While there is much focus on the overall customer experience, the post purchase experience doesn’t always get the attention it needs—and deserves—as retailers focus heavily on customer acquisition and getting the sale, but post purchase is the key to building lifelong customer relationships.
Today we’re going to talk about how to create a great post-purchase experience, what some of the key elements are, and what retailers need to be thinking about next.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Colleen Coulter, SVP, Customer Success and Experience at Route.
Colleen Coulter leads Route’s Customer Success and Experience teams. She’s focused on helping brands and shoppers generate significant value from Route’s post-purchase e-commerce solutions. Prior to Route, Colleen led the travel advertising business at Meta, partnering with the world’s largest travel brands to grow their business and helping to architect travel solutions across Facebook and Instagram. She previously worked at the Boston Consulting Group, working across industries on growth strategies and profitability improvement. Colleen earned her master’s in business administration from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. She is based in New York with her husband and two sons.
Resources
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Transcript
Note: this was AI-generated and only lightly edited
Greg Kihlstrom:
Today, we’re going to talk about how to create a great post-purchase experience, what some of the key elements are, and what retailers need to be thinking about next. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Colleen Coulter, SVP Customer Success and Experience at Route. Colleen, welcome to the show.
Colleen Coulter: Hi, Greg, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to have the opportunity to talk about post-purchase experience. It’s something, especially as we approach Retail’s Super Bowl with the holidays, that is make or break, really an opportunity to build loyalty for the long term.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I know this is the big season for it, right? So yeah, why don’t we get started with you giving a little background on yourself and your role at Route?
Colleen Coulter: Great. Thanks. So yes, as you said, I lead Route’s, customer success and experience team at route. We help over 13,000 brands deliver an incredible experience for shoppers from the moment they make a purchase online with shipping protection and issue resolution, package tracking returns, features, and carbon neutral shipping. I joined Route in 2023 because I saw how they were transforming the post-purchase experience. I worked for over 10 years at Metta, so I saw firsthand just how hard brands work to acquire customers. And you mentioned this in your opening, that the post-purchase piece doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. And yet a single bad experience with a purchase can cause the brand to lose that customer forever. I’m always astounded by this stat, but as a shopper, it also resonates. 40% of shoppers won’t give retailers a second chance after a single poor delivery experience. So we’ve all seen how Amazon has elevated our expectations about the post-purchase experience. But brands, I believe, shouldn’t have to sell on Amazon to meet those expectations. They should be able to build really big, thriving e-commerce businesses on their own, on their own terms. And I believe that that requires delivering a premium post-purchase experience.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, love it. Well, yeah, we’re gonna, we’re gonna dive into a few topics here. But, you know, first, I want to talk a little bit about and you touched on this a little bit, but want to dive in deeper, you know, how have customer expectations of the post purchase experience evolved over the last few years, you know, you mentioned Amazon and those kinds of things, you know, how is how is route or, you know, other brands that you work with responded to these kinds of changes?
Colleen Coulter: Yeah, absolutely. So starting with Amazon, for anyone who uses Amazon, you know how much it’s elevated our expectations for post-purchase. Those customers expect fast, reliable shipping. They want to know exactly where their package is and when it will arrive. In fact, I’m nervously following updates for a package with a gift that I need for tonight. And if something goes wrong, they want it to be made right with a quick refund or replacement. And the brands that we see winning amid these expectations are focused on delivering premium experiences. They’re focused not just on acquisition, but also retention. And while doing that, they’re keeping a close eye on their bottom line. So one way that we help brands meet these expectations is with our package tracking solution. The most frequent support question that brands get from customers is, where’s my order? And we help eliminate that question. So we provide tracking notifications across email, web, SMS during every step in the shipping journey. And those touch points are branded and easily customizable to really help the brand continue to build their relationship with the customer. So what happens is that customers feel well informed and confident in the whereabouts of their package. And brands love that one of their biggest customer service issues is off their plate, which helps them ultimately reduce their CX costs. And an example of a brand that has seen benefit from this, we partner with a multi-billion dollar health and wellness company. And since adopting our tracking solution, we’ve helped them reduce those where’s my order tickets by over 50%. So while those tickets used to make up five to 7% of their tickets, before, they now make up less than 1%. And that presents a really great opportunity for their team to focus on other more strategic tasks, or maybe as their business scales, they don’t need to expand their customer service team in a linear way, they’re able to find some efficiencies.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, well, that’s that’s great to hear. And, you know, so lots of brands out there trying to set things up for, you know, for the best possible customer experience. And yet, you know, as you briefly touched on as well, and, you know, want to talk about a little bit more, you know, not everything always goes 100%, you know, according to that, that best plan as well. And so, you know, when things go wrong, there’s an opportunity that customers are going to lose some trust, they’re going to lose some confidence, they’re going to do that comparison to maybe some of the other brands that they know and have had good experiences with. Can you talk a little bit about how brands need to have a strategy not only to, you know, to do the best thing to start, but also a strategy to know what to do when something goes wrong?
