How To Build A Resilient Post-Purchase Tech Stack — Prashant Gupta | Why Loyalty Is Built After Checkout, What To Fix Right After An Order, Why Tracking Builds Trust, How AI Confirms Orders, Why Returns Drive Retention, How ClickPost Works (#427)

In this episode, we explore why the post-purchase journey is the key to customer loyalty and repeat sales. 

From proactive updates to AI-powered personalization and smarter returns, you’ll learn simple ways to boost retention and create a wow experience after checkout.

Prashant Gupta, Co-Founder and CTO of ClickPost, shares how brands can turn order tracking and delivery into a revenue driver. 

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• Why brands lose money by ignoring post-purchase. 
• How the journey after checkout drives loyalty. 
• What to do right after an order to reduce errors. 
• How proactive updates cut support tickets. 
• Why personalized tracking builds trust. 
• How AI voice agents confirm and inform customers. 
• What brands gain from ClickPost integrations. 
• How AI stays on-brand with tone and persona. 
• Why multilingual AI makes global growth easy. 
• How personalized returns boost retention. 
  
  

Links & Resources 

Website: https://www.clickpost.ai/en-us
Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/partners/clickpost
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-gupta-clickpost/

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at
https://tinyurl.com/5n8csmvw

Transcript

00;00;00;06 - 00;00;18;07
Prashant Gupta
You can actually personalize that entire experience as well. So needing a very aggressive customer, I keep on checking when my delivery is going to happen. They probably have different triggers for a customer like me who is always on a phone checking when the delivery is going to come.

00;00;18;07 - 00;00;27;08
Claus Lauter
As you are so deep into. I need to ask you, were there any kind of surprises that you saw what it is really capable of? Yeah.

00;00;27;10 - 00;00;31;16
Prashant Gupta
Good question for that.

00;00;31;18 - 00;00;53;22
Claus Lauter
Hello and welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Most brands spent all their energy getting customers to buy, but then completely dropped the ball after checkout. But here's the thing What happens after someone clicks purchase is whether real money is made or lost. Today we're diving into how to build a post-purchase tech stack that doesn't just track packages, but actually drives revenue and keeps customers coming back for more.

00;00;53;24 - 00;01;12;00
Claus Lauter
Joining me on the show today is Prashant Gupta. He is the co-founder and CTO of Click Post, a leading SaaS logistics platform with a computer science degree. He drives AI powered solutions, enabling click post to process over 50 million shipments monthly for over 450 brands across more than 30 countries. We have a lot to cover, so let's get started.

00;01;12;07 - 00;01;14;02
Claus Lauter
Hey, Prashant, welcome to the show.

00;01;14;04 - 00;01;16;24
Prashant Gupta
Hi, class. Glad to be here.

00;01;16;27 - 00;01;25;28
Claus Lauter
Let's dive into it. Many brands treat their post-purchase phase as sort of dumb phase, but that's a big problem. Why is that a big mistake?

00;01;26;00 - 00;02;03;15
Prashant Gupta
Many of the brands focus a lot towards getting more customers acquiring them. Our brands miss out on retaining those customers and the entire funnel of building loyalty, which helps brands maintain a lot of customer retention. Ultimately helping them reduce the customer acquisition cost over a period of time by retaining or by driving initiatives in the entire post-purchase. Bet you to be more sticky to the brand.

00;02;03;15 - 00;02;19;06
Prashant Gupta
So that that is a mistake that they're seen bench doing in their journey. And that's where we come in to the chair and have them entertaining the customers and making those relationships for a long term benefit.

00;02;19;08 - 00;02;37;09
Claus Lauter
Mm hmm. Want to dive a little bit into the ignoring the post-purchase experience. Obviously, as you said, most brands are chasing the next customer down deep into marketing and just finding new customers, though the post-purchase experience is very important. Tell me why that is.

00;02;37;11 - 00;03;13;09
Prashant Gupta
Talking about the post cheese experience, right? Probably the purchase of the entire floor when the customer comes on our website and places. An order is like a 15 minutes 20 minutes journey at max. While once the order is placed from there on, then the product is delivered and handed over to the customer. If like a23 days window of time, then you can you can do a lot more stuff to wow the customer at every point.

