How To Consolidate Your Tech Stack To Maximize Post-Purchase Touchpoints And Boost Profits — Aaron Evett | Why Post-Purchase Boosts Retention, How To Turn Returns Into Exchanges, Why Streamlined Tools Improve Efficiency, How AI Improves Support (#377)

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In this episode, we explore the critical yet often overlooked post-purchase customer journey.

Discover how to streamline your tech stack, optimize order tracking, handle returns efficiently, and turn post-purchase touchpoints into powerful retention opportunities.

Our guest, Aaron Evett from Redo, shares strategies for unifying disconnected tools, reducing support costs, and converting refunds into exchanges—helping eCommerce brands maximize customer lifetime value while enhancing the overall shopping experience.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Why post-purchase experience drives customer retention. 
• How disconnected tools hurt customer experience. 
• What unified post-purchase solutions look like. 
• How to use tracking emails for upselling. 
• Why returns can be retention opportunities. 
• How to convert returns into exchanges. 
• What return policy display strategies work best. 
• How AI transforms e-commerce support. 
• Why integrated tools reduce staffing needs. 
• How optimized returns double customer lifetime value. 

Links & Resources 

Website: https://www.getredo.com/
Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/xiva
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/redo-tech
X/Twitter: https://x.com/redo_hq 

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https://tinyurl.com/yn7styhj 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey there, this is Claus Lauter and you're listening to the eCommerce Coffee Break Podcast. The show that helps you become a smarter online seller. In today's episode, we discuss how to optimize the post purchase experience of your customers and discuss the tools you really need. Joining me on the show is Aaron Evett, Head of [00:00:20] Revenue at Redo.

So let's dive right into it. Hello and welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break Podcast. Today we want to talk about post purchase. Touch points and how important the post purchase experience is for your customer. And as we all know, e commerce brands use many tools in their business.

Many of them waste time, increase cost, hurt customer [00:00:40] experience. And we want to find out how you can optimize that. Joining me today on the show is Aaron Evett. He is the head of revenue at Redo, where he helps brands redefine the post purchase experience. With a background in scaling, innovative solutions, Aaron worked directly with eCommerce operators and helps them directly drive growth, increase profitability, and improve customer experience.

So let's welcome him to [00:01:00] the show. Hi, Aaron. How are you today? Doing great. Thank you for having me on. Aaron, you want to talk about customer experience here and specifically, I think that's the most important part of the customer journey once they have bought something. And I think that's where a lot of brands lag with their.

And I want to talk a little bit about what do you see is [00:01:20] the biggest problem that e commerce brands face when they have too many tools in the background? Yeah, it's a good question. Like you said, a lot of brands are focused on how do I bring customers to my website and ultimately get them to purchase.

But. You know, now that you have that customer, you have a customer that you can convert [00:01:40] and retain. And so a heavy focus for us is on how do we take that brand and with it being way more expensive to acquire that customer in the 1st place? Or sorry, how do we take that customer and, you know, Get them to repeat and come back.

And so it's for for a lot of brands. It's been under focused [00:02:00] underdeveloped. Um, and so, you know, redo, we came to kind of solve that and bring the post purchase together for other brands. They have. You know, lots of different apps and different touch points that don't really speak to each other and and they're not like coordinating that experience across those those efforts.

So it's really inefficient because they're spending a lot of money [00:02:20] on that post purchase experience with the various apps and it's not coordinated. And so the customer gets, you know, kind of different information and a different journey, depending on where they end up. Um, and so reduce redesign is to bring that all into 1 place.

Um, and so if somebody has a support question. That they need [00:02:40] answered and they've already submitted a return. You have all that information together and you know best how to serve that customer and meet them with the information that they're going to need for, uh, that will help them come back to your website.

You mentioned that the post purchase experience because of many tools is probably not the best with a lot of them. Can [00:03:00] you tell me how the worst case scenario looks like from customers that you're onboarding? So what, what kind of experience did you have in the past? What did you see? Yeah, I mean, there's, there's lots of kind of horror experiences, but I mean, the, the biggest thing is, you know, a customer makes a purchase on your website.

And they have no idea how [00:03:20] to, how to get back in touch and how to answer their questions. Right. And so we've, we've seen brands that struggle with even conveying like, Hey, how does a customer reach, you know, you to answer the questions that you have. Um, we've seen brands, you know, we, we work with a lot of apparel companies and customers.

Don't know how to [00:03:40] return items. That's a big, you know, thing is as part of the post purchase experience, um, is making sure that customers are satisfied. Um, and so, you know, there's countless, uh, stories, you know, 1 that 1 that comes to mind for me is we had this brand. We were working with, uh, just recently.

