My worst experience EVER…

Hey there,

Welcome back to the 17th edition of Brandish

Your guide to crafting an iconic brand

I hope you’re having an extraordinary weekend and are ready to crush this week.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll talk about an incident that occurred recently and show you the importance of having a branded post-purchase experience.

So, grab your Brez, and let's dive straight into it!

The worst branding experience EVER…

A few days ago I purchased a supplement…

But their post-purchase experience just turned it off for me.

After going through their post-purchase experience I decided not to repurchase from them EVER again.

There could even be thousands of other people thinking the same way as me - making the brand lose a lot of money.

So let me describe how it went - so that we can all learn what NOT to do

I saw their ad on my IG feed from a jacked-up dude (he was pretty big influencer) talking about how well it has worked for him.

Now, just to be clear this is a pretty well-known brand (of course won’t name-drop them here), and was considering them even before I was served their ad.

Just like any consumer in the problem-solution-aware phase, I clicked on their ad and decided to purchase one of their bottles.

Their CRO team did a really good job of trying to upsell me - but I wanted to give one of the bottles a shot first.

To be honest, their website aesthetic and layout was sh**. 

BUT…

… since the brand was owned by a pretty big influencer, I trusted them.

However, right after I made the purchase - the downward spiral began.

After the purchase, I was greeted with a typical Shopify order confirmation email - which goes something like this:

Now, this wasn’t terrible but being a brand of that size I (as a consumer) expected something more branded and a better experience.

To show you some contrast -

Here’s an order confirmation email from Allbirds. Anyone who receives this has a way more personalized experience than the one above.

Now, a few days passed and I was waiting for their order to arrive - since their website said “Receive within 3-4 days”.

The order confirmation email just sent me a plain UPS tracking page that kept saying “In Transit”.

Again, this was a huge turn-off for me since I expected more communication from the brand regarding where my package exactly was rather than just an “in-transit” message that didn’t convey anything.

Most brands don’t realize this but their consumer makes an opinion about their brand within the first 24 hours - so you need to make sure the brand experience is bar none with constant communication.

Another thing this brand was missing was an order tracking page on their website which again makes it more a customized experience for the customer - since it's hosted on the website itself and makes tracking more fun and unique.

You probably won’t believe it, but the order tracking page is the second most visited page on our website at Obvi - so yes it's super important to have one built.

But, only the worst happened after this…

5 days passed and the UPS page kept showing “in-transit”.

So I tried contacting their customer service and of course, received no immediate response.

After sending them multiple emails and messages, I received a response after 24 hours saying my package was delayed for some reason.

Now, the rep didn’t tell me when I could expect it, but long story short I received my package after another 2 days.

Being a DTC brand owner I completely understand there are logistical issues and sometimes the packages get delayed but it is up to the brand to at least communicate this with the customers.

Honestly, customers are happier when they receive these notifications than just waiting for their package to arrive - even though it may be bad news.

That’s why it's important for brands to nail this post-purchase experience where they provide notifications to their customers after every update like order shipped, order left the warehouse, etc

This goes a long way and guess what the customers do?

They tell their friends and family about you.

Both when it’s positive AND negative. Word of mouth works in both ways.

And in both ways - it’s compounding either WITH you or AGAINST yoy

Anyways, that was enough of me ranting about this experience and this shitty brand.

Now onto my fantasy football!

Hope you guys have a great weekend and I hope this newsletter gave you some “food for thought” in relation to your post purchase experience.

Thanks for reading along

As always, thanks a lot for reading along.

I appreciate you and look forward to seeing you again next week