By Simeon Wynn - Looking at the state of world economic and geo-political affairs at the start of 2023, it’s hard not to approach this year with a decidedly less rosy outlook than perhaps we might have started recent years with. No matter where you look, it feels almost impossible to escape tales of economic woes, falling consumer confidence, and spiralling prices. Need I say more?

Of course, much of this is true, and down to real, world-changing events that have happened in recent months. As I sit here in rural Norfolk, deep in the UK countryside, I can think of at least a few country-specific decisions that have led to inordinately high prices in some areas here and a lack of supply in others. 

But, despite all this, there is one thing we should all be smiling about – whatever doom and gloom you may have heard about the e-commerce industry has frankly been greatly exaggerated. 

The e-commerce industry is still growing 

Yes, that’s right. Across almost all markets and in most major verticals, the e-commerce industry is still booming. On Black Friday 2022, total online sales were up 2.3% when compared to 2021. Shopify also reported over 52 million consumers worldwide purchased from a brand using their technology. Meanwhile, Barclaycard Payments have reported a 3.2% increase in transactions in the UK compared to last year. Across the EU, e-commerce sales are projected to reach over €600 billion in 2023.

There was a worry as we headed into the BFCM period that consumers were getting tired of online discounts and might prefer to look in-store for the best deals. But what did we see? Consumer habits didn’t just temporarily change over the pandemic; they permanently shifted, in a seismic way, to the point that over 80% of consumers now research products online as a first port-of-call, regardless of any deals they may have seen in person. 

So what does this mean for e-commerce brands? Well, there is certainly opportunity out there and space for growth, but only for the brands doing it right. The modern consumer is the best-informed, most active, and least-loyal iteration of a consumer we have seen yet. Successful brands know this and will be employing a few key strategies in 2023 to capitalise on the moment. 

First and foremost, you must focus on the customer. Now more than ever, consumers are looking for a seamless, convenient shopping experience and won’t accept anything less. With so much uncertainty around living costs, you need to be as honest as you can be about your shipping times, your return policies, and any changes to your operations. Something as simple as not offering a refund on import duties and taxes for cross-border trade can drastically affect sales, something Duty Refunds are poised to help you with. 

2023 will also be the year to embrace new technologies. From augmented reality to chatbots to the continued growth of social commerce on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, there is an increasing number of ways to reach your customers directly and make their experience as smooth as possible. 

Whatever you do this year, enjoy the challenge, and I wish you every success. 

The post Focusing on your customers has never been more important appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

By Salesupply - Expanding your e-commerce business to Scandinavia just became easier and more affordable. Webstores can now offer native customer service in the Nordic countries even when their customer service ticketing volume is low.

Salesupply just formed a strategic partnership with H1, one of the leading customer service providers in Scandinavia.  

Being the only customer service specialist strictly for e-commerce, Salesupply aims to simplify international expansion for online stores. With the shared customer service of Salesupply, online stores can make use of well-trained customer service agents in 36 languages, even if their ticketing volume is (still) low. The partnership with H1 enables Salesupply to offer this pay-as-you-use shared customer service model in all Scandinavian languages as well.  

Compete like a local everywhere

“I am extremely happy that we are now also able to support online stores with their expansion to Scandinavia. Quality always comes first at Salesupply, which is why we are glad to be working with H1.” says Hans Siebum, Managing Director Global at Salesupply. “H1 is one of the most renowned customer service providers in Scandinavia. We have a lot in common when it comes to service excellence, scalability, and customer flexibility.”

Find out more about Salesupply and all the solutions it can provide for your e-commerce here! 

The post Salesupply offers a new shared e-commerce customer service in Scandinavia! appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

ChatGPT's impact is nowadays unquestionable. Yet, the actual scope of what this AI can really do remains to be fully explored. 

For example, one of the fields where ChatGPT could easily become a game-changer for an entire industry is the customer care sector. If an AI-driven solution can outperform humans, this will - for sure - change the way customer care teams operate. 

But can it? Is it true that ChatGPT can outperform its human counterparts? Can an AI-driven chat be more efficient at customer care - which intrinsically means to be more efficient interacting with other humans - than what a real human can be? 

