Post Purchase Experience: Meaning, Benefits and 25 Ways to Improve

Most businesses miss out on the big picture when they don’t have a marketing strategy for post purchase experience. Well, at least not one that is set in stone.

Your customers traverse through a myriad of emotions after they make the purchase. They are excited that they will have something new and are also anxious to see if they have made the right decision. Understanding how customers behave after a purchase can give marketers much information about building trust.

What is the Post Purchase Customer Experience?

The way you treat someone who went from a prospect to a customer after they make a purchase is the simplest definition of post-purchase customer experience. Getting in touch with your customers in many ways after they buy your product can greatly impact your business.

There are tonnes of research that shows it is 5X more expensive to get a new customer when compared with serving an existing customer.

Importance of Post Purchase Experience

Imagine you buy a new toy. The fun doesn’t end when you pay for it. The post-purchase experience is like the after-party of shopping. It’s important because:

1. Happiness Check: It ensures you’re happy with your purchase. Like, “Is the toy as fun as you expected?”
2. Problem Solver: If there’s an issue, the post-purchase experience helps fix it. Like a superhero fixing problems to save the day.
3. Friendship Building: It’s like making friends with the brand. You want to feel good about your choice, and a good post-purchase experience makes you feel warm and fuzzy.
4. Memory Maker: A great post-purchase experience makes you remember the shopping adventure happily. It’s like having a cool story to tell your friends.
5. Come Back Soon: If the after-party is awesome, you’ll want to return for more. So, it’s like getting an invitation to future shopping adventures.

Take Amazon, for example. The e-commerce platform is renowned for its customer service. From personalized recommendations post-purchase to regular follow-ups on customer requirements, the online store ups its CX game! Moreover, the post purchase protection is a game changer!

Benefits of Improving Post Purchase Experience

• Customer Satisfaction Assurance: It keeps your heart happy after you buy something. Imagine a warm feeling inside, like a cozy blanket for your emotions after a purchase. Magical, right?
• Resolution Facilitation: If anything goes wrong, it will fix it. It will be ready to tackle any problems and make everything right again.
• Brand Relationship Cultivation: It’s like having a buddy in the brand. You want to feel good about your purchase, and an excellent post-purchase experience is like having a friendly buddy cheering you on.
• Memorable Brand Interactions: It helps create good memories. You’ll remember the fun you had not just buying the thing but also enjoying the whole experience afterward.
• Sustainable Customer Retention: If the post-purchase experience is fantastic, it’s like a warm hug inviting you to return. You’d want to do it all over again because it felt so good.

25 Ways to Improve Post Purchase Experience

Let’s cut straight to the chase: the folks at SurveySparrow give you these 25 tips that will help you improve the post purchase experience of your customers.

#1. Say thank you

This should be the first act that you do. A simple ‘thank you’ can further cement the relationship and enhance the purchase experience. You can even send handwritten letters or thank you emails where you thank your customers for doing business with you. It shows that you value their business, and it has a lot of impact on your customer’s post purchase experience and is the first step towards creating a long-term relationship.

It all starts with the thank you page they see right after a customer proceeds with a payment or avails of your service.

But, it should never end. Make them feel valued by appreciating their time every moment you get!

#2. Refund policy

Customers are wary that your product would suit their needs and meet their expectations. If not, the only solution is to return the product. But do you have a working refund policy in place? If not, your customers would be put off by it, resulting in a poor post purchase experience.

Even before the customer makes a purchase, you should clearly let them know about your refund policy so that they aren’t caught unawares. Also, we would advise you to allow for refunds until a particular period of time. It will keep them at peace knowing that a wrong choice doesn’t mean money down the drain.

#3. Provide information

After the purchase, there might be areas where the customer doesn’t know how to handle a situation. Do not make them call the customer care number, although that should be an option. Here’s what you should do instead:

• Provide all the information you can possibly gather about the product and how to use it most efficiently. This will also reduce the number of return requests.
• A customer buys with the belief that it will be easy to use, there are times when some people might not be aware of a few things and would need external help. This is where ‘how-to’ guides, information booklet, FAQs, etc, give them a direction.

#4. Product care tips

As the product’s creator, you would know everything about keeping it in the pink of health. Your customers might be handling your product for the first time and are completely unaware of how to keep it correctly.

Share tips to help your customers keep the product safe and in perfect working condition. When you share such tips after the purchase, customers understand that you have their best interests in mind. Your customers will appreciate you for caring about their needs.

