How important is your Post-Purchase?

It is exactly 9.5X times more important than you might think. 

In a recent course by Professor Scott Galloway for Section 4 Brand Strategy, I was introduced to the clock model. It is a model that clubs together all your marketing activities for a brand under 3 main time zones or areas: the Pre-Purchase, the Purchase, and the Post-Purchase. 

To further elaborate and to explain the differences: 

• Pre-Purchase are all the activities that we as marketers would do before the point of interacting with the product. For example, advertising, tradeshows, events, sponsorships, social media activities, and PR. This could be referred to as the “old school” of marketing where a lot of focus, money, and time were put into this area, with companies such as P&G, Coke, Pepsico, Unilever, etc., truly dominating this area. 

• Purchase are all the activities/resources that are happening during the purchase process.  For example, distribution, packaging design, store design, user reviews, user-generated content, and financing options (Affirm like). The major players who truly dominated this are the likes of GAP and Starbucks. They have transformed their product into a buying experience by investing heavily within the purchase touchpoint or at the point where you physically interact with your brand. 

• Post-Purchase are the activities that you create for post-buying that brand. This is like, you guessed it, customer service, loyalty programs, and warranties. This really focuses on relationship building or building a sense of belonging to the place, more like a community. I believe the masters in this are the airlines' industry. If I am searching for a flight, no questions asked, I will try my best to find a Star Alliance flight by any means to get the perks rather than focus on any other attributes such as price, stops, and timing advantages. They have really mastered the art of keeping you within their community by establishing a very strong loyalty program.     

So now that I have explained the difference between the 3 phases let's get back to the main question here.

How important is your Post-Purchase? 

It is definitely much more important than what you might think or believe. Unfortunately, this is an area that many companies tend to neglect or don't put enough resources into, big or small. 

Why is this area becoming more and more important? Because the more players out there, the more you need to form a cohesive, caring relationship with your customers. Remember, brands are characters or personas. No one likes people who neglect you, don’t care about you, or use you to their advantage. When you buy a product or a service, if you as a company neglect that post-purchase experience/feedback/troubleshooting phase, you will eventually block your customers from developing an ongoing relationship with your brand. It is really that simple. 

Now again, why is that extremely important nowadays? It's pure mathematics and Return on Investment (ROI). If you as a brand are currently spending $1 for customer acquisition, you will spend $9.5 to win back a dissatisfied customer. Yes, that’s how painful it is to get a dissatisfied customer back. So imagine the opportunity cost here? It is huge. It is huge to the extent that you would rather take half of that amount as a loss factor and invest it into a serious customer service/loyalty/retention program to guarantee that you lose the least amount of customers within your consumer journey than having to live with the pain of trying to re-gain that customer back. Hence, invest ahead of the curve in the relationship. 

Who are the masters of this, in my opinion? 

 

NORDSTROM really stretched themselves on making a point when it comes to customer service. You want to return an item at NORDSTROM? Here is their policy, plain and simple: 

“The luxury department chain offers full refunds for any item, regardless of when the item was purchased. Nordstrom will pay shipping costs for customers to send back fine jewelry, worn garments, and most designer items. The only exception is for special-occasion dresses, which must be returned in the condition they were purchased. Customers do not need a receipt to finalize refunds — Nordstrom will provide a gift card of the same price if no record of sale is available.” 

Outstanding right? Absolutely, and it really really pays off. I shop from NORDSTROM all the time, carefree about size issues; if the items do not fit, I just return them without any questions. What does that result in? Whenever I want to buy any item, I check if it's available at NORDSTROM first. Especially if it's the first time for me to try a new brand. It's genius from them, and it retains me as a serious customer for a lifetime. 

Take this perfect model vs. the opposite side of the coin for a local children's gift store here in Egypt called HEDEYA that I recently interacted with. 

 

I recently became a father of a beautiful daughter, and like many fathers, I started going to that kind of store to buy my daughter toys and random stuff that I don’t even know why I am getting them, but anyhow. I recently bought two small baby pools from there that keep getting punctured. So on my third buy, I decided to go for a bigger size baby pool. But when I unboxed the pool, I realized that it's huge, too big to fit in the yard. So without using it, I repacked it in the bag and took the receipt, and went back to return it a couple of days after. Little did I know that its gonna be a disaster of an experience. It's what I  would like to call “ A Shit Show of a Customer Experience.” 

Here is what NOT TO DO when you want to retain a customer. 

Mind you that the pool cost 450 LE, not a high ticket item in this particular store. I asked to exchange the pool for a smaller size since I realized it is too big when I opened the box. A store manager comes running to the counter from behind me to jump into the issue and interrupting me from finishing the discussion with the gentleman at the cashier. So I explain to him, listen, have the receipt, and the pool is too big, so I simply want to exchange it. 

He then gives me a lecture that the item clearly states the measurements on it (which it does) and that “you should have checked the measurements before buying it.” I honestly smiled at him and asked him, you are really going to teach a customer what they should do when buying products from you? Then he pauses and says, plus, we clearly state that you can not return open pools on the back of our invoices (which it does), but it also says something even more interesting.  

To translate  “You can’t return pools, etc.….. and you also can’t return some other items after opening them“  

I honestly didn’t have it in me to argue; I took the pool and left. I knew the owner's name, so I pulled her contact from Facebook and sent her a direct message on Messenger simply because I am a business owner myself and understand the importance of customer service. She responded to the message apologizing for the situation, telling me that someone will contact me immediately. No one ever did! I was not surprised.  What resulted from the situation to reach what it reached is a clear indication for me as a marketer that this is an entity that gives 0 importance to customer satisfaction or even understands some business fundamentals.  

Forget the 450 LE  you can keep them, forget the incident, forget the store manager attitude, forget the owner not taking any action; my one question is …… WHY? 

Why would you put such a statement? You are in the wrong business. You are not selling products; you are selling customer experiences, especially when it comes to kids' products. Trying to have the best in-store customer experience and post-purchase should be your only goal. Seventy percent of kids-related products purchased by parents are based on impulse buying. You do not really go with a shopping list, and there are no value equations guidelines to your purchasing habits. 

With that said, I want you to analyze the repercussions. You lost an active customer. I left the store swearing that I would never enter the store again or deal with that entity by any means necessary, and I am a man of my word. More importantly, for every family with a kid's outing or gathering, what do you discuss? Kids food, clothes and ……….you guessed it,  TOYS! What conversation do you think will be happening there?! 

Bottom line, Be a NORDSTROM; invest in your Post Purchase. It is the most undervalued medium yet the most crucial for retaining your core user. 

I hope you have enjoyed reading this marketing blog. Feel free to write me at shereba@brandmeup.co or leave a comment below. 

Until the next blog, have a good one. 

Shereba