Now, to correctly answering this question is a real challenge. And some industry leading companies like Salesupply are already trying to explore the limits of what ChatGPT can do for customer care. And their discoveries have hinted towards a hybrid approach that could forever change the way customer care teams work. 

But, before we delve deeper into the Salesupply experiment, we might need to start by defining what ChatGPT currently is and what it can do to have a basic level of understanding of what it can truly offer from a customer care perspective. 

Is ChatGPT capable of thinking by itself? 

Technically speaking, ChatGPT is built on several state-of-the-art technologies, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning, and Deep Learning. It is classified as an AI, yet… this is not entirely correct. 

An AI must be able to think by itself. Otherwise is more A than I - meaning it is artificial but less intelligent than you could imagine - this is because intelligence is not knowledge. 

Intelligence is the capability of using reasoning to solve problems. And knowledge is data accumulation. Obviously, if you know a lot of things, it is highly probable that among those pieces of information - that data you have - would be the answer to the problem that you are currently facing. 

But not necessarily. Furthermore, the answer perhaps is a derived conclusion from your knowledge. Still, because you lack intelligence, you can’t reach this conclusion because you don’t know how to adapt that knowledge to fit the specifics of the particular problem you are currently facing. 

So, ChatGPT is not capable of autonomously thinking by itself but rather is constrained by its Machine Learning models and Deep Learning models, which is, by the way, a good thing. The world might not be ready yet for a completely autonomous artificial intelligence.

This being said, we must understand ChatGPT as a tool to organize, filter and produce tailormade answers based on the data it has stored. Its like a super assistant, rather than a functional customer care staff, and it provides quick access to already storage answers to specific problems. 

This means ChatGPT can make answers on the fly to problems it doesn’t know. It is, by definition, not intelligent. 

What can ChatGPT do for Customer Care? 

In short? A lot. But not alone. Meaning, ChatGPT, as a tool - under human supervision and direction - is an incredibly powerful ally for customer care teams. It saves time by doing things that require a low level of creativity or intelligence - in the sense of problem-solving capability - and this, in turn, has multiple applications for customer care. 

For example, ChatGPT can be used by customer care teams can create a channel to answer common questions or to tend to a derivative chat, a chat designed to filter customer questions at a first level of contact and derive them into databases with tutorials, video tutorials, or an actual human being to deal with more specific solutions. 

In fact, it is precisely following this approach that some industry-leading companies are already experimenting with ChatGPT. For example, Salesupply is working in a beta integration of ChatGPT for customer care. 

This Salesupply ChatGPT-driven solution offers the best of both worlds: an improved service experience thanks to ChatGPT capabilities, but under human supervision to provide this intelligent factor and flexibility, all at a much lower cost to companies and brands. 

In short, this is what you can expect from this kind of integrations: 

- A hybrid solution, accessible via chat that will soon be integrated in a phone, email, and WhatsApp channels as well.

- The solution uses AI to continuously discover and generate FAQs and templated answers - together with our customer care team.

- This input is programmed into the training module of the chat solution. This way it can handle more requests automatically each time.

- By integrating ChatGPT in the chatbot, the application can turn the programmed answer into a tailor-made answer to the exact question your customer is asking.

And what can’t you get from ChatGPT? 

As we mentioned early in the title, this is a ‘do’s and don’ts’ kind of approach to ChatGPT, henceforth, we need to be absolutely clear about the ‘dont’s’. 

• ChatGPT needs to be continuously monitored for quality and improvements by human agents. 

• And Safety and compliance with third-party data, and privacy laws are vital both in the U.S. and Europe. So, all the interactions between your customers and ChatGPT must be fine-tuned to comply with your region's current regulations. 

• Also, ChatGPT is not capable of self-updating. Meaning it can not gather new information available online by itself. This also applies to - for example - new products your brand launches. ChatGPT needs to be fed the information about these products to offer possible answers to your customers. Otherwise, it won’t be able to provide any kind of answer. 

But all in all, the Salesupply approach is the ideal mix of artificial and human intelligence in which both strengths are used to their full potential. And what does it provide for brands? 

- Cost reduction: Automatically handling frequently asked questions will reduce the cost of your customer care cost operation.

