How To Prepare Your Post-Purchase Experience for Peak Season

Like many merchants, you already spent countless hours preparing your store, inventory, and operations for the holidays. But now that peak season is finally here, it’s worth taking a few more minutes to make sure your business is as prepared as possible for the upcoming boom in sales. To help you put the finishing touches on your peak season strategy, we’ve made a list (and checked it twice) that’s full of tips you can use to optimize your customer experience, reduce your support debt, and make it easier to retain revenue during the holiday rush.

Set clear delivery expectations 

Almost 9 out of 10 shoppers worry about getting an order in time for the holidays, which is why estimated delivery date (EDD) accuracy is more important during peak season than at any other point of the year. Setting expectations with visible EDDs not only boosts shopper confidence by letting your customers know when they can expect their package, but it also adds urgency at checkout increasing conversions in the process—this is especially true for last-minute shoppers. 

When setting your estimated dates, be mindful of packing days, courier cut-off times, and fulfillment schedule changes to ensure the most accurate delivery timelines. 

You should know…

• Narvar Track keeps customers informed of their order status and location, reducing customer service call volume. 
• The new gift tracking feature allows gift-givers to share a special tracking page with their intended recipients. 

Customize the holiday experience

Delight your customers the moment they place an order with a branded experience. Create, schedule and deploy holiday-themed tracking pages and make customizations with ease (and without designers) using an image asset editor. Update assets across multiple locales with dynamic redirect URLs and save valuable time in the process.

You should know…

• Narvar allows brands to improve their customer experience by customizing the broadcast banner in tracking emails to communicate important details about fulfillment, carrier delays, and other seasonal updates. 

Engage with customers every step of the way

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and everything that follows on the calendar isn’t just busy for you—it’s busy for your customers too. If you want to give your customers the best experience possible, you’ve got to make it easy for them to check in on their order. Use proactive messaging (notifications) to keep customers as informed as possible while simultaneously personalizing their post-purchase experience. 

Cover any potential communication gaps in the delivery or returns journeys "Carrier Delay" or "Return on Its Way" emails to reduce WISMO/WISMR inquiries by 50% or more.  

You should know…

• Narvar powers over 60 different types of notifications to provide a customer experience that’s both frictionless and transparent. You can suppress emails to account for carrier service methods, customize templates based on customer data, and more. 
• If you’ve purchased emails from Narvar already, you can get visibility into an entire order's notification history and resend communication to customers on-demand. 
• Klaviyo customers can take advantage of Narvar’s notification webhook to power post-purchase communication, enriching the customer experience by sharing shipment events across both platforms. In other words, you can use shipment-related events to power omni-channel post-purchase communication; enrich customer profiles to tailor future marketing campaigns; accurately time post-purchase follow ups.

Provide value for shoppers to increase customer lifetime value 

Revenue and profit jump during the holidays—unfortunately, so do returns (by more than 10% on average). The good news is, you can turn returns into a positive that builds lifetime-value by making the returns process easy and convenient. Brands that provide free return shipping during the holidays convert 90% more sales. 

So…

1. Make sure your holiday return policies match customer expectations.
2. Ensure those policies are clear and easy to find.
3. Create VIP-rules for your best customers.

Doing so will transform your return experience into a conversion tool that protects revenue and enhances profits long term. 

Add layers of convenience

Provide exceptional convenience when it comes to delivery and returns to convert more sales. Offering returns by mail is a start, but what about third-party drop off (e.g., at a Walgreens) or scheduled home pickup? Now, more than ever, consumers expect to see a variety of delivery and returns options.  

You should know…

• With Narvar, you can provide the most convenient return options on the market—a nice perk during the busiest time of year. Allow shoppers to conduct printerless returns, boxless returns, drop-off returns (at over 200,000 locations), scheduled home pickup returns, and more. 
• Carrier outage protection ensures your customers will always be able to request a return label and that your return operations will always run smoothly.

Get real time insight into your shipment data

As a final suggestion heading into the holidays, get real-time insight into your deliveries. Doing so will allow you to communicate more effectively with the customer, resolve last-minute carrier issues, and provide a more well-rounded shopping experience.

You should know…

• Monitor provides real-time visibility into outbound shipments to improve your fulfillment process. By allowing you to see key statuses such as live, overdue, trending, and undeliverable, you can better identify and resolve carrier challenges and problematic delivery expectations.