Russell Steed (00:10.46)
What's up everybody? Welcome to the E-commerce Unlocked podcast where we talk about all things E-commerce, where we cut the fluff and discuss actionable strategies and tactics to implement into your E-commerce business and drive real results today. Today is going to be a great one. We're talking about the five tools to reduce customer service emails brought to you by yours truly, Emerson Hammer. No, is that how you say it? Yours truly? Anyway, Emerson's truly.
Emerson (00:33.55)
I am yours truly. I am myself truly. It's truly me. Thank you
Russell Steed (00:40.884)
Brought to you by The Emerson Hammer, how about that?
Emerson (00:43.726)
Thank you, thank you. Too kind, thank you, thank you. I'll make some good stuff, don't worry. But yeah, no, today should be fun. I'm excited to dive into it a little bit. As always, I usually take an operational approach to most of the topics we talk about. And really, there's great opportunities to enhance the customer experience. The best way to enhance the customer experience is to not let them have problems with their orders. So.
Primarily, you'll see most brands between 35 to 65% of emails or inquiries come in the post purchase experience for a brand. That means most of your questions are going to happen once the customer has already placed their orders and they're going to be reaching out to you regarding either the product itself, once they receive it, once it's in transit, hey, where's my order type of things. So there's a lot of that stuff going on. So we're going to go over five tools that can really help.
reduce your customer service email so you can focus on selling your product and not deal with the operational headaches that can come from it. And we all love those operational headaches. So the first thing I kinda wanna go over is address validation. Okay, Russ, have you heard of fat fingering?
Russell Steed (01:55.601)
I mean I can assume what it means, but no I haven't heard of that fingering
Emerson (01:58.83)
You're refining your address.
Russell Steed (02:03.685)
where you just have sausages for fingers and you're just like clomping on the keyboard. That's the vision that I'm getting right now.
Emerson (02:07.79)
It's exactly what's happening. Okay, so whenever I find out something's on the site, looking at some information that kind of pre-populate, I'm sharing my screen for anyone watching on YouTube, check it out. But I'm going to this website. Whenever I wanna test a process, I always Google addresses based off of a McDonald's address. So if I wanna check an address, get shipping quotes for something, I always will just Google McDonald's in Russia, McDonald's in Hawaii.
And usually there's a McDonald's everywhere, and so I'll take 99. There, go Mickey B's. That's a tip. So if you're trying to figure out rates somewhere or whatever, and you don't want to look at your rate sheet, you just want to go online and Google it or whatever off of an online calculator. I always test my addresses and everything with a good old McDonald's address. Okay, so I'm pulling up this address. It's a Deprovo.
Russell Steed (02:39.852)
There is a McDonald's everywhere. Yeah, that's a good little tip.
Russell Steed (03:06.244)
Really quick, have you ever shipped something to a McDonald's by accident? Have you ever accidentally shipped something to McDonald's?
Emerson (03:10.382)
What's that?
Emerson (03:14.83)
Ah, yeah, I have. So I'm sure some of you guys, he's loving the stuff I've sent him. He's like, oh, great. It's fantastic. Yeah.
Russell Steed (03:17.097)
Hahaha! He's been caught.
Russell Steed (03:25.232)
Oh yeah, okay, so be careful. Be careful not to ship stuff to McDonald's.
Emerson (03:30.414)
Yeah, I'm sure they might like it. They deserve it, they're crushing it. So a lot of people ask like, hey, why do I need an address validation tool? Doesn't Shopify already validate my addresses? And to a degree they do. So in this situation, I'm looking up this as an address. Again, if you wanna follow along, it's 1225 South University Ave, Provo, Utah. Again, this is what Google's pulling up. That's what we're saying, it's a legit address. I found it, we're good.
