a cool example that merchants keep their words,” Chan said.

Adjusting Carrier Strategies, Service Types

Another strategy is to set a more realistic estimated delivery date in the first place. Some merchants work to give a more accurate estimate and tell customers that it’s likely to take that long because of the disruptions caused by COVID.

“So, no over-promising, no under-promising, setting up expectation — people understand,” Chan said.

Merchants can also adjust the carrier strategy or service type. A carrier may offer more than one service type, so merchants can change that rather than changing carriers if shipments have not been delivered when promised.

“You may offer more service types to more VIP users,” Chan said. “If there is something you can’t make the promise — you want two days but your services are not giving you two days, then you want to add one new service and charge a little bit more for just that, for example.”

Keeping Promises to Customers

When merchants have the data they need to take actions like these, they can improve the customer experience. Without the data, they may not even know that there’s a problem that they should solve. Instead, all they know is that a customer who was previously loyal has stopped coming back.

“If they don’t talk about the delivery rates, on-time rates, they are basically not keeping their promise to the customers,” Chan said. “The post-purchase experience is kind of broken. So, basically, you buy something and after the purchase button it’s ‘bye bye.’ That’s really not the right way to do things, and hopefully this OnTime Report is a wakeup to merchants that care about loyal customers.”