- By having a fully functional hybrid chatbot powered by such a powerful tool, you are able to help the majority of your customers with their questions in no time.

- In addition, your customer service agents now really have the time to help clients with more complex questions on the spot. This also results in happier clients and positive reviews.

As a pioneering industry leader, the Salesupply experiment will surely mark a path for the integration between AI like ChatGPT and customer care teams. Let’s see how it fares and if it truly can, change forever the world of customer care!

The post ChatGPT for customer care? Salesupply’s hybrid approach could be the key! appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Salesforce just announced at its TrailblazerDX 2023 event a strategic partnership with OpenAI for the integration of the ChatGPT app into the Slack platform. 

Built by OpenAI on the Slack platform, the app leverages ChatGPT's powerful generative AI technology to directly bring instant conversation summaries, research tools, and writing assistance into Slack. This will enable tens of millions of users to access AI productivity tools.

🔥Do you want to know more about international commerce and e-commerce and get all the tips and news that might give your company an edge? Subscribe to Cross-Border Magazine and get your digital copy now for free!🔥

Salesforce's "Generative AI in IT" report indicates that the majority of senior IT leaders believe that generative AI has the potential to help them better respond to their customers, leverage data, and operate more efficiently. The same study indicates that 81% believe that generative AI should combine public and private data sources. This new app combines the insight found in Slack with the intelligence of ChatGPT, giving Slack users the information they need to get their work done faster.

Currently, in beta, the ChatGPT for Slack app provides a conversational interface powered by OpenAI's excellent language models for instant summaries of conversations, search tools to learn about any topic, and provide writing assistance to compose messages quickly.

What is ChatGPT offering for Slack?

Update faster across channels or threads - AI-powered conversation summaries help users quickly keep up with what's happening.

Find instant answers to any project or topic: AI-powered research tools allow users to learn and develop insights faster directly in Slack, whether it's finding best practices, searching for a new account, and more.

Create draft messages in seconds: communicate with clients and teams faster with AI-powered writing assistance. Users can spend less time drafting responses, status updates, and meeting notes and more time putting plans into action.

The app is built on the Slack platform, along with more than 2600 other integrations in the app ecosystem. This ensures that companies have real control over secure management and access to third-party data in Slack. Data the app can access will not be used to train the ChatGPT language model.

Salesforce also announces Einstein GPT

Salesforce introduces Einstein GPT, a generative AI technology for CRM, which delivers AI-created content across all enterprise services: sales, service, marketing, commerce, and hyper-scale IT interaction. Einstein GPT creates personalized content across all Salesforce clouds with generative AI. This increases employee productivity and improves customer experience. 

Einstein GPT is compatible with public and private AI models, open, extensible, and based on reliable real-time data. 

Einstein GPT will integrate with OpenAI to provide Salesforce customers with out-of-the-box generative AI capabilities. Einstein GPT is the next generation of Einstein, Salesforce's AI technology that currently delivers more than 200 billion AI-driven predictions per day in Customer 360.

Salesforce Ventures launches $250 million fund for generative AI

Finally, Salesforce also announced a Generative AI fund from Salesforce Ventures, the company's global investment arm. The new $250 million fund will invest in high-potential startups, strengthen the ecosystem and foster the development of responsible, trusted, and generative AI communities.

The post Salesforce - OpenAI alliance will put ChatGPT into Slack! appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

By Salesupply - Our partners at Salesupply have produced an amazing Benchmark study to reveal the state of customer care in the UK. 

That’s why today we want to share Salesupply findings and insights to help your brand increase its profitability and turn your customers into kings! 

🔥Check here The benchmark done by Salesupply🔥

The benchmark revealed the state of customer care in the UK and highlighted the following finding:

• Missed opportunity: Over half of the web shops only offers customer service from 9 to 5
• Nearly 60% of the stores answers the phone within a minute
• 32% replies to emails in one hour
• Close to half of the webshops offer chat as a channel

Customer service is vital in creating an extraordinary brand experience, even more so in e-commerce. Speed in both reacting and providing a solution is key to keeping customers satisfied. According to the 2022 UK Customer Satisfaction Index, increasingly more customers even consider the rating/quality of customer service as a deciding factor for where to shop. 

What does that mean for British webshops? 

