How To Consolidate Your Tech Stack To Maximize Post-Purchase Touchpoints And Boost Profits — Aaron Evett | Why Post-Purchase Boosts Retention, How To Turn

How To Consolidate Your Tech Stack To Maximize Post-Purchase Touchpoints And Boost Profits — Aaron Evett | Why Post-Purchase Boosts Retention, How To Turn Returns Into Exchanges, Why Streamlined Tools Improve Efficiency, How AI Improves Speaker 2: Hey there, this is Claus Lauter and you're listening to the eCommerce Coffee Break Podcast, the show that helps you become a smarter online seller. In today's episode, we discuss how to optimize the post-purchase experience of your customers and discuss the tools you really need. Unknown Speaker: Joining me on the show is Aaron Evett, Head of Revenue at Redo. So, let's dive right into it. Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break Podcast. Today, we want to talk about post-purchase touch points and how important the post-purchase experience is for your customer. And as we all know, eCommerce brands use many tools in their business. Many of them waste time, increase cost, hurt customer experience, and we want to find out how you can optimize that. Joining me today on the show is Aaron Evett. He is the head of revenue at Redo, where he helps brands redefine the post-purchase experience. With a background in scaling innovative solutions, Aaron works directly with eCommerce operators and helps them directly drive growth, increase profitability, and improve customer experience. So let's welcome him to the show. Hi, Aaron. How are you today? Speaker 1: Doing great. Thank you for having me on. Speaker 2: Aaron, we want to talk about customer experience here. And specifically, I think that's the most important part of the customer journey once they have bought something. And I think that's where a lot of brands lack with their tools they have. And I want to talk a little bit about what do you see as the biggest problem that eCommerce brands face when they have too many tools in the background? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. Like you said, a lot of brands are focused on how do I bring customers to my website and ultimately get them to purchase. But, you know, now that you have that customer, you have a customer that you can convert and retain. And so, a heavy focus for us is on how do we take that brand and with it being way more expensive to acquire that customer in the first place, or sorry, how do we take that customer and, you know, get them to repeat and come back. And so, for a lot of brands, it's been under-focused, underdeveloped. And so, Redo, we came to kind of solve that and bring the post-purchase together. For other brands, they have lots of different apps and different touchpoints that don't really speak to each other, and they're not coordinating that experience across those efforts. So, it's really inefficient because they're spending a lot of money on that post-purchase experience with the various apps. And it's not coordinated. And so, the customer gets, you know, kind of different information and a different journey depending on where they end up. And so, Redo's design is to bring that all into one place. And so, if somebody has a support question that they need answered and they've already submitted a return, you have all that information together and you know best how to serve that customer and meet them with the information that they're going to need for that will help them come back to your website. Speaker 2: You mentioned that the post-purchase experience because of many tools is probably not the best with a lot of them. Can you tell me how the worst-case scenario looks like from customers that you are onboarding? So, what kind of experience did you have in the past? What did you see? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's lots of kind of horror experiences, but I mean, the biggest thing is, you know, a customer makes a purchase on your website and they have no idea how to get back in touch and how to answer their questions, right? And so, we've seen brands that struggle with even conveying like, hey, how does a customer reach, you know, you to answer the questions that you have? We've seen brands, you know, we work with a lot of apparel companies. And customers don't know how to return items. That's a big, you know, thing as part of the post-purchase experience is making sure that customers are satisfied. And so, you know, there's countless stories. You know, one that comes to mind for me is we had this brand we were working with just recently. They actually do 5,000 orders a month, and so they're a fairly decent-sized brand. And they had this old Instagram, you know, that they had set up a long time ago, and The owner had basically stopped paying attention to it, but it was still going, and they had customers. They had like 100 customers who had reached out to that Instagram to try to get answers to questions, and they just had no visibility into it because they were just taking emails as their support tool. So it's like, hey, we can combine these channels and make sure that customers are reaching you where customers want to reach you, but it's still efficient for your teams to get them answers to. Speaker 2: I think it's a very good example and I've experienced that myself in my own store years ago that people try to find you on the most, I don't know, crazy ways of reaching out to you because they're desperate. And if you don't have the right way to do that, that's a complete disaster. Now, you mentioned different touch points. Talk me through a perfect post-purchase experience. Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it really starts... Some of the most anticipated emails for a customer when they buy on a site is when that product is going to get to them, like tracking that order through. And so it really starts with order tracking. And so that's what we start brands with is, hey, let's get that information concisely to the customer. And not only that, in a way that conveys your brand, and maybe even gives opportunities to like upsell that customer to different products or items, right? And so communicating when an order is going to be there, where it is in transit, Those are messages that customers are really anticipating. They're probably your most open emails. And so owning that space and really communicating well there can be a great lift for a brand. And then once it gets beyond those order tracking emails, the customer has those items. Obviously, they're going to come back to your website if they need help, but having touchpoints to showcase the brand, to let them know what other products that you offer, and really just highlight the different things that you want to. Those are all super important. Speaker 2: Okay. I find it interesting because being in a post-purchase process, a lot of people might struggle with the idea that this might be a good point to upsell people. What would be a good strategy there? What would you sell? Do you have some examples? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. So we have a lot of different brands. I'll take one example. So one of our brands, they sell nicer clothing. And so a lot of times they'll come for like a suit jacket or suit pants or something like that. And so the customer, like me, I'll go on the site and I'll buy a suit. But they also have these belts, right? And those belts are just like an accessory item. And oftentimes, the customer doesn't even know that the belts are there. And in that post-purchase experience, that's like... We talk about like the gum at the checkout counter. It's like the little accessory that you grab that increases the ticket value. And so, you can place some of those accessory items. If you sell shoes, you want to put an insole in your order tracking experience, like some of those that really complement what that customer bought. And usually, they're lower-ticket items, but they just increase the profitability per order if you can attach those. Speaker 2: No, it makes perfect sense. Now, the next step, obviously, is shipping. Shipping information. Asking for shipping and tracking data probably is the number one question in every support system. How does that work? Where do you pull the information for, and are you going proactive with that, or how does that work? Speaker 1: We're proactive. With Redo, you can set up different flows for when you want to communicate to your customers. The most common is once you've fulfilled it, you send a message, hey, this is on its way. And then as it gets delivered, you're sending various updates. We're integrating your shipping data, or you can do that through Redo as well, but we'll pull in the tracking number. We'll help you design a branded page. So instead of sending that customer to a UPS website, a DHL website, wherever it is, and it's kind of ugly and it doesn't match the theme of your brand, You can send them right back to the page that looks and feels like your website, and it just feels like a really clean, nice experience for those customers, and they can see where their package is. Speaker 2: Now, the next step, obviously, is if people are not happy, they want to return it. Returning can be a complete pain in the neck for a lot of merchants out there for various reasons. How do you deal with that? What's the process? Speaker 1: Yeah, we could spend a lot of time on returns. Returns are an interesting thing because on one hand, they're just a big, heavy cost center, especially for, like I said, apparel merchants. But every customer, when they're buying online, they have this question, am I going to like this item? So it's important to have a good return process. And I think Amazon kind of trained everybody on returns. And so, you've seen merchants adopt various return strategies. Some don't want to talk about it because they think, I don't even want to deal with returns. I don't want to have to forecast money coming back on the business. And some are very favorable, saying free returns on everything. As we work with merchants, having a good return process is part of the buying decision that customers have. And so I think it's important to have a good return process. And not only that, if somebody gets a product and they don't like it, if you just let them keep it and you don't really address that, then they're never going to come back. And so, your return process can be a retention tool where you can provide, first off, an easy way to do it, but you can also provide various methods for a customer to get returns. We help drive for store credit or for exchanges and make it really easy to position things that the customer might like if they didn't like the style or the fit or whatever of what they got. And I think in that process, we found that If you offer an easy return process, but at the same time, you do everything you can in that return process to retain your customer, you can kind of get the best of both worlds where we see for some of our apparel merchants, we're converting 60% of their returns into exchanges where they get a whole new product. And now that customer is way more likely to come back to your store because they have a product that hopefully they like and will then come back for more. Speaker 2: It's an interesting topic, returns. As I said, there's a whole range of different ways on how to deal with that. And I think it also depends a little bit on the price point of the product, if you want to deal with it or not. And I think a lot of listeners of the podcast here are in the apparel and fashion industry. How do you communicate this on the product detail page? Do you have any examples on that? Speaker 1: Yeah, good question. And when we're demoing our product, we often show Amazon because on every product detail page, they'll put the return policy, easy returns. They're communicating And we recommend doing that for sure. We buy the Add to Cart button off and tell our merchants to put – it doesn't have to be free, but easy returns. They know right there it's part of the buying decision. And if you just make it really simple and straightforward and don't overload them with information about it, Then that customer is more likely to convert because they know, hey, if I don't like this, then I can come back and make a purchase. So we've done a lot of A-B testing with brands. And we've seen that putting it on that product page can increase the conversion by 5-10% versus not having anything on there at all. Speaker 2: Now, in the beginning, we spoke about how to integrate a tech stack into a one solution, and that's what you guys at ReDo do instead of having multiple solutions, apps that do not talk to each other. Talk me through your solution. What does it include, and what's the process to work with it? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. So we have, within our tech stack or our solutions that we offer, we have an order tracking product. We discussed that a little bit. We actually have an order management product where you can create, you know, shipping labels and all that. We have a returns product. We have warranties for those that offer warranties. We have a support product. So those are kind of like the post-purchase tools that we offer. And so there's some interesting things that you can do because you have all those in one place. So I'll give you a couple examples. We have a merchant out here that in their order tracking emails that I talked about before, They will try to upsell the customer to a second product. Well, oftentimes, the systems, the WDMS systems or whatever systems a brand is using, once they've taken that order from Shopify or whatever channel it's coming from, it's hard to then edit that order. So they can't fulfill that item actually. Because we're the same system, we're driving the sale and fulfilling the item. Now, we know when that happens, and so we can make sure the order is updated, it's timely, and the customer gets what they need. On the support tool, you mentioned before, one of the biggest questions is, where is my order? And a lot of times, your support reps at an eCommerce brand, 50% of their tickets are answering where's my order. And it's like, we can help streamline that. So instead of having a support rep that has to answer that question every time, we have the order tracking already there. And we know once they ask that question, we just give them the link and they're set. And so now, I'm more efficient in that process and my customer is happy. So, there are some unique experiences that we can drive like that. A bunch of others, but those are the different tools and a couple of examples. Speaker 2: Now, obvious question in time of AI, how much of AI do you have working in the crowd? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. Never enough, right? We're doing a lot of work with AI to incorporate it into our tools. And obviously, lots of learning and AI is just continuing to get better every day. But particularly on our support products, if we can give the information and give the tool what it needs, oftentimes, the AI can be the one at least taking a first pass at answering questions. And so, for a lot of our brands who are using our support tool, they'll either automate a lot of their tickets or they'll use what we call a co-pilot. And the co-pilot will take a first pass. Somebody comes in and reviews the answer that the AI has given and approves that to be sent. And it's really fascinating. I started at Redo 18 months ago. And I would say 18 months ago, there was a lot of skepticism that AI would work for people's businesses. And just in the last 18 months, I just got off a conversation I don't know, a week or so ago with a brand and they were like, honestly, it's better to answer support tickets than I am. I get tired. I get emotional. And this thing just kind of stays steady and you train it and teach it and then it's kind of off to the races. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that the trust factor in using AI tools, as you mentioned, has increased massively in the last 12 months. So, I think people now really get the point what it can do and start implementing it more and more because they see it actually works. Now, you gave a couple of examples already. I want to talk about a brand, and you don't need to name the brand. What kind of differences did they see when they moved over to your system from whatever tech stack they had in the past? Speaker 1: Yeah, so when that comes to mind, they're actually just down the road from us. They sell like accessory, women's jewelry is what they're selling. And they had various solutions for port, for order tracking, for returns, and even warranties for them. The biggest thing that they would point to is through Redo's tools and platform being together, AI that we just talked about, they were able to cut down their support heads. So they actually didn't get rid of half the team but they repurposed half the team to different parts of the business that they felt could be driving more like revenue or value, like marketing or different places like that. And so I would say that's the number one thing that we're driving. With the platform, we're trying to make that more efficient. These eCommerce companies, they run lean. There's not tons of margin usually that they have to work with. And so the more efficiency you can drive, it's huge for businesses. And then, you know, depending on the product, you can go a number of ways. With our returns products, one of the biggest... We're oftentimes taking customers who didn't have a portal or who had a different portal. And in the returns product, we're driving exchanges. And so instead of giving a refund to a customer, and, you know, if you have a 10% return rate, then every month, you kind of have to book 10% of that goes back to the customer. On average, for redo brands, 50% of returns end up in store credit or exchanges. And so, that's just less money that I have to give back to customers. But not only that, it's a retained customer. And so, we track the LTV of those customers who do like an exchange versus a store credit versus a refund. And the LTV benefit is 2x on those customers who need to do exchanges. So, we're oftentimes deploying strategies like, hey, you might want to even incentivize an exchange because that customer is going to come back if you can get them to stay. Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And you mentioned that specifically in the apparel industry, the profit margins are not very big. So, you want to make sure that you know your numbers and optimize wherever you can. And then, obviously, the aspect of having a massive time saver there and that you can reallocate your staff members to do more profitable things than answering where the tracking number is. That makes perfect sense. Now, we were talking quite a bit about the apparel and fashion industry. Who else is your perfect customer? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean we go across a lot of different, you know… It kind of depends on what products that they need that we come in. But because we have a support tool that automates and does AI, we can really go general and broad and pick up anybody. I would say we have a lot of electronics and even gym equipment because our warranties product really fits well in those spaces. But we do, I mean, we have food, supplement companies, you know, lots of apparel obviously, lots of accessories, jewelry. Those are probably... The majority of our customers are still in apparel and accessories. But because of our expansion into other products, even like order management, it's more broad. We're typically working with brands who are anywhere from... They're just starting their business to 50 million, 100 million businesses. So they're the SMB size and trying to help those brands mostly. Speaker 2: Okay. Well, that's quite a range. And I think post-purchase experience would be good for every brand. So, obviously, then every industry in the Asian vertical would work. Walk me through the typical onboarding process. What steps are involved? How long does it take? Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's one of the biggest things that we actually focus on. With my background, I've found working with SMBs, you just have so many things on your plate. And oftentimes, you go to buy a software. It looks really cool and shiny. You buy it and then you're just left hanging. And they got you on a contract. And so you stay with it for 12 months. But you're not leveraging all the tools and features and everything. And this is one of the big differentiators that when I came in, I worked with our CFO to say, hey, we need to resource a really good, we call it post-sales team. They should know and understand eCommerce really well. And they're doing a lot of the legwork for these brands. And so in the sales process, as we bring on and onboard merchants, we make sure that we're taking notes and we leverage AI for this to say like, what is this customer really trying to get? And then the post-sales team is compensated on, did we meet the job to be done for that customer? And so for a lot of our competitors, it will take a month or two to onboard because they're relying on their merchants. We, you know, for Redo, we have you install the app or get access to the app in whatever way that you need to. And then our implementation team goes and does the initial build based on what we understand. And then they come back and we tweak and kind of finalize things. But that shortens the cycle from a couple months or a month to onboard something to we have brands that we just had one actually today that we met them today. And now we have a returns portal up on their website today. Right. So we really try to shorten that, get people to value really fast. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's impressive. I mean, specifically small and medium enterprises, they might just have not the experience or the know-how that you bring on board. And then obviously, it's much faster than you take over for a bit instead of letting them figure out how it works. Tell me about your pricing structure. How does that work? Speaker 1: Yeah, that's another thing. Redo started with returns and our returns product, we actually took a different business model. Our founder was running a brand and he didn't like what he was spending on returns. He didn't like what he was spending on his return portal. And so he created this new model. And essentially what the model was, it offers customers the option for, we call it return coverage, where they opt-in at checkout. And if they opt-in, then we will cover the return label. So it's a small fee of $1 or $2, something like that. And so for a merchant, that's totally free because it's basically customer-funded. But what was cool about it was customers really liked it. They responded well. The conversion data came back positive. And so that part of the product is free. As we've evolved and brought on other products, we have various pricing structures. But because of the platform, we try to do everything as cheaply as possible. And oftentimes even free if we can so that, you know, merchants don't have to pay an arm and a leg for software as we talked about. There's not a lot of margin. And so we can offer a support tool really just barely above cost because you're using other products that we can, you know, generate revenue on that one area and maximizing our profit in that one area. Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, that makes perfectly sense if you have a customized solution and then try to optimize your pricing there. Sounds good to me. Before our coffee break comes to an end today, is there anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet? Speaker 1: No. I mean, the biggest thing is I would just advocate, invest in the post-purchase experience. I think those oftentimes, that's the best place that you can, quote unquote, market and get customers back. Because if you can provide an amazing experience when a customer comes to your site, makes a purchase... And my wife was just talking the other day. She bought from a brand. They actually made a mistake on her order. But they were so proactive about the communication and it was so clear what was happening the whole time. She's like, I just want to buy from them just because it was such a good experience. And I think that's kind of how we as humans are, is we get that dopamine hit. That first impression makes a big deal. And so if you can invest in that and take the time to make sure that you have a good post-purchase experience, you're going to see that return customer rate come on. And there's the natural kind of brand marketing boost that you get by doing that. It's hard to measure. And so that's why oftentimes it gets neglected. But over a longer period of time, that's ultimately going to make the difference in the business. That's what Amazon did so well. That's what some of these players that have gotten big have done so well. Speaker 2: As the old saying goes, there's no second chance for a first impression. And if you want to avoid buyer's remorse, then having a post-purchase experience that is just flawless definitely helps in creating long-term clients. Where can people go to find out more about you guys? Speaker 1: GetRedo.com. So if you just go on the website, there's information about the various products that we have. And then you can book a demo if you want to on there. Speaker 2: Okay. Excellent. I will put the link in the show notes as always, and you just want to click away. Aaron, thanks so much for giving us an overview. I think post-purchase is so important, and I still see a lot of brands who don't get it right. So I hope a lot of people will reach out to you and take it from there. And thanks so much for your time today. Speaker 1: Awesome. Speaker 2: Thank you. Hey, Claus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the Ecommerce Coffee Break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show. It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast. Simply like, comment, and subscribe in the app you're using to listen to the podcast and even better if you could leave a rating. And finally, sign up for our free newsletter and become a smarter Shopify merchant in just 7 minutes per week. We create content from more than 50 sources, saving you hours of research and helping you stay on top of your eCommerce game with the latest news, insights and trends. Every Thursday in your inbox, 100% free. Join now at newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com. That is newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com. Thanks again and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one.