Colleen Coulter: Yeah, absolutely. So first, just to your point about how ubiquitous this is, it’s inevitable that a brand is going to experience something like package theft, loss or damage. Research shows that there were 260 million packages stolen in the US last year. That’s about $20 billion worth of products. And of course, the challenge with that is that so much of those negative experiences are outside of a brand’s control, but customers still end up blaming the brand if something goes wrong. And we’re probably all guilty of this. We saw in research that 94% of shoppers blame the retailer after a delivery goes poorly. And in a survey that we did around the state of e-commerce in 2024, we saw that an even higher percentage, 97%, expect retailers to offer automatic refunds or replacements when packages are lost, stolen, or damaged. So brands, as you said, need to turn these negative experiences into positive ones that generate customer loyalty. But to do that can be extremely costly, especially for, say, small and mid-market brands that don’t have the scale to offset those costs. So we help brands do exactly that in a way that ends up reducing costs. For example, we offer shipping protection, which is effectively insurance for every item that a brand sells. the customer purchases this at checkout. And then if anything goes wrong in transit, the customer can quickly get a replacement or refund via our self-serve claim flow. And Route ends up covering the cost of that claim. So everyone in the end is happy. The customer is happy because they got a quick and easy resolution that didn’t require getting on the phone or writing a lengthy email and going back and forth with a customer service agent. And the brand is happy because they won the customer’s loyalty and saved on both the cost of the replacement or refund and the customer experience overhead that’s typically required to manage that claim. And just to put that into perspective, we work with Solo Stove. And you can imagine when they’re shipping really large, easily damageable metal fire pits, they were running into customer service issues. around those packages. And we partnered with them and ultimately have helped save them millions of dollars in their out-of-pocket claims costs. We’ve helped reduce their customer service tasks related to claims by over 90%. And we’re doing that while maintaining really high customer satisfaction. So it’s been a huge game changer for that business.
Greg Kihlstrom: Wow. Wow. Yeah, that’s, that’s great. And so, you know, along those lines and going, kind of going back to the, this idea of, you know, customers, certainly they’re, they’re not only customers of a single brand, they may use one or two more often than others, but you know, they’re, they’re taking those good experiences as well as the bad experiences with those other brands and, and kind of managing their expectations, and perhaps their expectations are rising with each good experience. And yet, to your point, Addressing every single perhaps pain point or potential issue, it takes resource, it takes focus, all of those things. What kind of signals should a brand be paying attention to from their customers as well as their competition to really meet these rising expectations in a practical way?
Colleen Coulter: Yeah, I love the way you teed that up because it’s so true that any great experience we have with a brand ends up just raising the bar for that person of what they expect from all of their other brand interactions. So in terms of signals to be looking at, for one, we see increased consumer willingness to pay for a premium post-purchase experience. And of course, Amazon initiated this with the introduction of Amazon Prime. And we see countless other brands capitalizing on it via loyalty programs that entail an added cost. So Authentic Brands Group is one example, they offer an authentic membership, it comes with a monthly fee. And with that fee, the customer gets free shipping and also other discounts on purchases. And of course, brands are offering options at checkout, as I mentioned, such as shipping protection or warranties. And I’ll admit that oftentimes in the beginning of conversations with brands, they question the customer appetite for this added cost. But time and again, we see brands really satisfied and frankly surprised by the customer adoption and strong customer experience that they witness. So in terms of signal, I’d say really encourage brands to let the data guide them, test these offerings around a premium post-purchase experience, and then expand based on customer feedback and adoption. And then similarly, brands need to be really laser focused on the data with respect to the customer support that they offer. With explosion of AI and all these new forms of customer interaction, it’s so critical that brands are measuring the CSAT associated with those interactions, the resolution time throughout those interactions. And with that, really use the data to assess the trade-offs they’re making with other areas of their customer experience.