They actually do 5000 [00:04:00] orders a month. And, uh, so they're fairly decent sized brand and they had this old Instagram. Um. You know that they had set up a long time ago and that the owner had basically stopped paying attention to it, but it was still going and they had customers that like 100 customers who had reached out to that instagram to try to get answers to questions and they just had no [00:04:20] visibility into it because they were, you know, just taking emails as their support tool.

So, it's like, hey, we can combine these channels and make sure that customers are reaching you where customers want to reach you, but it's still efficient for your teams to get them answers to. I think it's a very good example and I've experienced that myself in my own store years [00:04:40] ago that people try to find you on the most, I don't know, crazy ways of reaching out to you because they're desperate.

And if you don't have the right way to do that, that's complete disaster. Now you mentioned different touch points. Talk me through a perfect post purchase experience. Yeah, well, it really starts some of the most anticipated [00:05:00] emails for a customer when they buy on a site is when that product is going to get to them, like tracking that order through.

And so it really starts with order tracking. Um, and so that's, that's what we start brands with is, Hey, let's get that information concisely to the customer. And not only that, in a way that conveys your brand and maybe [00:05:20] even gives opportunities to like upsell that customer to. To different products or items, right?

And so communicating when an order is going to be there, um, where it is in transit, those are, those are messages that, um, you know, customers are really anticipating and they're probably your most opened emails. And so [00:05:40] owning that space and really communicating while there can be a great lift for a brand.

And then, you know, once it, uh, gets beyond those. You know, those order tracking emails, the customer has those items, obviously. They're going to come, you know, back to your website if they need help, but having touch points [00:06:00] to, uh, showcase the brand, to, to let them know, you know, what other products that you offer, um, and really just highlight the different things that you want to.

Those are all super important. Okay. I find it interesting because being in a post purchase process, a lot of people might struggle with the idea that this might be a good point to upsell. [00:06:20] Um, people, yeah, what would be a good strategy there? What would you sell? Do we have some? Yeah, it's great question. So we have, we have, you know, a lot of different brands.

Uh, I'll take 1 example. So 1 of our brands, they sell, um, nicer clothing. Um, and so a lot of times they'll come for like a [00:06:40] suit jacket or. You know, suit pants or something like that. And so the, the customer, like me, I'll go on the site and I'll buy a suit. Um, but they also have these belts, right? And those belts are just like an accessory item.

And, and oftentimes the customer doesn't even know that the belts are there. And in that post purchase experience, that's like, [00:07:00] we talk about like the gum at the checkout counter, it's like the little accessory that you grab that increases the ticket value. Um. And so you can place some of those accessory items.

If you sell shoes, you know, you want to sell, uh, put an insole in your order tracking experience. Like some of those that really compliment what, you know, that [00:07:20] customer bought and usually they're lower ticket items, but. You know, they just increase the profitability per order. If you can attach those, right?

No, it makes perfect sense. Now, next step obviously is shipping, um, shipping information, asking for shipping and tracking data probably is number one question in every support system. [00:07:40] Um, how does it work? Where do you pull the information for, and are you going proactive with that or how does it work?

Yeah. So we're proactive with, with redo. You can set up, um, different flows for like. When you want to communicate to your customers. So the most common is once you fulfilled it, you send a message. Hey, this this is on its way, right? And [00:08:00] then, um, you know, as it gets delivered, you're sending various updates.

And so we're integrating your your shipping data, or you can do that through redo as well. But, um, we'll pull in the tracking number will help you design a branded page. So instead of sending that customer, you To a UPS website, a DHL website, wherever it is, and [00:08:20] it's kind of ugly and it doesn't match, you know, the theme of your brand, you can send them right back to the page that looks and feels like your website.

And it just feels like a really clean, nice experience, um, for those customers and they can see, you know, where their, their packages. Now, next step, obviously, is if people are not happy, [00:08:40] they want to return it. Returning can be a complete pain in the neck for a lot of merchants out there for various reasons.

How do you deal with that? What's the process? Yeah, that we could spend a lot of time on on returns. Returns are an interesting thing because, you know, on one hand, they're just a big heavy like cost center, especially for, [00:09:00] like I said, apparel merchants, but but every, you know, customer when they're buying online, they have this question.

Am I going to like this item? So it's important to have a good return process. And I think Amazon kind of trained everybody on it. Yeah. On returns and so you've, uh, you've seen merchants, um, you know, adopt various return strategies. Some [00:09:20] don't want to talk about it because they think I don't even want to deal with returns.