#5. Post-purchase feedback

Don’t you want to know how your customers feel about your product after the purchase? Understanding their level of satisfaction can help you make a lot of business decisions that will make sense. Collecting feedback is one of the best ways to improve post purchase experience.

Send them simple email surveys immediately after they receive the product. You can use online survey tools like SurveySparrow, where you can also send automated follow-up emails and get customer data effortlessly. Moreover, the platform lets you create, share, analyze, and take action for improved customer experience!

#6. Recommend related products

This is yet another post purchase experience strategy that will not only help you make more money but will help your customer too. Send them recommendations of related products that will help them use your product to the fullest.

In fact, you can also send them recommendations of related products that you don’t sell, but a different business does.

The whole point is to know what your customers would need and give them that even if it doesn’t make you any money. Providing value to your customer should be the only thing on your mind.

#7. Offer discount codes for the future

Customers love discounts. No matter which part of the world they are from. Discounts are welcomed like the dawn of a new year.

When you offer them discount coupons for the next time they purchase from you, the likelihood of them buying from you increases if they like the product they have already bought from you. What better way to improve post purchase experience?

#8. Offer samples of your other products

Let’s say one of your customers buys product A and you have a bunch of other products as well. Then it would be wise of you to allow them access to other products for a short time period.

Your customers will not only try your products, but they would also become familiar with it and when they have a need for a similar product, they would choose your product. Why? Because they are already familiar with your business and that particular product.

#9. Celebrate milestones

When a prospect signs up on your website, they should have uploaded their details, including birthdays. Send them a small discount on their birthdays or special occasions. Make them feel special.

Now, how would you get the data on significant days for your customers?

Simple, slip in some questions when you send them a survey. They would be pleasantly surprised when they receive a discount. They will talk about it and share it on their social media platforms. Plus, That’s free publicity for you! Now, that’s a win-win situation!

#10. Always respond

If you get a query from your customer when using the product, make it a point to respond to them without fail. Ensure that they get a reply. The same applies to non-customers, but you must respond to your customers without fail.

No matter what kind of message it is, your customer wants a reply and you should give them that courtesy without fail. A simple non-response can put you in a place where you are vilified for not obliging to customer requests. It is easy to paint such a picture. Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned!

#11. Communicate

As soon as an order is placed, your customer wants to know when it will arrive at their doorstep or smartphone. The order will not be immediately available if it is a physical package.

The product will be packed and dispatched to the nearest hub, then sent to the hub closest to the customer, etc. All this information should be communicated effectively. The customer should not feel as if they are not in the know.

#12. Be helpful even when there are no issues

It doesn’t cost a bomb to ask your customers if everything is going well. But not all companies do that because that thought never enters their mind because there is no strategy for the same. This is the prerogative of the customer success team.

For all you know, the customer might be grappling with a problem and be hesitant to seek help. They might even assume that it is too trivial an issue that would require help from someone at your company.

This is where you take the help of technology by setting up automation systems to ensure that sending reminders, offering help, and other customer-friendly activities happen on auto-pilot.

#13. Little things matter

Something that the business dismissed as too small might be a pain to one of your customers. This is why you must be careful about every aspect of your business.

Your customers are watching you and so are your competitors. If your product is something they use day-to-day, the ramifications of your callousness are huge for your customers.

#14. Voice of the Customer

It is a term used to describe the process of capturing the customers’ likes, dislikes, and preferences. Metrics like revenue, churn, etc, while important, are vanity when it comes to the changes you can make by knowing your customer all too well.

If you want to give your customers a post purchase experience that will blow them away, then you need to invest in listening to them attentively.

Businesses use Voice of Customer to see if there is any gap between the service promised to the customer versus the actual customer experience. It has a lot of techniques like interviews, live chat, surveys, website behaviour, NPS, Focus Groups, emails and more. The information that you get from all these places consistently helps you get a much-evolved understanding of your customer.

Suggested Reading: What is Voice of the Customer Analytics? A Complete Guide

#15. Ask for reviews

Everyone wants social proof, especially businesses. Even your customers would want to flaunt their use of your product. Ask for reviews from your customers after a while when you know they have been using your product well.

If they had a bad experience, it would be an excellent opportunity for you to make it right even before they could tell their friends and family about it. Working on the issue they communicated to you can make them go from a disgruntled customer to a happy one.

Your customers are going to use product reviews for their buying decisions. It doesn’t look good for you if you don’t have any reviews on your website. Here’s what we would advise:

Ask all your customers for a review, even the ones who have been there for a long time.