• How well do online stores in the UK perform on customer service? 
• How long does it take before consumers receive an answer? 
• What contact options do they provide to their customers? 

E-commerce customer service specialist Salesupply went undercover and contacted 75 of the biggest British e-commerce shops to discover the current status of British e-commerce customer service (see reviewed stores in the appendix). 

What are the most popular customer service channels? 

Most online stores offer multiple contact channels. Every customer is different and they all have their own preferred way of contacting customer service. With 89%, email is the most offered contact channel, followed by phone with 86%. This fits the European trend; since 2021, email is the most used customer service contact channel of the European consumer.

On average, the visited online stores offer 2.6 contact channels. Most of the webshops (45%) offer two customer service channels for customer queries, followed by three channels (24%). Only 2% of the analyzed online stores offer all five possible channels. 

Should online stores offer as many service channels as possible? 

According to Jonathon Huggett, Business Development Manager at Salesupply UK, the most important thing is that stores deliver top service via the channels that they do offer. "You should always focus on your customers: who is your target audience and what are their preferred contact channels? Per channel, make sure the waiting times are short, agents are professional, well informed, and emphatic, and – most important – make sure that the customers’ questions are resolved quickly. Preferably during the first contact moment."

Customer service: available when the customer needs it? 

One of the big advantages of e-commerce is the possibility to shop at any given time and place. The evening peak in online sales (between 7 pm and 9 pm) confirms that consumers fully embrace this advantage. For online stores, however, this can be a challenge. Customer service should be available during these peak moments to resolve the questions and doubts customers may have. The peak in cart abandonment (between 7 pm and 11 pm) shows this is not always the case.

The study shows that there is room for improvement with regard to customer service availability. In 52% of the cases, customer service was only available between 9 am and 5 pm just like a regular offline retail business. The customer service department of more than half of this group (27% of the respondents) is only available during the daytime Monday to Friday.

"A missed opportunity" according to Huggett. "The importance of customer service in the pre-purchase phase is often underestimated. Online customers are impatient. When a question arises, they expect an answer right away. If customer service is not available at that moment, they will not hesitate and go to a competitor. Nowadays, an online store can no longer avoid offering customer service during evenings and weekends."

Chatbot: live or hybrid?

Chat solutions are certainly not new but the technology keeps on evolving. 43% of the e-commerce shops visited during this survey, offer chat as a contact channel on their website. Of these online stores, most of them opt for a manual chat with live agents (44%). The automatic chatbot is the least popular option (21%) while 35% of the only stores with chat functionality offer hybrid chat. Hybrid chat is becoming more popular each year. The chatbot resolves the easier / standard cases, giving the agents more time to focus on the more complex customer service requests. 

Response times customer service channels - How do the visited online stores score on speed?

Response time phone

How long do online shoppers in the UK have to listen to the waiting music before being attended? We called the customer service departments of these 75 webshops on workdays between 9 am and 5 pm. In 30% of the cases, a customer service agent answered the phone within 40 seconds. For 10% of the e-commerce shops in the UK, it took the customer service department 5 minutes or even longer to answer the phone.

What difference does it make to wait a couple of seconds longer? Is it really affecting the customer experience? According to Huggett, waiting time is one of the most important aspects with regard to the phone as a service channel. "Online Consumers are becoming more impatient by the year." A study by Skopos showed that German consumers’ maximum accepted waiting time is 4 minutes. A worldwide study by Genesys showed similar results. 'Customer experience is very important, the longer you let your customer wait, the harder it becomes to change this negative experience into a positive one.’ 

Response time email 

Among both consumers and companies, email is the most popular contact channel. Research shows that 74% of customers expect an answer to their message within one day. How fast are the online stores in the UK? Well, quite fast actually. Of the web shops in this benchmark, 32% responded within one hour and 66% of the companies responded within one day. A small minority (2%) took longer than a week or never replied at all. 

Focus on customer service opening hours

There are many ways in which online stores can improve their customer service. Based on this survey, what should they focus on? According to Jonathon Huggett: "Within this benchmark, one finding stood out: the tested stores have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to their customer service availability. There is always the possibility to extend the number of offered channels or to upgrade to a hybrid chat, but that is not the most important thing. We recommend online stores expand their customer service opening hours. It should no longer be an option for customer service departments to not be available after 5 pm or during the weekend. This is where a lot of shops are missing out on extra turnover."

