Like most online retailers, Snipes is no exception. Jako’s support team were constantly fielding “Where’s my order?” phone calls.
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There’s no question that big companies like Amazon are setting extraordinary standards for service and speed in the ecommerce world.
This can be tough for smaller brands competing in the digital space, as they have to operate much leaner than those top names. Like most online retailers, Snipes is no exception. Jako’s support team were constantly fielding “Where’s my order?” phone calls from customers – sometimes the same day the item was purchased!
Snipes uses each of their stores (100+) as shipping locations along with their main warehouse in order to broaden their web assortment by depth and quantity. Because of this, a customer placing a multi-item order that is split into multiple packages that stem from different points of origin. Not all store locations are the same however, so some may process orders slower or faster depending on staffing, workload, priority, or compliance.
As a result, Snipes’ customers would often receive their shipments at different times. This isn’t such a big deal in theory – but because they didn’t know their order was split up in the first place, they rush to the phone to ask “Where’s the rest of my order?” And can you blame them?
When your company is doing large volume through its ecommerce channel, it’s so important to find the most economical shipping method.
After significantly growing their web business over the course of a few years, Snipes decided to go with UPS SurePost. This method offers a very competitive shipping rate involves UPS picking up the order but handing the package off to USPS to do the final delivery. Teamwork – Woohoo! However, understanding this process and connecting tracking numbers turned out to be a challenge for Snipes’ customers.
Many struggled with dealing with two separate tracking numbers and juggling between UPS and USPS’ tracking pages. This was especially difficult for mobile users. The result? More lost and stolen packages due to not knowing when to expect them and of course – more calls to the support team!
Omni-Channel & Guest Customers Can’t Track Their Orders!
One of the benefits of having so many locations is that if a customer can’t find their size in their local Snipes, the odds are pretty high that the product is available at another one of Snipes’ stores.
To optimize their experience Snipes offers customers the option of placing an order in-store and having the out-of-stock product shipped directly to their home free of charge. Sweet! Snipes still made the sale and the customer didn’t waste a trip – win/win. However, one small problem stood in the way of this scenario playing out perfectly. Since the order was placed via a POS system, the customer had no way to track it!
Unfortunately now an otherwise smooth transaction would head into frictional territory as the customer was forced to place numerous calls to the Snipes support center just to find out when their package would arrive.
If that didn’t make enough extra work for the representatives, how about the fact that customers who checked out as “guests” on the web were faced with the same issue? Now that’s a lot of order tracking to do!
Returns can be tough. Although Snipes has a relatively small return rate, it was still challenging to make things clear for the customers.
Understanding how much time was left to make a return or how to actually initiate the returns process became even trickier as their store count began to grow.
“Can I still return this product?” and “Can I return it to the store near me?” phone calls began to pile up. To top it off, the customer still had to go through the same process at the store because communication between the digital and in-store teams was not seamless.
While the Snipes support team certainly didn’t mind walking a customer through a return here and there, they knew they needed to find a scalable solution.
1. Getting Ahead of “Where’s My Order?” Calls.
Although Snipes prides itself on speedy processing time, there was no way they were going to compete with Amazon based on speed alone.
WeSupply helped them take a different route to solve this problem – proactive notifications. Turns out, most customers aren’t particularly impatient (within reason), but they just don’t like being kept in the dark. Snipes was able to increase customer satisfaction while cutting down on “Where’s my order?” calls by keeping them informed through every step of the processing, shipping, and delivery process via emails and sms notifications.
Together we proved that setting deliverable expectations and empowering the customer are at the core of every great shopping experience.
WeSupply helped Snipes get ahead of these phone calls by clearly showing customers the multiple shipments that comprise their order in our tracking page and letting them know what each box contains as well as when it will arrive.
The customer gets notified about each package through SMS and email, keeping them in the know during all stages of the shipment. Furthermore, Snipes was able to optimize their order processing flow by using the WeSupply dashboard to analyze shipping performance by location.
This provided information well beyond what they could gather from their company average, and let them pinpoint exactly which locations were falling short of expectations. In one example, a high volume store was bringing the average down with lagging performance.
Turns out the store was experiencing very busy peaks just after lunch, so there was no one in the back processing web orders. A quick staffing addition got the store back up to speed and it continues to be a top performer.
In situations where there are multiple carriers used to ship a package, WeSupply’s intelligent order tracking system detects when the box changes hands.
In this case, we know the exact moment when UPS passes the order to USPS, and we can update the tracking page accordingly. Snipes’s customers no longer have to manage two tracking numbers or use a separate page at any stage of the item’s journey – it’s all there for them on our one convenient page.
Thankfully this cut back dramatically on confused phone calls to Snipes’ support team, freeing them up to better use their time.
WeSupply teamed up with Snipes to pick out the pain points in their process and help clarify return rules for their customers.
How? First we clearly show the customer how many days are left to return a product, on an item by item basis, on the order detail page. Then in the event that the customer does wish to make a return, we give them the ability of self-service – clearly guiding them along the way to cut back on phone calls. If the customer wishes to return the item to their local Snipes, we notify the store upon the return’s completion as well as give the customer proof of approval.
This makes the interaction quick and friction-free as the associate is able to process the return quicker and the customer doesn’t need to explain themselves.
Snipes had the right data, they just needed a little help (and a BI tool) to centralize it all!
WeSupply’s dashboard was able to help by pulling all order and transactional data from various systems and putting it into one easy to read place. We helped get all departments on the same page about key facts like how many orders were placed, how many orders have/haven’t been processed, where the items are shipping from, and how much money they took in (demand sales) versus how much they’ve actually banked (shipped sales).
Having a clear grasp on the facts, across all departments, has boosted Snipes’s agility in taking important decisions and optimizing their business! Also, all data points are sent to Magento BI for further analysis, letting Snipes take the information even further.
Customer service
cost reduction
Customer satisfaction
increase
NPS increase
CSAT increase
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You’ve worked hard to create a positive and memorable online shopping experience for your customers, and now you have the opportunity to deliver your products right into their hands! But what can you do when something unexpected happens during the shipping process?
