Excellent news!!!
The prospect is successfully converted, it’s exciting but isn’t enough. What matters that how your brand engages with the customers beyond the initial point of sales till becoming loyal customers – to the product and the brand.
Post-purchase strategies help brands to up their value game in the eyes of the consumers. While it’s not the fastest converting strategy, it’s a sure way to improve your CX, expand your customer journey, and position your brand for forthcoming sales and revenue.
E-commerce retailers must engage with their consumers even after the sale has taken place. Here come post-purchase strategies into play. The e-commerce industry is entirely disorganized.
Most e-commerce brands lack the trick when it comes to continuing the conversation and rendering a post-purchase connection after the customer buys a product. But brands should keep in mind that it costs less to keep existing customers; rather than obtain new ones.
In this article, you will get a quick walkthrough of some of the essential ways of improving the post-purchase customer experience.
Post-purchase customer experience should be a priority for all businesses
The basic definition of post-purchase customer experience is how well the organization treats its customers once they purchase a product or service. Existing customers are a trove of gems, and treating them well even after a purchase is what makes them loyal to your brand. It is much more cost-effective to convince existing customers or accomplish a repeat purchase from them; rather than acquiring new customers.
Leveraging your existing customers who have already purchased your product or service – you have to construct a reliable customer base, showing your loyalty towards them.
Let us now look at some of the most effective methods of providing a post-purchase customer experience for all businesses.
Show concern and care
Once the customer makes the purchase, businesses should express care and value for them. Usually, a post-purchase message like “Thank You” helps. Moreover, some companies cater to rating systems for customers to share how they felt while purchasing their product or service. Such actions can make an impact on the customer’s overall experience, in turn attracting new customers.
Don’t stop with a thanking message
Once the customer makes a successful transaction with the business, the thanking message pops up. At this point, your customer engagement with your site remains at its peak. In addition, transaction emails are the next element to generate a better post-purchase experience.
According to the report of Experian, transactional emails get eight times increased open & click-through rates compared to other email types. It is natural to say that once the customer places their order, they want to know its progress and status. That is where you can provide emails to bring trust and support even after a purchase.
Return and refund policies
Another effective way of rendering a better post-purchase experience is by confirming whether your buyer is fully conscious of the refund policies and returns operation.
Being entirely transparent on this matter helps your business build post-purchase trust with your customer. Such gestures also show that your brand is not about sales and making money alone. Rather, it indicates that you value every customer’s purchases. If anything goes wrong with the product or the delivery process, they can return the product and get refunded on time.
How-to manuals and guides
It is the responsibility of the business to ensure that the customers or buyers enjoy your product after receiving it. To ensure that, How-To manuals and guides help tremendously.
They also reduce the risk of getting product returns from frustrated buyers. Businesses can deliver How-To manuals and guides as a small leaflet with the item, via email, or as an embedded video guide link.
Creating online communities for customers
In the digital era where marketing has become customer-centric, brands need more online communities to enclose customers towards their business. Businesses can accommodate all existing customers under these communities for support, drive sales, keep them engaged with new products, and foster a long-term relationship through these communities.
Product Satisfaction Feedback
Another significant way to gain positive post-purchase engagement is by rendering product feedback. A personalized feedback form with a checkbox and rating for different aspects ranging from purchase to delivery, helps businesses keep the customer engaged with the product and the relations.
It also helps the company improve its product line and other services. It is essential to note that the time duration for taking reviews from customers varies on the type of product purchased. However, few products require taking feedback multiple times, such as computers, laptops, etc.
Get customers to sign up to your mailing list
Those customers that bought something from your business are more likely to provide feedback. If their experience with your site, product, and after-sale service is good, they will buy from you time and again.
This is an apt moment to bring a more positive post-purchase experience by providing them the chance to sign up to your mailing list. It is essential because, through this, customers permit the business to incorporate them into the drip marketing campaign of the company.
Product care tips
Cosmetics and other body-care businesses usually provide customers with product care tips, as part of the post-purchase experience. This is usually done to keep customers engaged with their products. These tips come as subsequent informative emails or video links packed with product care or product-based tips that help businesses prevent their purchase from fraying out quickly. All these engagements also keep reminding the customers about the company, its services, and how it cares about each buyer.
Replenishment reminders
Recurring periodic emails notifying the customer when their product is about to run out is another way of providing a better post-purchase experience. Such replenishment emails get generated automatically, as set by the businesses, by taking data from repetitive customers.
Such a form of auto-generated emails to customers works with all types of products like cosmetics, pet food, dry fruits, prepaid recharge, etc. Such emails get triggered with minimum or no human intervention. Replenishment reminders create simple attention through emails, increasing the post-purchase customer experience & bringing to your brand a reliable and trustworthy relationship.
Reward loyalty
Another way to engage your customers once they buy a particular product or service from your business is by providing rewards or inviting them to a loyalty program. Companies can do this by catering to emails to leverage those rewards and benefits. Bonus points, exclusive sales, VIP access, massive discounts, etc., are some ways to increase customer satisfaction post-purchase.
Complementary product recommendation
Grabbing as much customer information as possible not only helps in understanding them but also aids in better customer relationships. Even with limited information, businesses should use the strategy to recommend similar products or items the customer had already purchased.
Recommending complementary products give a sense of connection for customers and help companies understand what else the customer needs. Sending complementary recommendations over emails like “Customers are also buying X with this Y product you’ve already bought” is what increases the post-purchase relationship.
Conclusion
We hope this comprehension has given you a crisp idea to make a better post-purchase experience for customers. Many businesses and brands often overlook the importance of post-purchase customer relations, eventually only incurring losses. If you treat your existing customers well, they will become your brand advocates. That can be a good foundation for your business and help build a dedicated customer base.
Tags: After sales, After sales service, customer experience, Customer Experience Management, Customer Service, CXM, Post purchase experience, Sales