How Fulfillment Strategy Affects Customer Retention More Than You’d Think

There’s an underlying current among far too many ecommerce businesses that once the sale is made the business’s work is done. They’ve created the listing, marketed it accordingly, the buyer clicked purchase, and that’s the end of the line. That’s just not true. The line extends far beyond the click and buyer retention or wooing potential hinges on fulfillment capabilities more than most businesses believe it to.

It’s not just about timely shipping. It’s about how well a company can navigate what happens after the sale, and that’s predominantly in their control.

The Post Purchase Window Matters More Than Businesses Realize

When was the last time a purchase went poorly? There was a delay without notice, a broken box or worse, nothing ever showed up. Those occurrences annoy customers. They don’t think to themselves "oh, I’m sure the warehouse was having a bad day". They think "this business dropped the ball."

One of the top reasons consumers do not return to an online retailer is the delivery experience. It’s not price. It’s not quality. It’s fulfillment. That’s a powerful sentiment and it’s enough to shift mindsets about viewing logistics as an expense instead of directly contributing to the customer experience.

Thus, a well thought out approach to retail fulfillment directly addresses this, operational aspects that ensure accurate orders, timely dispatch, and communicative transparency so that the foundation is secured enough for customer trust to be established with little passive effort on the companies’ end.

Timeliness Counts, But Not More Than Accuracy

Timeliness tends to be the talk of the town, but when it comes to retention, order accuracy trumps timeliness for retention. Receiving the wrong item is worse than receiving an item one day late. Most customers will forgive if they’re kept in the loop about obstacles. But if they receive incorrect items, or items with missing receipts, trust is immediately broken.

Furthermore, accuracy issues stem from sub-par fulfillment operations, which tend to be under resourced or overwhelmed. If businesses are picking and packing without appropriate spacing and recognizable processes, it’s not usually a people problem but a systems problem. When volume increases, that percentage of errors becomes markedly more significant.

Those who’ve gotten accuracy right tend to be those who’ve taken the time to get it right with internal systems or had success with third party fulfillment partners who have proven resources.

Communication Bridges The Gap Between Shipment And Arrival

There is nothing more anxiety-inducing than knowing an item is coming but having no idea where it is within the process. Customers are patient when they know what’s going on and they’re frustrated when they’re left in the dark. Thus, where many businesses lose people isn’t through a big bang disaster but rather silence.

Automated order confirmations, dispatch messages and tracking links are par for the course these days. Customers expect them. But beyond technology’s involvement in this aspect of fulfillment, timing and tone matter, too; when a business can forewarn a customer about a mismanaged time expectation before they have a chance to figure it out on their own, this does powerful things for customer transparency.

Customers appreciate when businesses pay attention and anything more transparent than that goes farther than businesses believe.

Returns Factor Into Retention, Too

This is where it gets surprising; a lot of businesses do not anticipate returns as part of retention, it’s a failure state that must be minimized but once it happens, must happen as quickly as possible for everyone involved.

However, having been found to yield more retention than if customers had never needed to make returns at all, good return experiences create immensely stronger opportunities for retention than any other possibility.

How is that possible? Because if a business can facilitate a return well when a customer is already feeling vulnerable due to disappointment, then loyalty will emerge down the line as long as the return went well. If it was painful and slow, goodbye.

Getting returns right has to do with making shifts in mindset but also fulfillment logistics, timelines and clarity of communication, which rarely happen by accident.

Fulfillment Strategy Is Brand Strategy

The bigger picture here is that all things considered, fulfillment is not separate from the customer experience; after purchase it’s entirely the customer experience and every delay, no matter how small, every error and every lack of communication is a brand touchpoint.

These touchpoints add up over time.

Businesses who grow, appreciate this sooner than those who do not grow; they invest in logistics as they would any part of retention because that’s exactly what it becomes, one time orders going out on time, accurately fulfilled with appropriate tracking and reasonable returns, customers might not be able to say why they keep coming back, but it’s because retention channels through acquisition better than anyone realizes.

Those businesses who struggle with retention find that upon diving deeper into problem areas it’s rarely a product-based or price-based problem; it’s what happens post-sale. Fixing it rarely requires drastic measures; they need to simply take fulfillment as seriously as every other component of their business.