Suggested Reading: How to Manage and Monitor Online Reviews in 7 Steps

#16. Make customers confident about their purchase

There was a time when customers were wary about buying products online. The reason was that they wanted to ‘feel’ the product before they bought it. Businesses started taking professional pictures of their product from different angles so that customers could be assured about what they got.

Make their digital experience memorable by alleviating their fear of getting a product that doesn’t look like the one they saw on the website.

#17. Build a community for your customers

While building and maintaining a community for your customers is difficult because many factors are involved. You need to ensure that there is a lot of participation from the community members while you work on delivering content that piques everyone’s interest.

It is a gateway to creating a lasting relationship with the customers. It is an easy way for you to conduct polls, and customer feedback surveys, get them enrolled in loyalty programs, and more. You can drive the conversation there, and once you build a thriving community, the members will answer new customers’ questions. That’s how powerful it is.

#18. Loyalty programs

Running a loyalty program for customers who are advocates for your brand is a great way to build your brand, and it ensures that they stay with you for a long time. It is a win-win for everybody as you give more reasons for your customers to stay with you while ensuring that the customer makes more purchases.

There are a lot of different ways in which you can devise loyalty programs. Sky’s the limit, well, at least your imagination is. When you offer something for your customers to stay with you, they are more than likely to do so. Loyalty programs are extremely powerful in converting customers who are apathetic toward your cause to become advocates for your brand.

#19. Interact everywhere possible

Do you see a stray comment on a random person’s Facebook profile about your product thanks to Google alerts? Do you ignore it because only a few people are going to see it or you think a comment on someone’s profile is too insignificant to warrant your attention, then you couldn’t be more wrong?

As we have repeatedly mentioned, your customers are always watching you. They want you to appear out of nowhere to ease their stress.

It is a must that you interact with them anywhere you see your brand mentioned. Even if it is a rude comment, go out of your way to alleviate their anger. More than earning one customer, it is about being true to your word as a brand that cares about its customers.

#20. How-to use guides

Give your customers materials that will help them use the product better. Write helpful how-to guides, FAQs, and other materials to enhance their experience.

It will smooth things for the customers and clear any doubts that they might have had when using the product. Also, give them opportunities to ask questions, if they have any.

#21. Be respectful

You might get calls from customers that might be lame to you, but they have reached out to you because they are facing an issue and you are the only person to make it right.

Ensure that customer service executives in your team are respectful towards your customer, no matter how unreasonable someone might sound. You are there to help the customer, not judge their actions. In case you’re having a really bad day, these customer service memes will help lighten the mood.🙂

#22. Keep it simple

Do you have any of your customers scratching their heads during any part of the buying process? Well, why would you make something difficult even if all your customers are scientists whose IQ puts them in the MENSA category? Customers want to get done with things at the earliest.

Time is money! They won’t waste it on anything. The easier it is, the better their experience, and the more likely they are to return to you as a customer.

#23. Create an unboxing experience

If it is affordable and right for the kind of product you sell, you can create an unboxing experience for your customers. This is a great post purchase experience that you create and is a share-worthy one for your customers. They might even make a video of the unboxing and post a video on their social media handles.

In fact, go out of your way to persuade your customers to post their unboxing experience online by using your brand’s social media handle names.

#24. Omni-channel support

Your customers want to contact on any channel that they deem fit. Do not offer them a single point of communication. With CRMs ruling the roost, it becomes easy for you to maintain information about the customer’s order history and add additional information at a single place. This will smoothen the process even if you were to offer them different types of channels for customer support.

#25. Make a memorable post purchase experience

Take a look at each step that happens post purchase of your product. How can you make moments that are memorable for your customer? You can do this for any part of this.

It could be during onboarding or a week after they receive the product. Even something as simple as a hand-written message can delight your customer.

Conclusion

If you want to stay in business for a long time, you need to be cognizant that post purchase experience is a thing and deserves your team’s time, effort and experience. Helping your customers after opening their wallets for you seems like a no-brainer, but many companies falter at this point. They have no agenda for retaining their customer with a smart post purchase experience program in place.

When you care, your customers will know that you have their best interests in mind. They will appreciate you for the steps you take and will always have a good word to say about your business to their friends and family.

Understanding that a customer’s journey doesn’t end after the purchase will make your business extremely successful. Invest in post purchase experience, take pride in your customers, and ensure they feel the same as you.

And, before you go, give SurveySparrow a try. It’s free!