00;03;13;11 - 00;03;55;17
Prashant Gupta
Now, when all of that happens, brands generally focus a lot towards that first 15 minutes of their journey, getting the customer making them place an order or the method on is they have two more days or three more days to actually wow the customer and repeating it, which is something that we can do better. Yeah. So starting from as soon as the order is players going to give an opportunity to the customer who just missed out on adding a discount code which can be applied or adding that address some mistakes that they did or add another product.

00;03;55;17 - 00;04;20;22
Prashant Gupta
Can you do that or get that capability to the customer or once the order is placed, can keep the customer informed about when it is going to be shipped? Is it a just in time product or readily available in your warehouse? Then it'll be dispatched when it is going to arrive. How accurately you are able to commit that to the customer, giving them that personalized experience.

00;04;20;24 - 00;04;51;18
Prashant Gupta
So they started a journey right from building these experiences for brands. And from there today that we are now getting into personalizing these experiences for our customers. So you in Argentina might have a very different persona and your experience with a brand might be very different than me sitting in New York while I'm receiving the same T-shirt. So my expectations on how I'll use that T-shirt will be very different.

00;04;51;18 - 00;05;13;27
Prashant Gupta
So can a brand nudge and keep the customer informed about how they can use the product in the best way, which is another piece of the product that they can buy the same T-shirt for to make the best sense out of it. So these are the things that we are doing nowadays to enhance that experience for brands.

00;05;13;29 - 00;05;34;21
Claus Lauter
Far more than just optimizing the shipping method. It's really about communication. It's really about staying on top before the question basically comes up or the client. You already provide the right information there. So give me a couple of examples on how that would look like from somebody going into the checkout and how often gets a client informed.

00;05;34;23 - 00;06;16;16
Prashant Gupta
So A, it starts on the checkout journey. So as soon as the checkout happens, they see four brands around 5 to 7% of the queries that come in around editing the order or updating the order. Can you reduce that by them? There are brands who want to do a customer confirmation. Can you deploy voice agents to get the order confirmation done on the brand's behalf instead of humans reaching out or calling the customer's can now we can have voice agents calling the customer and doing all of it.

00;06;16;19 - 00;06;56;10
Prashant Gupta
Once the orders conformed, then keeping the customer informed about when the order is going to be dispatched, and then it will be delivered to avoid cases where the customer is not present at their address to receive the product. How can you have those cases minimized again at the time of shipping being from the customer? So traditionally brands have been informing the customer around the shipping updates in a very plain vanilla manner that there'll be a shipping update that'll be out for delivery update, then they'll be delivered update and the deliverability got to the NPS.

00;06;56;12 - 00;07;26;24
Prashant Gupta
All of that happens now. You can actually personalize that entire experience as well. So needing a very probably aggressive customer, I keep on checking when my delivery is going to happen. They get the retailer data and the inform. They probably have different triggers for a customer like me who is always on it form checking when the delivery is going to come so that I'm not actually taking it.

00;07;26;24 - 00;07;50;19
Prashant Gupta
I am being informed by the brand. It creates an aha moment for me by you. On the other side can be someone who is okay. That okay. Once I have this order, I'll get it in like two three days. But just it's important that you're informed if there is any delay happening. And in the transit journey for for you, the notifications might be different on the tracking page.

00;07;50;19 - 00;08;28;15
Prashant Gupta
Again, the experience that you get around. What are the style tips that that you can have for a particular product? If it is a fashion category or if you have the furniture, what is the specification or installation guide for a particular product will vary from detailed plan. Implement these floors without going into the cumbersome process of mapping all these data points, but directly reading that data, these data points from their website and having a dynamic tracking page is made for them.

00;08;28;17 - 00;08;32;24
Prashant Gupta
As I said to each customer's I follow. So yeah.

00;08;32;27 - 00;09;00;23
Claus Lauter
Very interesting. So this is a really proactive approach of customer communication. So as you said instead of the customer taking from their site, and whereas my shipping is probably the most asked question to any customers upwards of any brand anywhere. So you're really proactive and you're pushing the information to the customer. And what I like is that you also sort of create an excitement for the package for the product arriving by telling how how can you use it or what can you expect.

