Why should you use this flow?
Did you know that 40% of COD orders are returned by customers.
A big majority of these returns are due to impulsive purchases without any commitment from shoppers.
This flow is advantageous in many ways:
- It helps to reduce fraud: Reconfirming COD orders before shipping can help to reduce the risk of fraud, as it allows the merchant to verify the customer's information and ensure that the order is legitimate.
- It helps to avoid shipping to incorrect addresses: Reconfirming COD orders before shipping can help to ensure that the package is shipped to the correct address, which can help to reduce the risk of lost or undelivered packages.
- It can improve the customer experience: By reconfirming COD orders before shipping, merchants can show that they are proactive and take the time to ensure that orders are processed accurately and efficiently. This can improve the customer's overall experience with the merchant.
- It can help to reduce shipping errors: Reconfirming COD orders before shipping can help to catch any errors in the order, such as incorrect item quantities or shipping addresses, which can help to reduce shipping errors and improve the efficiency of the fulfillment process.
Based on data from 6 million customers who were asked to re-confirm a COD order we found that
- 7% of customers will cancel their order
- 33% will not respond and
- 60% will reconfirm.
That means 14% (7% back and forth shipping) of your COD shipping costs can be reduced by simply weeding out COD orders that would have not been accepted anyway! A good rule of thumb is that for every 1000 COD orders you could save at least $140 in unnecessarily incurred costs by enabling this flow. Assuming a COD shipping costs you $2 in costs considering
- Forward & reverse shipping logistics cost.
- Cost of COD payment collection
- Blocked Inventory (Items stuck in transit).
- Physical quality check and re-packaging of returned items.
How does this flow work?
FlowHippo automates this entire process by automatically triggering a whatsapp message to customer asking to re-confirm orders, applying the correct tags (confirmed, cancelled, no-response etc.) on Shopify and also automtically cancelling the orders on Shopify if the customer clicks the cancel button on WhatsApp. While traditionally, companies tried re-confirming by calling customers who placed COD orders, it is an unscalable and capital-intensive approach. Automating via WhatsApp is a proven way to save costs.
You can now put this entire process on auto pilot by activating this flow. You can automatically trigger a whatsapp message, for COD orders, asking the customer to reconfirm it. We then automatically tag the order correctly in your Shopify back end.
