Business Messaging
From Order to Delivery, Seamless Fulfillment Communications Start with WhatsApp
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October 30, 2024
It’s down to the wire, and your customer is anticipating delivery of that special item they ordered from you, maybe just in time for a big celebration or special moment. The last thing you want is an address error or delivery time miscommunication to ruin the experience (and damage your relationship with the customer).
Timely, helpful fulfillment communications are your opportunity to keep customers informed with post-transaction updates to ensure they know what to expect and when. During seasonal sales peaks, like around holidays and Mega Sales Days, you want every customer experience to go smoothly. Post-sale communications are a key piece of the puzzle.
Well-executed fulfillment communications can help deepen customer relationships, but without the right automation and communications channels in place, it can be difficult to deliver a positive experience when holiday sales surge. The good news is that WhatsApp can help.
Streamline fulfillment communications on WhatsApp
As a trusted and convenient channel for communications between businesses and customers, WhatsApp can be a helpful platform for efficiently scaling fulfillment communications around busy shopping holidays and Mega Sales Days. Automating important messages like address verifications, order updates, and delivery notifications with WhatsApp can help in many ways. It can reduce operational headaches, increase productivity for your team, and help deliver a smooth and positive customer experience.
Connecting with customers on their preferred channel is a smart way to help improve customer satisfaction and retention, and it can even be a way to differentiate your brand from competitors and drive growth during peak seasons. Here’s how utility messages on WhatsApp can help streamline fulfillment communications for everyone.
Keep customers informed with utility messages
Utility messages on WhatsApp can help keep opted-in customers informed, and encourage them to take necessary actions to ensure the seamless fulfillment of their order. Especially important around busy holiday sales periods, utility messages for fulfillment updates can also help reduce inbound inquiries to your team. When customers already have key information on their order status, many of their questions are answered even before they reach out to your team to ask.
Utility messages are both timely and visible, grabbing attention and helping to increase open rates vs. other channels like email. They can also drive engagement, offering rich media capabilities and the ability to take action in a thread, meaning they can help facilitate a wide range of communications.
When using utility messages to automate fulfillment communications during peak sales periods and throughout the year, consider these best practices to maximize the business results you care about most:
- For a high-quality customer experience, build integrations with backend systems like order management and fulfillment systems in order to ensure real-time updates and accurate data in an automated way
- For inspiring action, take advantage of rich media capabilities and interactive features to boost engagement
- For incremental revenue potential, follow utility messages with personalized cross-sell recommendations based on their recent purchase (for customers who have opted in to marketing messages)
How they did it: Urbano Envíos boosts delivery accuracy and efficiency with WhatsApp
Urbano Envíos is one of the largest logistics and courier companies operating in Latin America. The company wanted couriers serving its financial services customers to deliver packages to the right addresses on the first attempt, helping to significantly reduce costs, labor, and time related to repeated trips. Because one-way SMS messaging wasn’t sufficient, Urbano Envíos needed an interactive communications channel that allows recipients to confirm addresses while getting reminders about documents to have on-hand for smooth deliveries.
The company turned to WhatsApp as their interactive communications channel, enabling them to proactively validate customer addresses to ensure timely and accurate delivery.
The result? A 100% delivery success rate for customers confirming addresses via WhatsApp. Urbano Envíos also achieved:
- 2x increase in productivity attributable to WhatsApp
- +60% message read rates through WhatsApp
- -35% decrease manual address changes entered by agents
Keep your busiest season running smoothly, door to door
By updating and informing your customers on the channel they prefer via fulfillment communications on WhatsApp, you can minimize customer experience friction and reduce inbound pressure on your service teams.
A Meta Business Messaging Partner can help you set up the right integrations and messaging experiences to meet your customer and operational needs during peak seasons. For example, partners can help you build chatbots on WhatsApp that can answer questions about orders and escalate to human agents as needed. Or, you can set up automated messages that help facilitate returns and exchanges, making the process simple for customers without overloading your support team with calls. The possibilities are endless.
From the first personalized promotion to the final delivery notification, WhatsApp can help your business operate and grow efficiently during holidays and Mega Sales Days, and beyond.
Take your first step, explore our partners, or browse our entire library of holiday and Mega Sales Day resources to learn more.