00;09;00;27 - 00;09;09;18
Claus Lauter
So it really interesting. I want to dive a little bit into the technology behind that. You mentioned there's agents, obviously agents. And how does it work.

00;09;09;21 - 00;09;37;06
Prashant Gupta
Within actually thinking about how best we can leverage gear to transform the entire post-purchase experience from their it was to how it's going to be for us in that it's hard as personalization is something which is here and personalization can be baked by using it a lot more faster than how the brands will build it without. Yeah, in place.

00;09;37;08 - 00;10;10;09
Prashant Gupta
So we use all the all the new age models. If I was just out, you keep on trying all these models that these large companies are launching which works best for which use case and then experimenting trying out the from the engineering approach around what's the best outcome that they are getting from these models and then deploy them in the supply and then that flow for that brands get that outcome that they that did that.

00;10;10;12 - 00;10;49;05
Prashant Gupta
Another important point to notice, it's not just about deploying the models once. It's also about how do you build out your evaluation engine, how do you have validation done on these models so that they are not hallucinating as people said commonly? Are they not giving something inappropriate that you would not want them to see? So we have a strong do with validation also based out to ensure that the model only does what it is asked to do and is not and has proper guardrails around it so that it's behaving as you'd want it to behave for it.

00;10;49;09 - 00;11;09;06
Prashant Gupta
It's quite similar to how you have a new genie coming in your team and how do you train that person, guide him or her at all times, do this, not do this, etc. How do you do that with the the agents again, is something that they are constantly doing.

00;11;09;08 - 00;11;26;12
Claus Lauter
Mm hmm. That's a kind of interesting aspect there, because I think a lot of brands out there there would be concerned about having an agent talking in their brand like language in their lingo, or what the customers are used to. Tell me, how long does a training take? What's what's the kind of onboarding process before it's fine tuned?

00;11;26;15 - 00;11;53;25
Prashant Gupta
So they have to in different personas internally and classify that based on us working with 450 plus brands using flip calls, We now have broad categories. Image brands classify them and says there are some brands who want to classify themselves as really modern and premium. While there are some brands who want to be in that quirky zone that they want to talk in the new gen-z language at all times.

00;11;53;25 - 00;12;14;20
Prashant Gupta
So there are different brands who who had a strong launch. And based on that, we have defined ones that the brand can select review if they want to do some tweaks, they can do that and they can go like say it's entirely out of the box. I would say the entire training part is something that we keep on doing whenever we see that logo.

00;12;14;20 - 00;12;33;09
Prashant Gupta
That is a new trend coming in in the market. We introduce a new tone for it and brands can just use it out of the box. So it's more of like one time activity that we do, which is cluster around for the what it is activity and then brands are open to using it and going live with it.

00;12;33;12 - 00;12;59;28
Claus Lauter
Mm hmm. Let's have a little bit deeper into technology into the back end. Most of our listeners on Shopify or any other kind of marketplace, there's many out of there, and I can imagine that a lot of our listeners have different tech stacks, and I want to dive a little bit into tech specs. What kind of APIs or methods of thinking with existing platforms do you have and how do you embed all of this into a post?

00;13;00;03 - 00;13;29;17
Prashant Gupta
Yeah, good question. So that our approach on how to approach technology, are they on looking at the technology has been the we look at everything as API first and then you can have different lines based on top of your API, which integrates the different systems on deck. Most are API first platform, which integrates which allows brands to integrate with it at all times.

00;13;29;19 - 00;13;52;10
Prashant Gupta
Now we see a trend that way. Shopify, you can have a plug in. So then we have our channel Integration Steam, which integrates an API based, a plug in nonce on Shopify. So we have another plug in on WooCommerce or Magento. So again, it is all based on top of the API. Butter API is the name code to our our systems.

00;13;52;10 - 00;14;05;02
Prashant Gupta
And then there are brands here that actually use our API. Also good track to those systems. While there are brands on Shopify, Magento use our plug ins to activate their systems.

00;14;05;04 - 00;14;12;07
Claus Lauter
Hmm. How does it work with Warehouse warehouse management systems? Next step in the shipping journey. Where do you connect there?

