How an OMS Helps Retailers Maximize the Post-Purchase Experience

A person with their retail order delivered to them

Every step of the customer journey is just the start of the next step toward success. Roped in a new prospective customer? Start working to convert them. They’ve filled a basket? Start prompting them to check out. You’ve captured their purchase? Start the order fulfillment process. It never ends, and that’s a great thing.

That last bit — post-purchase — is where too many retailers face challenges that frequently turn into lost customers. To put a positive spin on it, retailers delivering a wonderful post-purchase experience attract customers willing to pay more for products and services!

I recently wrote an article for Retail TouchPoints on this precise challenge: Note to Retailers: How to Maximize the Post-Purchase Experience With a Modern Order Management System. I recommend you read the full article, but here’s a quick recap.

Post-purchase is as important as the purchase

It’s easy to imagine the differences between a good and a bad post-purchase experience:

A great post-purchase experience will see the customer getting frequent email or text updates with shipping and package tracking information. If the retailer might miss the estimated delivery date by a bit, the customer is proactively informed. If a package is extremely delayed or potentially lost, the retailer offers options to begin the refund process.
A poor post-purchase experience keeps customers in the dark. They must manually search for their order confirmation email or log into a website to find the order’s status. But it won’t have a package tracking link, or it may have a tracking number that’s not linked, forcing the customer to copy/paste the number into the carrier’s website. Customers will struggle to find support information, chatbots will only offer superficial information and links to generic help articles, and requests to connect with an agent will put customers into confusing loops with long wait times.

Which retailer would you rather give repeat business to? Yeah, me too! Customers want an easy and transparent post-purchase experience. They want clear communications, delivery insights, fast access to customer support, a clear process for returns and exchanges, and more.

If you miss any of those customer expectations, you’ll likely lose that customer.

Use an Order Management System to improve post-purchase experiences

Order Management Systems (OMS) simplify everything from inventory to orders to fulfillment and beyond. It’s an integrated and automated way to keep your retail operations running smoothly while keeping customers delightfully informed of their order and delivery status and any issues. Add some AI into the mix, and OMS puts your customer experience on a whole new level.

For customers, the best part of OMS is the accurate, real-time updates on orders, plus proactive notifications, shipping information, refund status, potential delays, and more. Customer support teams also have the same detailed order insights through OMS, empowering them to give better, faster attention for faster resolutions.