The Key to a Happy Customer: After Sales Care

After-sales care is sometimes overlooked. But the truth is that this is the moment you can turn a first- time customer into a brand advocate. And what better time to do it than in the busiest retail season.  

The way you treat your customers after they’ve made a purchase with you is just as important as making that sale. Therefore, it is worth investing some time and money in providing premium quality after-sales experience.

Transactional messages are the way to go

There are many bonus touchpoints you can offer your customers that will make them feel valued. One way to show them appreciation is to always keep them in the loop about their order. Transactional messages are the equivalent of receiving a receipt after purchasing from a B&M store. The habit of getting one gives customers comfort. In fact, transactional messages, such as shipping confirmation have 64% higher open rates, than promotional ones.  They are the pathway to engaging your customers and keeping them interested for longer. Therefore, you can  potentially earn more money if you use them wisely.

How do you do that?

For starters, try using a multi-language shipping confirmation messages based on the customer’s location.

A study found that 74% of customers prefer making purchases from a company that provided post-sales service in their native language. It shows respect and is also proven to increase their trust. Having a solid base of loyal customers is especially important around Black Friday, when good deals are thrown from every corner of the market, and owning such a competitive advantage is a must.  

To really secure your spot on the Black Friday finale, take an extra step by making yourself available to your customer. We’ve found out that contacting a customer a week after their purchase was shipped, asking them about their experience, can significantly boost customer retention and helps solve problematic situations that may lead to bad reviews.

Okay, lets see how we can do this with SMSBump.

How to build a multi-language shipping confirmation?

Maybe you have already heard about Flows, our newest feature. If you are still a Flows newbie, our latest knowledge base will help you get on track.

Flows are very similar to SMS automations but they allow you to create more complex relationships among them.That’s why they are the perfect tool to create an automated multi-language shipping confirmation message.   

So, here is a short walk-through of how to set things up:

Select the correct trigger

Start with the trigger Shipping Update. It will send a message to the customer when the products are shipped, and tracking number is generated.  

Once your trigger is set, you should start building the logic behind the multilanguage flow.

Select Country as a condition and choose the countries which speak the respective language.

For example, if you want to have the message in Spanish, select all Spanish-speaking countries such as Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, etc.

Inform them about the status of their purchase 

Remember what was one of the key elements of exceptional after-sales care?

Yes, you’ve guessed right? - Keep them informed. 

Give them a piece of mind, by letting them know  their purchase is on its way and give them the tracking code.

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Make your message simple and actionable.  It may go something along the lines of:

“Hey, {DestinationFirstName}. The tracking number for your order from {SiteName} is {TrackingNumber}. Track your shipment on: {TrackingUrl}”

To help you with the creation of your international texts here is this message translated to Spanish, French and German respectively.  

“Hola, {DestinationFirstName}.El numero de seguimiento de su pedido de {SiteName} es {TrackingNumber}. Puede realizar un seguimiento de su pedido con: {TrackingUrl}”

“Salut, {DestinationFirstName}. Le numero de suivi pour votre commande de {SiteName} est {TrackingNumber}. Suivez votre commande ici: {TrackingUrl}”

‘Hallo {DestinationFirstName} die Sendungsnummer deiner Bestellung von {SiteName} lautet {TrackingNumber}. Verfolge deine Sendung unter : {TrackingUrl}”

Keep in mind that using special characters such as stress marks, which are very typical in Spanish and French, will decrease character count from from 160 to 66. We advise you to remove these from your messages if they will not affect the meaning of the words.

Show them you care

After the initial message you should allow some time for the package to arrive, before you contact the customer. We suggest you set a delay of 7 days. By that time your customer did not only receive the product but most probably s/he had time to try it out.

This is the part where you can make your store stand out from the competition. Show extra care by asking the customer for feedback – about the product or the whole experience. A recent study showed that 42% of customers would rather live chat with a retailer, than write an email. Texting them opens up a direct channel for communication. 

On top of being one of the fastest means of communication, SMS is one of the easiest and it comes as the most natural way for most people nowadays.

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Send a friendly message asking your customers for feedback on their order. Let them know that they can reach out if they have any questions or comments by simply replying to the text message:

“Hello, {DestinationFirstName}, this is the owner of {SiteName}. Just wanted to personally reach out and ask how you like your recent order?”

For Spanish you can use something like this:

“Hola, {Destination FirstName}, soy el propietario de {SiteName}. Simplemente queria contactarte personalmente y preguntar que te ha parecido tu ultimo pedido?”

The French and German translations go like:

“Salut, {DestinationFirstName}, je suis propriétaire de l’entreprise {SiteName}. Aimez-vous votre dernière commande?”

“Hallo, {DestinationFirstName}, ich bin der Besitzer von {SiteName}. Ich wollte nur sicherstellen dass alles mit deiner Bestellung in Ordnung ist.“

For your ease we have prepared a pre-made International Shipping Confirmation flow in the Flows Library. You can simply edit it and tailor the texts to fit your brand voice. 

If you feel crafty and you wish to master an international shipping confirmation flow yourself, we tried to summarize the key steps into the following image:

Make sure you receive all your messages

Every feedback is equally important, this is why you need to make sure all of your customer’s responses get to you. Since this a two-way street, you should also have a way to answer them if they have any additional inquiries or worries.  

Don’t worry - we’ve thought about this, too! Our Chat section is all you will need to keep track of your customers’ messages.  Make sure to activate it before you enable the Shipping Confirmation Flow because otherwise you will not see the messages your customers send you.

You can choose to write them directly within the app or you can integrate SMSBump with Gorgias or Slack, so you never miss an important conversation.   

One last thing… 

After sales service is very important not only for healthy retention, but for recovering lapsed customers. Going that extra mile to show your customers how valuable they are to your business can help you maintain a loyal base of shoppers, that will keep coming back. Refer to our Get Your Lapsed Customers Back in Time for Black Friday article for more useful tips on how to design the perfect winback flow.