With the vast choice available to customers and the blurring of lines between online and offline experiences, customers’ buying process is getting much more complicated. From marketing to post-purchase customer engagement, the decision-making process is no longer quick and linear.
That’s why customer engagement comes in as a critical part of your sales funnel. You need to be in touch with your customers when they’re researching, deciding, and purchasing.
In this article, we outline 3 eCommerce must-have aftersale customer engagement workflows that all business owners should familiarize themselves with. These ensure that they’re not missing out on opportunities to capture, engage, and convert valuable leads.
1. Order refund workflow
As an eCommerce business owner, you deal with changes that are simply beyond your control.
From weather patterns to suppliers falling behind in their orders, there are times where things may not run like clockwork. In most cases, there is not much you can do to control these situations. However, there are ways to avoid similar events in the future.
Regarding the post-purchase period, one of the most “unwanted scenarios” is order refund. The truth is that not everyone is happy with their orders.
The best way to satisfy your customer is by alerting your team of the refund info, sending an apology, communicating the problem & putting them on a list of “special treatment” in the future.
Re-engaging customers who have recently purchased
It’s easier to get a sale from someone who has already bought from you. The average business takes 5 times harder to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one. There are several tactics you can use to increase post-purchase customer engagement. This includes upselling and cross-selling, a loyalty program to encourage repeated (and regular) purchases, or a lead nurturing email. Whatever the tactic is, the goal is to retain consistent communication and stay on the top-of-mind.
In the below workflow, the goal is to reach out to customers who have previously purchased from your website, segment them into specific groups based on product purchased & total lifetime spending, and re-engage them with content that will sway them to purchase again.
Let’s say the last item your customer bought from your store was an iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Firstly, the workflow auto-adds attributes “Apple user” to the customer.
For your first email, it could comprise a list of accessories they could try using with their newly-purchased iPhone. If there is any engagement (e.g., by opening it or clicking a link in it), the lead score will increase. Updating their lead score allows you to identify hot leads that are more likely to buy again. This way, you can direct your further lead nurturing efforts towards them.
Pay tribute to customers with a loyalty program
By showing your tribute to your customers, you can successfully encourage reorders and generate a loyal customer base. This gives you the base setup to segment customers’ tiers based on their total lifetime spending. With Atom8, you can add many attributes to each customer, whereas in BigCommerce’s nature, one customer can only be in one group only.
Let’s say the order has been completed by a customer.
Based on the total life-time spending, auto-group customer on Sendgrid – Integrated with your BigCommerce store: Platinum (If total spending > $5000), Gold (If total spending < $5000 and > $2000), and Regular (If total spending < $2000).
Then, auto-send an email to the customer via Atom8’s Mailchimp integration, notifying them of the tier upgrade and rewarding them with a special discount offer.
At the same time, auto-add a Trello card, notifying your team about customer upgrades for future engagement.
Want to see more automation customer journeys?
Simply install Atom8 for your BigCommerce store and visit our template library to browse & apply directly our extensive collection of free commerce automation workflows. Whether you want to send a thank-you email after an order or segment customers to specific groups or A/B split test of different website themes, our commerce automation workflows can satisfy them all.