Now what happens if I just change this address from 1225 to 1227? Okay. And then I'm going to hit, nothing's like really popping up. Nothing's saying like, Hey, don't ship there. There's no warning. There's no nothing. So that's not a valid address. But it's going to let me go through and say, I'm like, Oh, yep, that's good. Let me get you shipping rates. It's going to be processed this order actually, even though it's not a valid address, so a lot of people ask like, is Shopify doing it? What Shopify typically does is they do have a first line of defense.
natively in their software where they're saying, okay, check the zip code primarily and see if that is a probable address. It's not actually validating since it's an actual address. So when I look it up in Google, again, Google is gonna be semi-accurate. Google is actually saying this is a probable address as well, but the little point is saying like, hey, it's probably in the middle of the street. It's not actually associated to any address. It's not actually a real address you can ship to, but Shopify is gonna let you go through and place that order and your customer's gonna get that ship to an inaccurate address.
and they're not gonna get it, which is gonna cause a lot of friction in your supply chain. So the customer's gonna email you back saying, hey, I never received that order. They're gonna say, hey, I shipped it to the wrong address. Can you update my address? Or they're not gonna know what happened and think you're just gonna be a scam and you're gonna get charged back. So it's gonna cause some friction in your process. There are softwares out there that are gonna validate that address for you to make sure that doesn't happen. There's a handful of them out there that I've used in my career.
Some of the main ones you'll see on Shopify and out there is address validator. It's probably one of the larger address verification tools on Shopify. You have valider, V-A-L-I-D-E-R. So that is a fun way to spell that. Address guard and locate are some of the top address validation tools. They all have their perks. They all have them with a Q.
Russell Steed (05:44.508)
And that's locate with a Q just for those people out there.
Emerson (05:49.966)
People are trying to buy cheaper domains. They spell them funky, you know? So those are some good tools to get some address validation tools. Now, typically these cost anywhere for a couple of pennies between like anywhere between two to five cents in order. They'll charge on these apps to validate the address. So depending on your volume though, I mean, if you're shipping, well, a thousand shipments, that's 20 bucks to validate all those addresses, which might be the cost of just having one address be prevented from shipping out wrong.
Russell Steed (05:53.513)
Yeah.
Emerson (06:19.214)
can pay for itself and then some. From all the product you might be losing the time, you know, customer service. So I think it's definitely a well-worthy investment, but definitely comes into play when you're doing higher volume shipments that you might have this coming into play. If you're doing maybe 50 to 100 shipments a month, your processes might be a little bit more buttoned up than when you're getting to the masses of shipping, thousands of orders a month, couple hundred orders a day. It's easy to look over those addresses and not have it correct. Same thing is if you're entering the wrong unit number, apartment number, and things like that.
So help prevent the Russells Teeds of the World fat-fringering their addresses in there. We know Russell's doing it. So.
Russell Steed (06:53.876)
with little sausage fingers over here, just typing in the wrong address. Well, just one thing that I've noticed is that for some reason, sometimes like my saved, I use LastPass and I use Google, you know, to save a bunch of my, not only passwords, but also my addresses. And sometimes it's wrong. Like sometimes it like puts in my old address and I swear I remove those, but somehow they're still there. And sometimes it gets in there.
Emerson (06:58.83)
out and for me to go for it.
Russell Steed (07:22.124)
which I guess wouldn't actually help with this because it's a legit address. But, you know, if in the case where, you know, on that thought, an address validator is not gonna catch it. So totally unrelated. Ignore my comment.
Emerson (07:25.166)
Mm-hmm.
Emerson (07:36.654)
Well, good comment, because if anyone's listening this, that's an app developer in this area. I would love someone to validate a valid address to a customer name and seeing has an order shipped to that address before. I think that's a sexy app. Someone build that. That's a game kind of receive a name and address match to validate that. But definitely.
Russell Steed (07:49.086)
Oh, interesting.
Russell Steed (07:53.14)
There's gotta be like some sort of like privacy issue with that. I don't know. Maybe not.
Emerson (07:58.574)
Probably in the UK. I feel like yeah
Russell Steed (08:02.612)
But European addresses are the worst anyway, so who cares? We don't even like shipping there.
Emerson (08:06.062)
They are. So it's interesting little tidbit on Locate. Locate has a very interesting way they validate it. They actually look at your IP address and your geolocation is a thing. And so they're looking, if you're saying you're when your address is 123 Main Street, New York City or whatever, and suite 300, somehow I don't know all of it. They look at your IP address and your geolocation, they say, hey, from your location, you're 500 feet up or whatever. I don't know, you should be on.