List of visited webshops

The post Mystery Shopper Benchmark: Are the UK online customers kings? appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

By Ruud den Rooijen / Salesupply - It is an often heard question. Webstores spend large parts of their budgets on acquiring traffic and on converting these first-time visitors into first-time buyers. With steadily increasing acquisition costs, this strategy only becomes viable in the long term when you manage to convert these buyers into repeat customers.

Together with our friends at Retail Rocket we have created an ebook explaining what to do to create repeat customers.

The two key elements to creating repeat customers are:

• Provide accessible, personal customer service
• Use AI retention management software 

Customer support - don’t hide behind technology

More and more online stores decide to start with having a fast and cheap tool to take care of their customer service, it is easier and more budget-friendly than setting up a customer service team. At least that is what it often seems like in the beginning.

The impact of not offering clients the possibility to talk to an agent is often underestimated. 89% of customers have stopped doing business with companies after experiencing poor customer service.

Salesupply and Retail Rocket e-book points out clearly the fact that: Online shoppers always want to feel recognized (especially if they are frequent shoppers.)

In fact, according to a HubSpot survey, 68% of respondents said they would pay more for a product from a company with a strong record of good customer service.

According to a HubSpot survey, 68% of respondents said they would pay more for a product from a company with a strong record of good customer service.

Moreover, if a company offers outstanding customer service, 78% of consumers will do business with them again after a mistake.

So customers are likely to remain loyal, even if an issue crops up. This is a testament to the importance of providing excellent customer service and how customer service is directly linked to customer retention.

In the ebook, the authors make a case for the combination of these new technologies and the so important human factor of customer service to create the perfect service team.

🔥Download the complete ebook today for free here!🔥

AI retention management - a vital element in e-commerce

Nowadays retention management strives to create a unique and valuable customer experience that will keep people coming back.

This can be done through things like personalization, providing exclusive content or deals, and offering a level of convenience and accessibility that is hard to find elsewhere. 

Simple examples of AI automation include push notifications, triggered emails, recommended products, and personalized offers—basically anything to individualize the customer experience.

Automation also allows you to use predictive analytics to recommend future purchases based on customer preferences, behavior, and previous orders.

This helps to improve customer satisfaction and keeps them coming back for more.

Combining the powers of customer service and AI-based retention tactics, you can build a flywheel and keep it spinning forever while creating an exceptional customer experience at every touchpoint. 

🔥Don’t wait any longer, download the ebook today.🔥

The post How to turn online shoppers, into happy returning customers! appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Berlin – a blooming and friendly city – building the future that does not forget about its past. It is the city of Zalando’s headquarters as well. We are meeting up to talk to Vice President Customer Satisfaction Lisa Miczaika and Vice President Logistics Products Jan Bartels, who will tell us about Zalando’s way of handling their customer care and the brand new Zalando Fulfillment Solutions.

Customer Satisfaction: a team effort

In 2017, Zalando is a well-established fashion platform in Europe, dealing with thousands of customer queries every day. It all started when one of Zalando’s founders, David Schneider, put his phone number on the website in 2008, and since then, Zalando’s customer care has grown into a key factor of the organisation. Lisa Miczaika: “Customer satisfaction is one of the main cornerstones of our organisation and customer care an important aspect of it. Satisfaction is not produced from customer care alone, but rather an effort from everyone.” She continues: “A customer care team is very close to the customer, since they are always in contact with them through various channels.”

As Zalando started in Germany, this is where their customer care team started as well. Expanding across borders, into new markets, let to the demand of more service teams. Each team located in Berlin focused on their own market: the German team on the German market, Austria on the Austrian market, the Dutch team on the Dutch market and so on. “Every team had its own thing going on, and although we had processes, they were not clear for. At some times, it was chaotic in the beginning. We had some basics: a customer called with a problem and it had to be resolved. However, in the last four years, as Zalando grew, we became more professional in terms of having this backbone that you need to do customer care. What our team of specialists concentrates on is ‘what the customer wants’, and improving the NPS (Net Promoter Score).”