I don't want to have to forecast, you know, money coming back on the business and some are very. Favorable saying like free returns on everything. Um, you know, as, as we work with merchants, having a good return process is part of the buying decision that [00:09:40] customers have. And so I think it's important to have a good return process.

And not only that, if somebody gets a product and they don't like it, um, if you just let them. You know, keep it and you don't really address that, then they're never going to come back. And so your, your process can be a retention tool where you can, you know, provide first [00:10:00] off an easy way to do it. But you can also provide various methods for a customer to get returned.

So. We help, you know, drive, uh, for store credit or for exchanges and make it really easy to position things that the customer might like if, if they didn't like the style or the fit or, or whatever of what they got. Um, and I [00:10:20] think in that process, you know, we found that. If you offer an easy return process, but at the same time you do everything you can in that return process to retain your customer, you can kind of get the best of both worlds where we see for some of our apparel merchants, we're converting 60 percent of their [00:10:40] returns into exchanges where they get a whole new product.

And now that customer is way more likely to come back to your store because. Um, you know, they got, they have a product that, that hopefully they like and, and, uh, we'll then come back for, for more. It's an interesting topic returns. Um, as I said, there's a whole range of different ways on how to deal with that.

And I think it [00:11:00] also depends a little bit on the price point of the product, um, if you want to deal with it or not. And I think a lot of listeners, um, of, of the podcast here are in apparel, in fashion industry. Um, how do you communicate this on the product detail page? Do you have any examples on that? Um, Yeah, good question.

And, and, uh, we, when we're demoing, [00:11:20] you know, our product, we, we often show Amazon cause they, on every product detail page, they'll put return the return policy, easy returns, right? They're communicating and we recommend, we recommend doing that for sure. We, we, uh, you know, buy the add to cart button off and tell our merchants to put, it doesn't have to be free, but easy returns.

They know [00:11:40] right there. It's part of the buying decision. And if you just make it really simple, cool. And straightforward. Um, and, and don't overload them with information, you know, about it, then. That customer is more likely to convert because they know, Hey, if I don't like this, then I can come back and, uh, and make a purchase.

So we've done a lot of [00:12:00] AB testing with brands, and we've seen that putting it on that product page can increase the conversion by, you know, 5, 10 percent versus not having anything on there at all. Now, in the beginning, we spoke about how to integrate a tech stack into a one solution. And that's what you guys agree to do instead of having multiple.[00:12:20] 

Solutions apps that do not talk to each other. Talk me through your solution. What does it include and what's the process to work with it? Yeah, it's a great question. So we have, um, within our, our tech stack or our solutions that we offer, we have, um, an order tracking product. We discussed that a [00:12:40] little bit.

We actually have an order management, um, Product where you can, can create, um, you know, shipping labels and all that we have, uh, returns product. We have warranties, um, for those that offer warranties, we have a support product. So those are kind of like the post purchase tools that we offer. And so [00:13:00] there's some interesting things that you can do because you have all of those in one place.

So I'll give you a couple examples. Um, we have a merchant out here that, um, In their, um, order tracking emails that I talked about before, they will try to upsell, you know, the customer [00:13:20] to a second product. Well, oftentimes the systems, you know, the WMS systems or whatever systems a brand is using, once they've taken that order from Shopify or whatever channel it's coming from, it's hard to then edit that order.

So they can't. Fulfill that item actually, because we're the same system, we're driving the sale and, you know, [00:13:40] fulfilling the item. Now we know when that happens. And so we can make sure the order's updated, it's timely and, you know, the customer, um, gets what they need. Um, on like the support tool you, you mentioned before, one of the biggest questions is where's my order.

And a lot of times. You know, your support reps, uh, at an e commerce brand, 50 [00:14:00] percent of their tickets are order. And it's like, we, we can help streamline that. So instead of having a, you know, support. Rep that has to answer that question. Every time we have the order tracking already there. And we know once they ask that question, we just give them the link and they're set right.

And so now I'm more [00:14:20] efficient in that process and my customer's happy. Um, so there's some unique experiences, uh, that we can drive like that, a bunch of others, but, but those are the different tools and a couple of examples. Now, obvious question in time of AI, how much of AI do you have working in the background?

Yeah, it's, [00:14:40] it's a good question. Um, never enough, right? Um, we're doing a lot of work with AI to, to incorporate it, um, you know, in, into our tools and You know, obviously lots of learning and AI is just continuing to get better every day. But, uh, particularly on our support products, if [00:15:00] we can give the information, um, you know, and give the tool what it needs, oftentimes the AI can be the one, you know, at least taking a first pass at answering questions.