00;14;12;10 - 00;14;46;16
Prashant Gupta
Yes, for the even integrated that holds management systems, different vehicles, diamond systems like for example, ship station or Flex port. The these stores, like most integrate, allows brands to have a one click integration available with their various management systems, and they constantly invest in building more integrations that these different their health management systems so that are integrations are really strong across and it's very easy for brands to onboard check labels in their ecosystem.

00;14;46;18 - 00;14;55;04
Claus Lauter
You're working with more than 30 countries, 450 brands, multi-language settings. How does I deal with different languages?

00;14;55;06 - 00;15;35;29
Prashant Gupta
Oh yes, another good point. So the theme that I brands see a lot more confidence in using an API tool for such use cases than actually relying on humans. If I think about just a typical use case of contacts and do things now for different languages in order to have different people or the same person has to be trained in different languages to be able to talk to the customers in those that agents are able to have the same script trained in different languages.

00;15;36;01 - 00;16;01;14
Prashant Gupta
For that, it's very scalable. The same agent can handle English, Spanish or any other language that the burden is the good part for. We see a lot of use cases around vernacular support, and this is probably one area where we are seeing brands adopting AI because of the limitations that humans have generally with different language support.

00;16;01;20 - 00;16;24;15
Claus Lauter
Yeah, robotics perfect sense is such so much better and so much more affordable than having a whole range of team support team members. They're sitting with different languages there. Now I want to dive a little bit into and you mentioned that in the beginning about retention and results. Can you give an example or a case study? And you don't need to nickname the brand someone who was working with you and what kind of difference they saw after implementing Click Post.

00;16;24;17 - 00;17;05;24
Prashant Gupta
All right. So let's talk about a large marketplace is operating in North America, which which earlier was using a different tool for their entire shipping management and the post-purchase management. One of the lines that they were focusing a lot on expanding their carrier network. So they used moved and with us being onboarded with them, they were able to onboard 15 additional carriers in North America in a span of six months, which which was a huge win for them, along with those 15 carriers.

00;17;05;24 - 00;17;37;08
Prashant Gupta
Not only we help them integrate and generic labels track the shipments, but we also had them retroactive updates to the customers giving a branded tracking page experience to their customers across all the carriers became a consistent experience that they were now delivering that click, both coming into the picture via their earlier tools that they were using and they saw a jump in, I think, an ambitious points among their customers.

00;17;37;08 - 00;17;59;09
Prashant Gupta
If using click post with their active communications, capturing the shipment of their daily updates, giving an opportunity to the customers to edit their information right after the order placement. So those are two of the data points that yeah, it said.

00;17;59;11 - 00;18;19;00
Claus Lauter
Mm hmm. That's interesting learning as you're so deep into it. I need to ask you, was your journey developing click post with any kind of surprises that you saw personally when you were implementing ICE Solutions into post What I is really capable of. So something that really surprised you, What I can do.

00;18;19;02 - 00;19;04;25
Prashant Gupta
That there have been multiple cases and they have been involved by every time they look at a trade, they have been looking at the in terms of reducing or grunt work that humans are doing and delegating that to. Yeah, because they're able to do all of that grunt work that humans do. Now, beyond that, we we actually figured out that even deeper analytics is something that I can do if you train it on your data so fairly well, it's able to give you better insights in a shorter time duration, which probably a business, unless they take to drive in a couple of hours or a couple of days.

00;19;04;28 - 00;19;23;01
Prashant Gupta
So that way we found good, good utilization of along on kickball that it followed around for that. Oh, it can even do this like explore the action can be implemented within our tool to hybrid labor on the product.

00;19;23;04 - 00;19;41;15
Claus Lauter
I think that someone who was working with A and everyone I think was listening right now should already be working with A.I.. If you're in e-commerce and you're not using AI, you have a problem. So and I think everyone has found out that I can do so much more than just saving your time, but also getting better in the quality of what you do.

00;19;41;17 - 00;19;54;05
Claus Lauter
Now, for someone who is interested in testing, Click Opposed. Tell me about the onboarding process. We were diving a little bit into it, but if you're on Shopify, what are the steps and kind of homework I need to do before I can get started?