Russell Steed (08:18.162)
Oh really?
Emerson (08:34.798)
suite 500 based off of the geolocation, not suite 300, are your suite number correct? And so actually we'll look at your IP address and give you a suggestion saying, based off of your current location, do you wanna, this is where you're located at, do you wanna send that address there, the shipment there? So kind of.
Russell Steed (08:48.692)
Based on our satellites, it doesn't look like you're in that location. You're actually in this location. Our astronauts are telling us that you're wrong.
Emerson (08:54.19)
Yeah. Exactly.
Emerson (09:00.782)
Everyone, they got spies everywhere, man. They'll find you. So they're figuring out. So there's different ways to validate addresses versus USPS, UPS address change systems and stuff like that. They're looking at. So just be aware there's things. So each of those apps I mentioned, locate address validator, validator.
Russell Steed (09:04.1)
Spies... something. Just, yeah. Starlink. It's all watching.
Emerson (09:24.334)
and address guard validate in different ways. So see something that you feel comfortable with that makes sense to validate it. It's not gonna catch everything 100%, I'd say. There are some of those things, like again, like it could be a valid address that shipping to and the person is still doing it wrong. There is that possibility for sure, but it's gonna reduce a lot if you're running.
Russell Steed (09:41.428)
What about, I guess at what point do you, would you recommend implementing something like this? So like I'm on a low, like my store currently has low order volume. I haven't really had any issues with somebody shipping to the wrong location. Although I did on a wholesale order. That I guess is a, that is a scenario that does happen, but it ended up arriving anyway. So at what order volume do you think that somebody should implement something like this?
Emerson (10:04.334)
Yeah, I'll probably say once you're in the thousands, I'll probably say a thousand shipments a month, probably is like maybe the beginning, you start looking at it. Once you're getting like 5,000 plus shipments, I definitely would start looking into that. You're probably getting into a decent amount. When you're doing international shipments for sure, you're gonna wanna look into something like this to validate.
Russell Steed (10:24.124)
Does it do international? Like does it is it able to actually validate international addresses? Hmm. Oh, that's good.
Emerson (10:28.494)
Yeah, most of them do. So it's more helpful when you're setting up those criteria. Some of these as well, like address validator, I'm more familiar with. If you don't want to ship to PO boxes, I'll say don't even ship to a PO box. Like that's too difficult, APO, DPO, I mean all those and sets up certain criteria as you can eliminate shipping to certain zip codes as well. So like we always lose packages going to the zip code. So it does a little bit more than validation and also sets some criteria. I was saying these zip codes we don't ship to, this format we don't ship to. So there's some really good.
Russell Steed (10:47.134)
Oh.
Emerson (10:56.302)
Ways to do that because when you're validating an address if you guys ship with multiple carriers They also have different character limits some will say like hey in the first line address You have a 20 I believe I can't remember which carrier one is like 25 But one is 35 character limits and so you want to make sure like hey if I only shipping This amount of character limits should be in the address for this This carrier Shopify will send it if you print it in Shopify. They might cut off that address length
in it because it doesn't meet the big carrier formats. Because some people might say like on the line one, they might say, hey, I'm on 123 South Main Street, suite 500 and put that all on line one of it instead of saying that's my apartment number. And then it gets cut off. So then they don't have an apartment number. You want to be able to address that and formulate that. And mostly it's address verification tools will help with that as well. So it just, it keeps your data clean. So you can just, instead of having to edit your orders, if you guys are manually getting flags to your ship station account or your WMS
through Shopify or OMS, whatever you're using, to edit manually these addresses, these address tools should help reduce that manual entry as well to speed your pick and pack processing time. So that would be one of my main tools, I think that a lot of people overlook or don't understand the full complexity or utility of those apps. The second thing that I would recommend, depending on your OMS and either ERP that you're using is a post-purchase editing tool.