Um, and so for a lot of our brands who are using our support tool, they'll either automate. A lot of their tickets or they'll [00:15:20] use a, what we call a co pilot and the co pilot will take a first pass. Somebody comes in and reviews the answer that, that the AI has given and, you know, approves that to be sent.

And it's really fascinating. I started at redo 18 months ago, and I would say 18 months ago, there was a lot of skepticism that AI would work for the, you [00:15:40] know, for people's businesses, um, and it just, in the last 18 months, you know, I just got off a conversation. I don't know, a week or so ago with a brand.

And they were like, honestly, it's better answering support tickets. I am, I get tired, you know, I get, I get emotional. And this thing just kind of stays steady and it's, you know, you [00:16:00] train it and teach it and then it's kind of off to the races. So, yeah, I think that the trust factor in using AI tools, as you mentioned, has increased massively in the last 12 months.

Um, so I think people now really get the point what it can do and start. Implementing it more and more because they see it's, it actually works. Now you gave a [00:16:20] couple of examples already. I want to talk about a brand and you don't need to name the brand. Um, what kind of differences did they see when they moved over to your system from whatever tech stack they had in the past?

Yeah. So when that comes to mind, they're actually just down the road from us. Um, You know, they, they sell like accessory women's, um, jewelry is [00:16:40] what, what they're selling. And they had various solutions for port for order tracking for returns. Um, you know, and, and, uh, even warranties for them. The, the biggest thing that they would point to, um, is through redoes tools and platform being together, AI that we just talked [00:17:00] about, uh, they were able to cut down their support heads.

Um, so they actually got. Not didn't get rid of half the team, but they repurposed half the team to different parts of the business that they felt the driving more like revenue or value, you know, like marketing or different places like, [00:17:20] um, and so I would say that's the number one thing that we're driving is with the platform.

We're trying to make that more efficient. You know, these, these e commerce companies, they run lean. There's not tons of margin usually that they have to work with. And so the more efficiency you can drive, it's huge, um, for businesses. And [00:17:40] then, you know, depending on the products. You could go a number of ways with our returns product.

Um, one of the biggest, we're oftentimes taking customers who didn't have a portal or who had a different portal and in the returns product, we're driving exchanges and so instead of giving a refund to a [00:18:00] customer and you know, if you have a 10 percent return rate, then every month you kind of have to book 10 percent of that goes back Um, on average for redo brands, 50 percent of returns end up in store credit or exchanges.

And so that's just less money that I have to give back to customers. But not only that, it's, it's a retained [00:18:20] customer. And so we, we track the LTV of those customers who do like an exchange versus a store credit versus a refund. And the LTV benefit is two X on those customers. You need to do. So we're oftentimes deploying strategies like, Hey, you might want to even like incentivize an exchange because that that customer is going to [00:18:40] come back if you can get them to stay.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And you mentioned that specifically in the apparel industry, the profit margins are not very big. So you want to make sure that you know your numbers and optimize wherever you can. And then obviously the aspect of having a massive time saver there and that you can reallocate your staff members to do more.[00:19:00] 

More profitable things than answering where the tracking number is. Uh, that makes perfect sense. Now, we were talking quite a bit about apparel and fashion industry. Who else is your perfect customer? Yeah. So, I mean, we go across, um, a lot of different, um, you know, brands and it kind of depends on, uh, what, what products, um, you know, that [00:19:20] they need that, that we come in.

But because we have a support tool that automates and does AI, we can, we can. Really go general and broad and, and pick up anybody. Mm-hmm . I would say we have a lot of like, electronics and, and even like gym equipment because our warranties product really fits well, you know, in [00:19:40] those spaces. Um, but we do, I mean we have, we have food, uh, supplement companies, um, you know, lots of, lots of apparel, obviously lots of accessories, jewelry, um, those are.

Probably, you know, the majority of our customers are still in apparel and accessories, [00:20:00] but because of our expansion into other products, even like order management, um, it's more, more broad. We're typically working with brands who, you know, are anywhere from they're just starting their business to, uh, 50 million, 100 million.

businesses. So they're the SMB size and, [00:20:20] and trying to help those brands mostly. Okay. Oh, well, that's quite a range. And I think, um, post purchase experience should be good for every brand. So obviously then every industry in the Asian vertical would work. Walk me through the typical onboarding process.

What steps are involved? How long does it take? Yeah, and that's one of the biggest things that we actually focus on, um, you know, with, with my [00:20:40] background, I've found working with SMBs, you just have so many things on your plate and oftentimes you go to buy a software. It looks really cool and shiny. You buy it and then you're just left hanging and they got you on a contract.