00;19;54;07 - 00;20;25;13
Prashant Gupta
If you were to start using clipboard is, it's as simple as just going ahead and looking for a plug and install it and you are up and running like probably then that onboarding takes like 5 minutes form. Yeah. As good as just getting started there. And then for the entire clipboard offering is divided into different modules. You can take a tracking page, you can take a editing piece or you can take labels, migration as a service, depending on the service that you are opting in the onboarding time.

00;20;25;13 - 00;20;41;27
Prashant Gupta
That is for the smaller service. Like everything, you can just go ahead and install the plugin and you are good to go late file for service of like tracking. You need to do account setups which you'll already have the carrier credentials that it can come in contact that you are going to that.

00;20;42;00 - 00;20;51;23
Claus Lauter
Mm. That what would be one tip that you would give a merchant to start optimizing the post-purchase experience for the clients right now.

00;20;51;25 - 00;21;11;09
Prashant Gupta
So I would say start looking at a on how it can actually transform the experience that you are delivering per customers. I try out like most for you, that will change the way you look at it and how you can leverage it to improve your type of practice.

00;21;11;11 - 00;21;17;04
Claus Lauter
Mm hmm. Now you're working with a huge range of customers out there, but who is your perfect customer?

00;21;17;07 - 00;21;43;18
Prashant Gupta
I would say it's a persona that you designed, right? Apotheker is one who is I've driven as a to improve their entire post-purchase experience. Like, there is no magic. The app just starts working as soon as you install cables. There are processes and right ways of leveraging the tool through which you are able to get the best outcome out of it.

00;21;43;21 - 00;21;59;27
Prashant Gupta
The perfect customer is one that has one champion who is actually driven to make the entire alternative finance successful. And then they work with us, they see windows happening and they're perfectly true.

00;21;59;29 - 00;22;06;16
Claus Lauter
You need to have somebody who is taking the responsibility there. How does your pricing structure work for it?

00;22;06;16 - 00;22;13;23
Prashant Gupta
Is per transaction for for every transaction that you have on click must be charged before that?

00;22;13;28 - 00;22;20;07
Claus Lauter
Okay. Before our coffee break comes to an end today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

00;22;20;10 - 00;22;56;08
Prashant Gupta
I think they have covered everything around that offering. We spoke about the audio editing piece that says art is pleased. How can you let the customers control the order information even right after the order is being placed? And then how can you keep the customer always engaged in that entire journey to have better outcomes? And then not just engage them, value them with the personalization that you can do that now and different floors that you can build around.

00;22;56;14 - 00;23;32;02
Prashant Gupta
One thing that we didn't cover is around the returns and exchanges. So there are a lot of personalization that you can even do around returns and exchanges that you can have customer segmentation done on it and you can have different return policies for different customer segments. So you cannot you need not have just a plain vanilla returns policy for all your customers, but depending on your loyal customers or high returns can actually have different return policy, which is something that we enable clients to have on their bodies.

00;23;32;09 - 00;23;50;25
Claus Lauter
It just shows you the power of AI and how it can help you to reduce support requests, obviously. But I think more importantly, intervention does a few times is creating a wow effect and really being proactive when it comes to the communication. Was your customer and makes sure that customers will come back if they are satisfied with the communication.

00;23;50;25 - 00;24;01;08
Claus Lauter
I think that's the most important part in any business and that will make sure that your revenue goes up and you see more what is coming in product. Where can people go and find out more about click a post?

00;24;01;10 - 00;24;05;07
Prashant Gupta
Oh, you can go to click closed RTI to learn all about it.

00;24;05;09 - 00;24;23;19
Claus Lauter
Okay, I will put the link in the show notes as always, and you're just one click away. Thanks so much for your time today. I always a massive topic. I'm totally a big fan of A.I. on how it can help customers and brands out there to make your life and work easier and better. And I hope a lot of people will reach out to you.

00;24;23;20 - 00;24;25;05
Claus Lauter
Thanks so much for your time today.

00;24;25;07 - 00;24;25;23
Prashant Gupta
Thank you.