Meeting customer expectations with ecommerce order tracking
Vaishali Ravi
·July 9, 2024
Modern logistics carriers offer unparalleled ability to track your packages’ real-time locations and other data insights. Supply chain visibility is important for your brand’s operational efficiency—but it’s just as important for your customers when it comes to order fulfillment.
Delivering a best-in-class customer experience requires transparency throughout the fulfillment process. By implementing order tracking, you can build confidence in your brand, reduce customer support requests, proactively address errors, and combat fraud.
In this article, we’ll cover why ecommerce order tracking is so important, and how to optimize your order tracking process from end-to-end.
Why ecommerce order tracking matters
Leading ecommerce brands like Amazon, Walmart, and Target have set the expectation of real-time order tracking at every stage, with “where’s my order?” pages that empower customers to track their packages’ progress in real-time, via carriers like USPS, UPS, DHL, and FedEx. These ecommerce giants and carrier partners have set the standard for order tracking—and no matter the size of your brand, it’s important that you deliver the same best-in-class experience.
With order tracking, you can:
Enhance the customer experience
Ease your customers’ minds as soon as they place an order by giving them accurate order tracking with real-time status updates, so they know exactly when to expect their orders.
From the moment of purchase to package delivery, they want full transparency around their order status. In fact, 96% of online shoppers say they track their delivery status at least once after placing an online order, with 43% tracking daily. And 29% of them said that order tracking is so important to them that they wouldn’t place an order at all if they weren’t able to track its delivery status.
Reduce your customer support ticket volume
Automated order tracking can also help you reduce CX inquiries related to order status. When customers have access to real-time data at their fingertips, they’ll never need to seek out help from your team in finding out where their package is. In fact, brands with proactive order tracking have seen a 63% reduction in customer support inquiries compared to brands that don’t offer tracking.
By making it simple for customers to check their package delivery status in a self-service portal, you’ll empower them to get the answers they need instantly. That frees up time for your CX team to focus on more complex cases that need hands-on support, while expediting resolution time.
Get ahead of shipping errors
With an integrated dashboard that gives both your brand and your customer access to shipping updates, you’ll be able to respond instantly when there’s a shipping delay or error.
You can set up customized campaigns based on the error type that will instantly send branded messages to your customers, informing them of the delay or error and your brand’s plan to resolve the issue. In cases of shipping delay, you can inform your customer of the new delivery date as soon as it’s available. If the package has been lost in the mail or misdelivered, you can instantly ship out a replacement product at no cost to your customer.
Combat INR fraud
Returns abuse is on the rise, and one of the most common forms is “Item Not Received” (INR) fraud. In INR fraud, a customer will make the false claim that they never received an item, and request a refund. In some cases, they may simply be experiencing buyer’s remorse over purchasing an item they can’t afford, but still wish to keep—but whatever their motivation, it’s impacting your bottom line if you let them get away with it.
With detailed order tracking and proof of delivery, you’ll be able to discourage your customers from making such claims. Your carrier can share geotagged photographic evidence that the package was delivered at the correct location, giving you solid evidence to fight against a potential chargeback. If you’re shipping a high-value item, you can even require signature confirmation, which will require that someone in the household has accepted the package, ensuring that you won’t fall victim to an INR scam.
Implementing end-to-end order tracking
As we’ve seen, order tracking is an essential technology for delivering a great customer experience throughout the course of an ecommerce sale—but what about the post-purchase journey?
In some cases, a product doesn’t work out. Maybe it’s damaged or defective, or it’s simply not the right fit. Returns are a natural part of online shopping, so it’s important to have a streamlined process for handling them. This is where end-to-end order tracking comes in.
Using Loop, customers can easily initiate a return or exchange directly from their order tracking page on your website once the order is marked delivered. They can select the item they want to return, specify the reason for the return, and select from numerous return options including box-free, label-free drop-offs, to send the item back to you. When the order is scanned in, either by the mail carrier or by the drop-off center, the customer will receive a return tracking number, which they can use to track the status of their return.
You can credit the shopper instantly when the item is scanned in, which will provide a seamless and hassle-free return experience that alleviates their anxiety over when they’ll get their refund or credit.
For higher-value items, you may require a manual inspection prior to offering a refund. In this case, you can integrate your order tracking with your 3PL or warehouse data, giving both you and the customer visibility on when the returned item arrives at your warehouse, when it is inspected, and whether it meets the conditions for a full refund. If it doesn’t, you can offer alternatives, such as returning the item to your customer or giving them store credit instead of a refund.
Loop enables your brand to offer a branded post-purchase order tracking page that’s customized with your logo and brand visuals, helping you deliver a cohesive brand experience through every phase of the buyer’s journey. As a retailer, you’ll also be able to track metrics such as return reasons, average time to return, and return rate, giving you the data you need to optimize your returns process.
Discover the benefits of end-to-end order tracking and management.
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