There's quite a few that are out there. And I would say five years ago, I wouldn't have recommended to any of these apps, but just how the dynamic in tech has evolved. Basically what it does is if someone places an order and they realize after they've ordered, they entered their wrong address, or maybe they didn't apply a promo code right after your checkout, or maybe they added the wrong item and they wanna switch it out. They bought a medium when they wanted to get a large or something like that in the size. There's a couple of tools that I recommend using, Orderify, Order Editor, and Editify.
are some pretty solid options for post purchase order editing. So basically what that lets them do is like before the order gets marked as shipped or whatever criteria you set up, they'll let you edit that item. So it makes it super, super simple. I'm sure, Russ, I mean, you're in the apparel industry and stuff, how did that happen? Quite a bit where someone's like, hey, I wanna change my address or anything like that or wanna edit their order post purchase or you run into that much.
Russell Steed (13:18.252)
Um, yes, sometimes. It's not like super common. But I will get people that are like, Oh crap, you know, I wanted to add this item or something like that. So it does happen. And luckily, I'm small enough. I'm doing I'm doing self fulfillment at the moment. So I'm able to just like quickly jump in and like, yeah, cool. You know, make the change. And it's not a big deal. Once you're working with a warehouse, you have dropped times and you got all this more complexity that it's like, hey, once it's once it's in Shopify, like nothing's changing, like it's an iron box and nothing's going to be changing. So
Emerson (13:40.558)
Thank you.
Russell Steed (13:48.285)
which is my experience in the past, but so can you kind of handle that with these, with these types of apps? Can you like say, hey, don't drop or put it on hold? Shopify has got this new thing where you can put it on hold for a little bit. Like, is that how they handle that?
Emerson (14:00.174)
Um, what they do actually depends on how you integrate with your WMS ERP, or whatever it is. Um, some of these actually integrate into your ERP or ship station and stuff like that. So you edit it in Shopify, it'll actually update it in there in the ship station or your ERP system and stuff like that. So they, that's why I'm saying like five years ago, I wouldn't have recommended these apps due to them not integrating with down the pipeline and stuff. Now with Shopify, I think they've made it easier with Shopify API will work with some of these other, um, um,
tech solutions that can make edits. So it could be dropped into WMS and you can set a certain criteria. Once it hits that status, once a label is generated, don't do anything. Once it's in a pick line, don't do anything or a time set up countdown. You can set it off so they can't edit it as for a certain period in time. So there's some ways to do that. Cause that's the worst thing ever is when someone's getting an order, it's already placed and you say, hey, we can't cancel it cause our warehouse already has it. Then you know that you're going to ship it and then it's going to get canceled and returned back to you. Now you're putting the return shipping on that.
these tools eliminate that. So I definitely would say looking into those to see if it works with your tech stack. Again, make sure it works with your tech stack. But even if you're getting like one of those, two of those a month, again, most of these are gonna be on a higher volume. I would say again, once you're probably in the 1000 to 5000 shipments plus a month is when these start making sense. You'll run into that a little bit more. And they're pretty cheap and cost effective solutions. These apps run between five to $10 a month. So if you can stop one order a month from going through incorrectly, again, that's gonna pay for itself with just like one order.
that it makes sense and again, it's quite an awesome customer service experience.
Russell Steed (15:32.228)
Yeah. Did you say that you can actually like retroactively apply a coupon code with these apps?
Emerson (15:38.318)
Some allow you to do that. Yeah, some of them will. So basically, hey, I checked out, but I forgot to enter my promo code. This one, can I still apply it? What it does in that situation is it will cancel the original order, and then it's repopulate the new order with that discount code on it. So it'll refund the first order, usually is how they work. And then they send out the, basically cancel order one, here's order number two, and cancel the theory system. But it reduces the customer service team having to do that.
Russell Steed (15:41.792)
Interesting.
Emerson (16:05.678)
Again, you can enable these features or not, depending on what you want. If you're saying, hey, sales are final, you don't wanna implement that, don't enable that feature on it. But I think again, it's reducing those customer service emails, like these are processes that hopefully you don't need to add a human touch to, to provide a quick solution to the customer. And your customer service team can be focusing on other things, and stuff like this. The next thing that I think you can add onto it is having a solid FAQ.