Greg Kihlstrom: Regarding returns specifically, I know you touched on this when you’re talking a little bit earlier. You know, it seems like a few years ago, everybody had, you know, there was just this kind of this blanket approach of like free returns and everybody was doing it. Certainly a lot of smaller companies have had some challenges kind of keeping up. Cause it’s, it’s not cheap to, to do those kinds of things. So now there seems to be maybe some shifting trends and, and even shifting approaches. So it’s not always a given that there’s no charges for returns. What are you seeing here? And, you know, I know, I know you mentioned that route addresses some of these things, too. So, you know, just curious what you’re seeing and how you’re helping there.
Colleen Coulter: Yeah, absolutely. So as you said, retailers in some ways have created this issue through how prevalent free returns were, but they’re seeing a returns crisis. So last year, 15% of items were returned, and those costs just get magnified due to returns fraud. NRF reported in 2023 that returns cost retailers $743 billion. Wow. with over $100 billion related to return fraud losses. And we see that return fraud coming to bear through things like wardrobeing, where people purchase items with the explicit intent to return them afterwards. And then we even see organized retail crime groups now taking advantage of brands through returns. So it’s something that brands obviously need to be paying really close attention to. And we’ve seen them start combating returns with tons of strategies. As you said, some are introducing return shipping fees or restocking fees. They’re using things like shorter return windows to reduce the exposure that they have. We see brands innovating with things like resale programs. I think over 150 brands have launched some sort of resale program like New Balance, for example, has the New Balance Reconsidered program this year that is really encouraging kind of the resale of their used sneakers. And at Route, in terms of the role that we’re trying to play and help brands, one example is that we’ve launched a new solution called returns coverage. And to your point around brands introducing more return shipping fees, I think that sometimes they’re hesitant to do that in terms of how that could dissuade customers from buying, reduce their purchase intent. But with something like returns coverage, Shoppers have the opportunity to pay a small fee up front, say $2, to avoid a larger return fee down the line. We see return fees everywhere from $8 to $25. So for the customer, it can make a lot of sense for them to say, okay, let me get this $2 fee up front to avoid that fee down the line in case I don’t end up wanting the product, the product doesn’t work out. And of course, the brand then is using those dollars to cover the cost of return shipping. And one brand that we’ve partnered with, interesting story, it’s CLA Athletics. They’re using returns coverage. Returns has become a much bigger focus for them. They previously only offered hats and hats are adjustable. So you don’t see hats getting returned that often, but they’ve now expanded to apparel. which of course has some of the highest return rates. And so they, you know, all of a sudden returns became a really big problem for them and they needed to figure out a way to combat it or address it. And they have, as I said, adopted returns coverage and have been really excited about the customer appetite for that premium experience, paying that fee. and how that in turn has helped them generate loyalty from those customers who are making returns while offsetting their historic returns costs. So I think we’re going to continue to see a ton of innovation in this space just because returns are not going anywhere and we need to figure out a way to make sure that it’s a seamless experience for shoppers while making it a manageable cost for the brands and retailers.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, and to your point about, you know, the research, it’s, you know, it’s not that most customers aren’t willing to pay a little bit extra for that better experience as well. So, you know, it seems like it, you know, it seems like there’s some hope there for everybody to kind of win to some degree. So I think I think that’s that’s helpful there. Yeah. Last topic I wanted to talk about with you is just, you know, retailers. It takes a lot of pieces to have a great experience. And, you know, we’re focused primarily on the post-purchase experience here. But, you know, certainly end to end, lots of lots of platforms, partners, pieces, components, all those kinds of things. So, you know, just as a company that partners with retailers, I just wanted to kind of ask you, you know, what should a brand be looking at in their partners? You know, what makes a good partner, particularly in the in the post purchase experience, since that’s an area you focus in?
