The sale has been made, the money is in the bank and the order is on its way to your customer. Surely, it’s time to congratulate yourself on a job well done, isn’t it?
The reality is that those retailers who do think like this risk losing customers in the future. And since we know that getting a new customer costs five times the price of retaining an old one it’s an expensive mistake to make. Instead, there is a valuable opportunity to build true customer loyalty and generate future sales opportunities by ensuring your after-sales service is as good as your pre-sales service. We invite you to learn more about this critical area by reading this article.
Alternatively, if you would like to get a full overview of how to achieve a 360-degree excellent customer experience in retail, you can download our report straight away.
Here you will find:
- The after-sales opportunity is huge
- Building customer relationships
- How to maximize the after-sales opportunity
The after-sales opportunity is huge
After-sales service has to be about every element of the customer journey after the sale is made. So do you really have friendly, knowledgeable customer service teams and systems in place to manage after-sales support? Are you using reliable, trusted delivery partners to ensure orders arrive to customers at the level of customer satisfaction you expect?
Poor delivery experiences, a lack of tracking capability, and unreliable delivery partners can lead to an influx of customer service calls which your employees need to be able to handle. Consumer surveys repeatedly find that a customer who is proactively informed of delivery problems is happier than the customer who has to do the chasing to find out where their parcel is. It not only means a happier customer but less pressure on your customer service teams too.
The after-sales journey doesn’t end at the point of receipt of goods either. The goods may not be as expected, or the customer might have just changed their mind. So the returns process needs to mimic your omnichannel sales process. That means enabling your stores to accept a "return anywhere" policy, as well as swift refunds where possible. This is especially important since it can help recapture a sale from the customer rather than risk losing them elsewhere. Here, too, retailers need to ensure employees are ready to maximize the opportunity, especially when customers are in-store. -png-2.png)
Building customer relationships
Retailers also need to be aware of the after-sales communications possibilities. Without spamming the customer you should look at how to follow up communication with the customer after the sale. This could include a "thank you" email, guidance on how to use the product to get the most from it, or suggestions on how to protect it.
After-sales is also about managing customer feedback, whether via social or review sites such as Trustpilot. As a retailer, you need to be listening closely and responding quickly and efficiently to good, and bad responses to ensure you maintain committed customers or resolve the problems of unhappy ones. In the global world of "24/7" retail needs to ensure fast responses and proactive support from a team who truly understands the brand and the customer.
Handling repairs well also offers another opportunity to retain the customer, rather than risk them leaving the brand, especially since it may involve third-party companies coming in contact with your customers. Ask yourself some of these questions: can they deliver the same level of service as you strive for? Can you offer other services that are less disruptive for you and the customer, such as video calls to identify and try to fix the problem remotely?
How to maximize the after-sales opportunity
To maximize the after-sales opportunity you need to have easy access to customer and sales data
To maximize the after-sales opportunity you need to have easy access to customer and sales data. It means enabling access to information about the customer and ensuring that communication is humanized, relevant and personalized. It's especially important for remote customer service when the temptation can be for full automation.
Whether it’s store or call center employees, information about the customer and their purchases needs to be quickly accessed through the company’s CRM. A modern CRM system gives you a 360-degree comprehensive view of customers so the service team can provide the best and most personalized experience. It can also help to optimize the processes with automated workflows to ensure different tasks and communications with the customers are completed.
When it comes to issues such as returns not only do the customer-facing processes need to be slick but also the back end. This means offering automated, fast management of returns in the warehouse to get products processed, checked, and back on sale, as well as quickly refunding the customer. This can be achieved by creating a workflow in the cloud ERP warehouse module that ensure processes are handled quickly and correctly with an integrated payment service that allows refunds to be made as soon as the return has been approved.
At UK fashion giant Next, for example, customers are able to return products bought online in-store without any paperwork. Email communication to say returns have been received and processed is immediate and refunds also happen within a few hours. This means the customer isn’t left for days wondering whether their return has arrived safely and wondering when they will get their refund. Such speed of process makes it much more likely that customers will purchase again while in-store and improves their satisfaction with the returns process.
These are just a few of the opportunities around after-sales which are easily overlooked but, as we see, are wide-ranging. Those retailers that recognize the value of the after-sales opportunity and that invest in the technology and systems that best enable it will stand the strongest chance of retaining loyal, happy customers.
