According to research, The Retail Expectation Gap, undertaken by Parcelhub and Brightpearl, online merchants have several customer retention expectation blind spots.
The research which spoke to both consumers and leading retail decision makers has identified 10 key blind spots that merchants must take notice of when looking to improve customer retention.
The likelihood of customers coming back and remaining loyal to a brand is hugely dependent on what happens during the delivery and receipt of items and these blind spots are the difference between why customers do not repeat buy versus the different reasons merchants believe.
Merchants’ customer retention blind spots:
The top reasons why consumers said they would stop doing business with a brand include poor product quality (71 per cent), high delivery costs (62 per cent), poor customer support (58 per cent) and missing or wrong items delivered (54 per cent). This compares to much lower results for any of the pre-purchase issues, such as website problems (30 per cent) or an item not being in stock (25 per cent), which were both ranked the lowest. The results show that the post-buy button experience requires significant attention from merchants.
Retailers, on the other hand, ranked both potential pre-purchase issues as the highest, with 43 per cent believing that an item not being in stock would cause a customer to stop doing business with a brand and 30 per cent quoting website problems as an issue. These results demonstrate the chasm between the priorities of consumers compared to the perceptions of retailers.
Damaging reviews
Reviews are an important tool used by potential customers to influence their purchasing decisions. The research found that 92 per cent of consumers surveyed consider reviews to be important, with almost half (46 per cent) considering reviews to be very important. Acknowledging the post purchase customer expectation blind spots will significantly impact the positivity of the overall customer experience.
Steve Marjoram, managing director Parcelhub, said: “We are all prone to second-guessing why someone makes a decision, and this research shows that these preconceptions are impacting on a retailer’s ability to retain customers. Our research highlights the customer retention blind spots of merchants which will impact their bottom line. Not only affecting repeat purchase but leading to poor reviews dissuading potential new customers from using that retailer or brand.
“The key to customer retention success lays in having an exemplary post purchase delivery experience. Parcelhub as the UK’s leading provider of multi-carrier delivery solutions and proactive tracking support can help retailers and brands transform their customers’ experiences leading to greater initial and repeat sales success.”
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