There's quite a few different knowledge bases and FAQs out there. Most of your help desks are gonna have something built into it. There's quite a few just in Shopify that you can look into just for adding a knowledge base or FAQ page to your site. I love the Gorgias knowledge base. It's pretty interactive and connects really well with their help desk. So if your help desk offers that, Gorgias has a stellar one. I know Help Scout has a pretty solid one as well. Zendesk offers some features as well that are pretty solid.
I mean, customer, I know have some pretty good features into there. So if your help desk has a feature, I'll say utilize that and make sure it's up to date. Especially as you're going into holiday season, make sure those are updated properly with whatever your criteria is. So if you're having an extended return window for the holidays, make sure your FAQ is up to date and your knowledge base is up to date to address that. If your shipping times are going to be fluctuating at all, make sure that's updated so when people are looking back for these answers, the answers are.
in there. So Russ on your side of marketing, how often would you say maybe FAQs or knowledge bases actually comes up in your guys's discussions, would you say typically or how often should a brand revise those, what do you think?
Russell Steed (17:46.548)
Oh, it comes up probably 0% of the time. I mean, it really kind of depends. Like I've seen a few different structures when it comes to different brands. So some brands put customer service under operations and some brands put it under marketing. So it really can be on either side. I think it makes most sense under marketing when you're looking at it, it's kind of the mindset shift from customer service to customer experience. And I know the people that work in customer experience are very passionate about the difference of those two.
Emerson (17:49.134)
Wow.
Emerson (18:10.318)
Mm-hmm.
Russell Steed (18:15.796)
things. But when you're talking to the customer service team, the sorry, the customer experience team, I didn't mean to offend. When you're talking to them, like, yeah, the FAQs are definitely going to come up because they're the ones dealing with it. When you're talking about like marketing or ecom manager, I wouldn't say it's like the most common thing, although I did. I mean, we did talk about it like, oh, yeah, we got to get that updated. And usually around the holidays, you're like, oh, we got to update those FAQs, make sure that that's like, everything's buttoned up there.
Um, and then I, I've also noticed when looking at like my analytics pages, that we've got, um, a good amount of people actually go in and look at the FAQs. And so maybe not just FAQs, but like policy pages, return policy, shipping policy. And then your frequently asked questions are definitely things that people will look at if it's a higher ticket price. Um, it's for sure people are going to be looking at that. If it's just like more of like a, uh, an impulse purchase, maybe not.
but it just really depends on kind of where you're at. From my perspective.
Emerson (19:18.03)
Yeah, I'll say on that, I definitely think it's a hand-to-hand, it's the middle ground of operations and marketing, working together through customer service for sure. And like I said, checking those pages to see which views, most of the, I saw a fly there, most of these services that have knowledge bases are gonna track page visits, and seeing how many people are looking at that page. So utilize that, you're seeing, hey, a lot of people are asking about our return policy, maybe you should make that a bit more prevalent during the checkout.
or asking about delivery days, make that more visible to your merchants. They're not going to an FAQ page. If that's going to ball make your checkout experience, see who's looking at what pages the most and see how you can display that more to your customers before, for checkout. Hopefully increases some conversion on that. So the other tools I'll say is automating your returns and exchange process. Customers want to have a seamless post purchase experience. If they did order the wrong item,
It's not the right fit. It's not the right product they expected Make sure you have a process to make it streamlined. There's Once you get to a certain size, it makes sense to look into a service provider I usually say what you're doing and probably 25 by least by 50 Returns a month that you're managing it makes sense to have a solid solution in place. I would say If you're below that there's some decent softwares That are pretty cheap possibly a free. I mean Shopify has a returns platform. That's
Not my favorite, but if you're doing 10, 20 returns, you might be okay doing something like that, that Shopify native one.
Russell Steed (20:45.16)
Yeah.