Colleen Coulter: Yeah, so first, I’d say, you know, like, why should they partner in the first place? And in my belief, these partners allow brands to really enhance their post purchase experience quickly and effectively. Because we’ve specialized in post purchase, So we can use our experience with thousands of brands to stay ahead of the customer expectations that we talked about in the beginning and really use their scale to test and innovate quickly. So if an individual brand was looking to do this themselves, they could end up wasting a lot of development cycles and maybe get left behind just because they don’t have the scale to test and learn quickly. And as I said, keep up with those customer expectations. So, then when it comes to looking for a great partner, I’d say focusing on those that you can integrate seamlessly with into the brand’s existing technology, make it really turnkey, not have it involve tons of development projects, and then also making sure that the partner is helping the brand enhance their brand, rather than the partner taking center stage. And at Route, something that we also really focus on and pride ourselves on is making sure that we’re listening to brands’ feedback and addressing it quickly. So for example, this half, we made a ton of enhancements to our claims reporting because we were seeing the questions that were coming into our support teams, but also getting direct feedback from brands about just the level of detail that they wanted. So I’d really encourage brands as they’re evaluating partners to ask some of those questions around like, what does the feedback cycle look like? How is your product team responding to the needs that your clients are servicing?
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So one last thing I wanna ask you before we wrap up here, we’ve talked about quite a few things here today. One thing we didn’t get a chance to talk about yet and I feel like it’s obligatory that I mentioned AI in every, every episode here. So I’m gonna do that. But, you know, just kind of open it up in general, you know, what advice would you give to retailers looking to enhance their post purchase experience? You know, is there is there an AI component they should be keeping an eye out for? And, you know, even just in general, you know, what advice would you give?
Colleen Coulter: Yeah, absolutely. So first, you know, in the post purchase, you’ve already got a customer who’s made a commitment of some sort to your brand. And that’s the opportunity to get them to commit for the long term by getting repeat purchases. And this is a space where I think AI can play such a powerful role because you have a bunch of touch points post purchase where you can be using AI driven results of product recommendations to surface additional products that the customer may be interested in. Route does a version of that in our tracking notifications to surface those products most likely for the customer to be interested in. And as I said, it appears throughout all those different tracking updates. So really that opportunity to enhance the loyalty over time. But of course, also AI is playing such a huge role with just customer support and other direct customer engagement. I’m sure you’ve played around with Amazon’s Rufus, the AI powered shopping assistant, where I love using it to ask questions about product features or receive other recommendations. At Route, an example just of using that AI-powered conversation is using it with our help center content, using it with merchant and shopper history so that when merchants or shoppers are reaching out to us, we can respond to them in a way that feels much more personalized, feels much more conversational, but isn’t so resource-intensive. This is a space that I am just super excited about and know that there’s really great customer interactions that we’re able to deliver through it.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, that’s great. Well, so last question before we wrap here. I always like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role? And how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Colleen Coulter: Yeah, I love this question. First, I just want to acknowledge the importance of mental and physical health so I can show up really engaged for my team and our clients. I’ll admit that I used to think that not needing a lot of sleep was my superpower and I prided myself on it. And then I read enough books and research that showed just how important it is. So I really prioritize sleep to, you know, as I said, show up really engaged the next day. But in the role itself, I embrace the mental model from Amazon around one-way and two-way doors. So if you’re familiar with the model, one-way door decisions have lasting effects and are hard to reverse. So you want to make sure those decisions are really, really considered, whereas two-way door decisions are reversible. So I really focus on those two-way door decisions as an opportunity to embrace testing, embrace taking risks, and making it okay to fail because it’s simply an opportunity to learn and improve. And if you were treating that decision instead as a one-way door, you’d be approaching it much more cautiously. So that I think overall certainly helps me stay agile in the role.
