The Rise of Online Shopping During the Festive Season

As consumers increasingly shift their holiday shopping from physical stores to online platforms, they benefit from a wider variety of products, more competitive pricing, and convenient replacement and refund policies. This growing trend is evident in the retail industry, with a projected 7% to 9% increase in retail sales in 2021, according to Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast. In our country, the online retail sector is expected to see a significant boost, with India’s festive season generates $9.2 Billion in online sales alone during the 2021 holidays. This surge in online shopping highlights the growing preference for e-commerce, especially during the festive period when consumers seek convenience and great deals.

Enhancing Post-Delivery Customer Experience

With e-tail becoming the first choice for buyers, ensuring a seamless purchase and delivery experience is imperative for organizations to drive sales. But that's half the battle. The remaining half requires ensuring a seamless post-delivery experience. According to our Delivery Delight Index #3, a survey conducted in partnership with Redseer, for consumers’ post-delivery experience is one of the crucial touchpoints for retailers to build customer loyalty.

This means, ensuring a hassle-free return, rapid reverse pick up, and a faster refund. Brands that do so, not only turn first-time customers into lifelong customers but also increase revenue per customer. Here are strategies to bump up your post-delivery customer experience:

• Build Proactive Response: A report by Forbes indicates that for 96% of customers, a great customer service experience is important for enabling brand loyalty. Moreover, it's imperative to provide proactive assistance in their post-delivery phase. Respond and engage with consumers who mention your brand on social media or reach out to you via support, regardless of a negative or positive post-delivery experience. It is important to make them feel heard. This is especially relevant when considering the 50 stats that prove the value of customer experience, which highlight how impactful a positive customer experience can be for driving sales and fostering long-term loyalty. Providing excellent customer service helps businesses build trust and keep consumers coming back for more.

• Provide Timely Resolution: Having a team of experienced customer service reps who understand how to navigate a difficult situation is important. An extremely unhappy customer will usually calm down when the interaction with customer support is fruitful. A solution-centric strategy that provides timely resolution is the key to enhancing customer experience. Real-time visibility into your post-delivery experience can help win back the consumers if they aren’t happy with the purchase. Work with a delivery partner that empowers your businesses to provide customers with live updates on the return progress.

• Speed up Return and Refund: Is your return policy understandable to your consumer? Is it easy to find on your application or website? If the answers to these questions are no, then brands need to re-assess their ease-of return. Having a concise and clear return policy to help improve customer trust. Brands can also enable a self-return option on the web and mobile applications for faster returns and easy tracking. By making the return process simpler and hassle-free, brands reduce the time in dispensing the refund. This encourages your customer to make another purchase even if they were not satisfied with the earlier products. Free return shipping can be your key brand differentiator and biggest purchase driver for the most and least frequent online buyers.

• Engage with Consumers Consistently: Your job isn't done until the entire delivery experience is completed. To ensure that the consumer is not getting anxious about their order updates, it is good to provide them with their order statistics. Delivering regular updates on the post-delivery process showcases that you have got their back, increasing the chances of customer loyalty.

• Get Customer Feedback on Delivery Experience: Another proven way to improve the post-delivery experience is getting customer feedback. Every feedback gives insight into what is working for the customer and the brand. Your target audience is your research to implement better solutions for your brand.

Must read: The RedSeer Shadowfax Delivery Delight Index

Conclusion

In today’s competitive e-tail landscape, the future of a brand is largely defined by its customer behavior. It is now more than ever that organisations need to measure customer behavior across touchpoints to create a seamless experience. The smoother the interaction becomes, the more chances for the customer to stay. This extends beyond customer service to include logistics service, as timely and efficient delivery plays a crucial role in shaping the overall customer experience. Brands that streamline their logistics services are more likely to build customer trust and loyalty, ultimately driving long-term success.