Measuring Satisfaction

Having the means to measure customer satisfaction lead to decent and effective changes in the workflow. For a large fashion platform, such as Zalando, it is essential to have satisfying workflows. The brand asks customers to fill out a survey, and when customers agree, they receive a survey that measures all important NPS scores. All touchpoints, from landing on the webshop up until the potential reimbursement of a returned order, are questioned. “We try to collect data on all aspects that influence the satisfaction of a purchase and look at them monthly. People are more than welcome to write a negative review, but naturally, that is not what we wish for. It is not just about preventing bad reviews to be written, it is more. Naturally it is not what we wish for, but people are more than welcome to write a negative review. Our goal is that in the end, the experience of the purchase was a good and positive one. Our goal is that customers come back to us the next time,” says Lisa. Analysis of gathered data from the survey, as well as from social media channels, review channels and more leads to very specific, localised changes in certain processes. “For example, when we notice that French customers may were not happy with certain promoted items during the previous summer, we try to find out why. Or, for instance the tendency that our customers are very used to their local delivery company. This is for example why we decided to work with PostNL for our regular deliveries and with DHL Express for fast delivery in the Netherlands.” Lisa explains.

Zalando has not rolled out a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Each market has its own tailored customer care approach. A common example is differences in payment preferences. The Dutch very much like to pay with the local payment method iDeal, while Italians like to pay with cash on delivery, since they are relatively new to shopping online and have not build up the necessary trust to use payment systems like credit cards.

Customer care and its development takes place in Berlin, as Zalando has their customer care for the largest part done from the capital of Germany. While it sometimes might be difficult to find the right employees to work on the local markets from Berlin, Zalando works with native speaking customer care employees, an approach the team views as highly effective. “We do not outsource 100% because we want to stay close to our customers to know what is on their minds. This means that outsourcing in general is not what we aim for. However, in some markets like the Finnish, and in certain periods the Dutch, we struggle to find the right native speakers to work in Berlin. That is why we outsource some of our work to sustain the stability in our service levels, and to have the people we need inhouse. Our partners in the local markets are a part of the Zalando family and know how we work. We handle all training ourselves to make sure our brand values are communicated, and to know that our personnel are able to provide service in line with the Zalando Identity. It is important that our customers experience these values when they visit the website or when they actually pick up the phone and contact us,” says Lisa.

The concept of the Zalando Identity only started about a year ago, but the results already show an increased customer satisfaction. “Customers feel that they are talking to a person instead of a robot. That is what we want customers to feel, that we really want to help them resolve any issues. Just as important for us was the change among our own employees. Being able to talk more freely to our customers is way more satisfying. For our diverse audience this works well, since our teams now have the autonomy to interpret how to talk to them. You do not talk in a stiff manner to an 18-year-old, and that is why we allowed more freedom to tailor the conversation.” comments Lisa.

Growing on a steady fundament

As Zalando is growing rapidly, all aspects of the company need to grow with it. Among these aspects are the customer care teams. Is it not very difficult to keep the customer satisfaction on the same level while expanding in so many ways at the same time? “The most important thing when growing is to have a reliable, steady fundament. If your fundament is steady, you have the opportunity to expand. If it isn’t strong enough, you will run into issues. We realised that in customer care, we would need outsourcing partners to keep our service levels up for some local markets.” says Lisa. “To me, there are different components to a steady foundation. Firstly, having the right number of people to deliver local service on the level we want. We do not want Swedish customer care in English, for example. The management part is very important too. Only employees who feel comfortable, and are happy with the offered working conditions will be able to deliver good customer care. Second is the process part. This means that we need to provide everyone with information so they know what they need to do, and on the other hand give them enough freedom so they feel comfortable doing it. The last is the technological part. You need a good CRM-system, have the right channels like Chat, WhatsApp and Facebook etc. When these three pillars are covered, you can grow.”

What about local differences in service?

Lisa says, “Zalando works with Experience Managers, one for each local market. They make suggestions to provide the best local services. Our Belgian Customer Experience Manager, for example, pushed us very strongly to provide customer service for native Flemish and Walloon speakers. Typical Dutch or French speakers do not go down too well for Belgian consumers. We also gained unique insights from our Finnish Experience Manager. The Finnish do not like to call and prefer to chat, as they think it is a more convenient and quicker solution to a problem. We increased the offering of chat in this market. Our Experience Managers really help us to localise and tailor the experience to a market.”