Russell Steed (20:49.236)
Honestly, I would almost say it's easier for email. Like, just do email. The Shopify one, you have to like, the customer has to log in, they have to have a user account and then they got to do this. It's kind of a pain. And so it's like, you're probably gonna be getting emails about it anyway. So in that scenario, just process it through email. One thing that before I took over the brand that I currently run, they would just, they had a PDF that like whenever somebody said, hey, I wanna return this or I wanna exchange it, they'd send a PDF. And it was like janky, but it worked.
Emerson (20:52.462)
Good.
Emerson (20:56.686)
That's true.
Russell Steed (21:18.644)
And it was totally possible to do for, you know, the five or 10 returns they did a month. Uh, you know, and then, so I came in and I actually revamped that I installed, um, crew by Corso and we're using that as our returns. I still don't do a ton of returns, but it's just, it's so much easier. Um, so I would recommend like, I think that threshold that you threw out there is pretty good, like 25, maybe 50, like you can handle under that really easily through email, but then it just becomes a lot more of a pain, like
creating the shipping label and this and that. And so I'd recommend actually, you know, getting another platform in place before you actually need it. Cause a lot of times like once you get to a point where you need it, it's like too late. And then it's just, it's just a mess, right? ERPs, returns platforms, just all of it, right? And so I would recommend, you know, 25, 50, that seems like a good threshold.
Emerson (22:08.782)
Yeah, definitely gonna save you some time. At that phase of business, you probably have a small team and so we're leaving some of that stress dealing with those concerns can help out a lot for sure. And then the last thing I'd say is dealing...
Russell Steed (22:20.624)
And a quick side note, I've talked to quite a few brands who do like 10 returns a month and they're paying $700 for their platform. So like beware that there are platforms that will rip you off. So don't pay too much, because that's a ridiculous amount. Actually, no, sorry, they were doing 10 and it was $560. So maybe not that bad, but not as bad as 700, but it's still really bad. So like you shouldn't be paying through the nose like that.
Emerson (22:48.27)
Yeah, that's disgusting. Yeah, good point on that. The last tip I'd say is, how does shipping protection program in place? Shipments go wrong. Shipments get lost, damaged, stolen, transit. Make sure you have a policy in place to help with that. Either if you're managing that yourself or using a provider, again, a solid app. Again, we recommend Corso shipping protection on that. Such a solid, simple program. It simply goes wrong in shipment. Let your customer service team deal on things that only your customer service team knows about, which is like product-related.
Company related, it's great to have your customer focused on that. The Corso team is their experts in the shipping world, let them handle those lost damage stolen shipments and make it super easy and convenient for your customers. So I'd say those tools are really going to help reduce your customer service. Inquiries coming in, let your customer service team or customer experience team manage the concerns that they have regarding your product or company.
And that'll go a long way. And then side note, I also have a secret six tool that I will share. Yeah. I get in. Is our favorite one is a WISMO. Where's my order? Um, Shopify has an awesome order confirmation page. Um, that's pretty much all it is to order confirmation with a tracking number on it. Um, those pages are viewed quite a bit at somewhere between like 20 or 35% of your email traffic as open rate on those order tracking pages.
Russell Steed (23:55.713)
Oh, sneaky.
Emerson (24:17.454)
make those branded, make those, add some more flair, make some more information on your product and make it easier for customers to track their order with status updates throughout the whole shipment. I'm kind of surprised honestly through Shopify, I just bought a new Shopify POS system and ordered off a Shopify site and they use their order confirmation on the tracking app on it. And it's pretty janky honestly, just using the order confirmation page.
It doesn't really give much insight, doesn't really give me updates unless I mainly go check it. I don't get daily updates of where my shipment's at and stuff like that. But using a service like Malomo or Wondermint are great apps that are gonna give awesome branded tracking experiences to your customers. That's gonna reduce the amount of customer service inquiries you're getting about where their shipment is, where it's at, and then just kind of plugging these all together. If they do have a where's my order question and they're integrated with Malomo or Wondermint.