And so you stay with it for 12 months. But you're not leveraging all the tools and features and everything. And this is one of the big [00:21:00] differentiators that when I came in, I worked with our CFO to say, Hey, we need to resource a really good, uh, we call it post sales team, um, where they, they should know and understand e commerce really well.

And, you know, they're doing a lot of the legwork for these brands. Um, and so in the sales processes, we [00:21:20] Bring on an onboard merchants. We make sure that we're taking notes and we leverage AI for this to say like, what is this customer really trying to get? And then the post sales team is compensated on, did we meet, you know, the job to be done for that customer?

And so for, for a lot of our competitors, [00:21:40] it will take. A month or 2 to onboard, um, because they're relying on their merchants. We, um, you know, for for redo, we have you install the app or get access to the app in whatever way that you need to. And then our implementation team. Goes and does the initial build based on what we [00:22:00] understand, and then they come back and we tweak and kind of finalize things.

But that shortens the cycle from a couple months or a month to onboard something to, we have brands that, um, we just had one actually today that we met them today and now we have a returns portal up on their website today. Right. [00:22:20] Um, so we, we really try to shorten that, get, get people to value really fast.

Yeah. That's impressive. I mean, specifically with small and medium enterprises, they might just have not the experience or don't know how that you bring on board. And then obviously it's much faster than you take over for a bit, um, instead of letting them figure out how it works. Tell me about your pricing structure.

How does that work? [00:22:40] Yeah, that's, that's another thing. Um, you know, Redo started with returns and our returns products, um, we actually took a different business model. Um, our founder was running a brand and, you know, he, Didn't like, uh, what he was spending on returns. He didn't like what he was spending on its return [00:23:00] portal.

And so he created this, um, new model. And essentially what the model was, was it offers customers the, the option for, uh, we call it return coverage where they opt in at checkout. And if they opt in, then we will cover the return label. So it's a small fee, a dollar, 3, something like that. [00:23:20] And so for a merchant.

That's totally free because it's basically, you know, customer funded. But what was cool about it was customers really liked it. They responded well, like the conversion data came back positive. Um, and so, you know, that, that part of the product was free as we've evolved and brought on other products we have.

You know, [00:23:40] various, um, pricing structures, but because of the platform, um, we, we try to do everything as cheaply as possible. Um, and oftentimes even free if we can, so that, uh, you know, merchants, um, don't have to pay an arm and a leg for software. As we talked about, there's not a lot of margin. [00:24:00] Um, and so we can offer a support tool really just barely above cost because.

You're using other products that we can, you know, generate revenue on that one area and maximizing our profit in that one area. Okay, yeah, that makes perfectly sense. If you have a customized solution and then try to optimize [00:24:20] your pricing there, sounds good to me. Before our coffee break comes to an end today, is there anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

Um, no, I mean, the biggest thing is I would just advocate, uh, you know, invest in the post purchase experience. I think those oftentimes that's the best place that you can quote unquote like market [00:24:40] and, you know, get customers back as if, if you can provide an amazing experience when a customer comes to your site, makes a purchase, um, you know, and, and my wife was just talking the other day.

She just, she bought from a brand. They, Okay. Um, they actually made a mistake on her order, but they were so proactive about the [00:25:00] communication and it was so clear what was happening the whole time. She's like, I just want to buy from them just because it was such a good experience. And I think, you know, that's, that's kind of how, you know, we, as humans are.

Is we get that, um, dopamine hit. We, we, uh, that first impression makes a big deal. And so if you can [00:25:20] invest in that and, uh, take the time to make sure that you have a good post purchase experience, you're going to see that return customer rate, um, come on and there's, there's the natural. Kind of brand marketing boost that you get by doing that.

That's hard to measure. And so that's why oftentimes it goes, gets neglected. [00:25:40] But, um, you know, over, over a longer period of time, that's what's ultimately going to make the difference in the business. That's what Amazon did so well. That's what some of these players, you know, that have gotten big have done so well.

As the old saying goes, you have, there's no second chance for a first impression. And if you want to avoid buyer's remorse, then having a post purchase experience that just [00:26:00] is just flawless, definitely helps in creating long term clients. Where can people go to find out more about you guys? Um, get redo.

com. So it's, uh, if you just go on the website, there's, there's information about the various products that we have. And then, uh, you can book a demo if you want to on there. Okay. Excellent. I will put a link in the show notes as [00:26:20] always, and you just want to take away. Aaron, thanks so much for giving us an overview.

I think post purchase is so important and I still see a lot of brands who don't get it right. So, um, I hope a lot of people will reach out to you and, um, take it from there. Then thanks so much for your time today. Awesome. Thank you.