There's a course of integration with those platforms. So if there is a shipment that goes wrong, they could easily file a claim for a loss or damage shipment and the course or team can take care of it. So all those WISMO questions can pretty much be taken care of by having awesome tech stack partner integrations. And again, on those solutions, I'll probably say the same thing. When you're about a thousand orders plus a month, you're gonna wanna look into solutions like that. It's kind of where you hit that threshold and you'll definitely start seeing some ROI on that, with these apps that you're adding to your book. It's kind of where you start seeing so.
Hopefully one of those tools helps you guys out. Nice.
Russell Steed (25:40.305)
Emerson, I'm gonna put you on the spot here.
I'm going to put you on the spot. What, do you have any stats behind like out of all the customer service emails that come in, how many of those have to do with like Wismo or shipping issues or something like that? Do you off the top of your head, do you know kind of what that number is?
Emerson (25:59.758)
Yeah, what's your opinion on Brandon and very a little bit. They say it would feel like 35 to 65% depending on the brand industry is gonna be like post purchase related question. I know I'm like the Malomo side, I believe they advertise somewhere around like 19 to 22% are Wismo questions, where's my order? I mean, just like a tracking related situation on that during that process as well. I mean, that's the whole thing is like, hey, where's my order then once it actually does happen? And then when you're looking at our returns or exchange.
typically on a returns exchange, a brand will see anywhere on a return exchange, depending on the industry, between 10 to 40% return ratio. If you're in the apparel shoe industry, stuff like that, you have a higher return rate. So you're gonna have all those inquiries going on, so if you can automate that, that's gonna be added on top of that. So if you're having an average of 20% of post-purchase emails are about Wismo questions, and you have a 20, 30% return ratio, that's gonna be a decent amount of your concerns are gonna be about that, with those two questions alone.
and then I'll call that the address validation question.
Russell Steed (26:58.7)
So with the tools that you called out, yeah, with all of these tools, potentially you could cut your amount of tickets by like half, maybe. Like maybe that's a little optimistic, but like, I mean, I think that's probably not too far out of the ball game.
Emerson (27:12.59)
I don't know where you're at in your journey. Yeah, no, I think you definitely could reduce it. And that's the thing is customer service, customer experience is about providing that experience. And part of that, we, I was working with a brand a while ago and he didn't want to have an automated returns process. At first he says, I want to give my customers awesome experience. And I want to give them a touch point with a human to do their returns. So he wanted to email it. And then he realized they didn't want that. They just wanted a quick resolution.
Russell Steed (27:17.736)
That's pretty awesome.
Emerson (27:41.646)
They didn't care as a person. There was like, dude, this takes too long. I don't care. I just want it to be instant. And I don't want to talk to someone. They wanted self-help tools. So it's kind of interesting. I mean, we want to provide an awesome customer experience. And sometimes we think that that is through human interaction. When most of the time it's the belt speed of resolution and a human can't touch the speed of a software that's open 24 seven. And so that's something definitely to look into is obviously great hand like human interaction.
where it makes sense, but also don't jip your customers out on an awesome experience by leveraging these awesome tech resources. Now.
Russell Steed (28:18.57)
Well...
Russell Steed (28:21.784)
Here's a statistic for you. 92% of consumers will buy something again if returns are easy. So I mean it kind of you know a returns tool can very much help your conversion rate for those repeat purchases. Sorry I just I had a statistic that I knew and so I just had to throw it in there. I'm sorry.
Emerson (28:39.758)
Wow, you're so smart, Steve. You got statistics. Right, right, right. He read a book a week ago. He's like, I can't wait to tell someone this. Found the opportunity. All right, there we go. Just reading USPS papers, FedEx papers, return stuff from the NRF. This is great.
Russell Steed (28:41.164)
I'm sorry.
I looked it up. I didn't memorize it. So don't think I'm too smart
Russell Steed (28:52.044)
That's so excited. Well, let's start a book club. Yeah, let's do a podcast book club. Why not?
Russell Steed (29:07.372)
No, fun, fun book club, not boring operations book club. Well, anyone, anyway, we're just gonna wrap it up there. We're gonna call the pod. We're getting into some weird territory. So thank you everybody for joining us this week and we'll see you on the next one.