To make these changes, Zalando wants to confirm that something works. Therefore, new features are tested extensively upfront. “A lot of it is technological, AB-testing, where we divide customers into two groups and see how they react to different messages that are supposed to say the same. We did this for our Surprise & Delight programme, where we act when something goes wrong and send flowers or chocolate to apologise for the inconvenience. A handwritten card, drawing or anything else – even without a discount voucher – was received as more satisfying than a formal email message with a 20% off voucher.”

It is OK to make mistakes

Very interesting for Zalando, and something Lisa Miczaika clearly supports, is the open mind for new things. While being a very structured organisation with a lot of tailored processes and workflows, there is room to improve and to learn. It is okay to make – small – mistakes. Lisa explains: “Without making mistakes, we cannot learn as much as we do when we do make them. To find things out and see how they work, you must do tests. If something does not work, we stop. An example is a customer care chatbot utility we tried – it was not great and we decided to quit the experiment. It was important that we clearly told our customers we were testing this as a feature, so they hopefully would not blame us if things were not going perfectly. I still believe it could be a nice addition for our company, once the technology has developed itself. It could be a great addition to our dynamic FAQ.”

Zalando Fulfillment Solutions

As learning and development are so important to Zalando, it is only logical that new services are being introduced. One of the major new services are the Zalando Fulfillment Solutions. Here Jan Bartels comes in. With natural enthusiasm, he tells us about this new feature Zalando introduced for its partners. “One of our newest babies, Zalando Fulfillment Solutions, helps us expand the Zalando platform. In the past, we basically sold products launched on our platform. As we have built up strong logistic capabilities, we have now opened them to our partners.”

The fulfillment solution look a lot like Fulfilment by Amazon, which has the big advantage of being very close to the end-consumer. Jan Bartels says: “It is only logical for other companies to think about these kind of services, as they are very economical. Our partner programme is our approach to a marketplace. It is even more, as we have our own opinion about how to do things. Partners are offering their merchandise on our platform – they remain the owners of the goods and make all economical decisions, like pricing and offered quantity. In the past, we used to work with a dropship model, where our partner had to meet certain requirements to send his product(s). With the Zalando Fulfillment Solutions, this has changed. We did this to secure convenience levels of our end-customers. As we know what customers in local markets prefer and we have the technical connections to do so, we can easily provide them to our partners. For them, it would be very time-consuming and expensive to integrate all of this. We have been through this journey already, so why not make it easier for our partners? Besides that, by the end of this year, we have multiple warehouses in which our partners can store their inventory. Most big brands only have one, or maybe two in Europe. This way, we can help our partners to be more local to their customers as well.” says Jan.

“There is an economic benefit as well,” he continues. “Look at a typical Zalando order in our partner programme and it becomes clear – our customers, generally, do not buy one item on our shop. Usually, there are items from different brands and from Zalando as well. What happens in a classic dropship model is that every partner would send out a parcel with their part of the order. In the worst-case scenario, a customer would have to be at home for multiple deliveries on multiple days, which is not consumer friendly. Similarly, returning an order would happen in multiple packages. The Zalando Fulfillment Solutions makes sure that the customer only receives one package with all items. For our partner and us, it means a cut in logistic costs, which makes it possible for our partners to extend their offered range of products,” tells Jan.

This service is about enablement. By providing the service,  partners can extend their assortment, which helps brands to expand their European footprint. Naturally, Zalando started testing this solution service to make sure everything works. Just as in customer care, hiccups in service could be eliminated before a full launch took place. The programme is still developing itself. Jan Bartels: “As we were piloting the first Zalando Fulfillment Solutions, we were already testing a new service, Fast Replenishment. This is a service where our partners have weekly replenishments, resulting in a low capacity consumption on our side. For our partners, the benefit is to keep their stocked inventory more in control. We can predict what will be selling in the next one or two weeks and can recommend our partners what to send to us. When we provide our stated service levels, our consumers, partners and we can benefit from this solution. We have fully launched it since then.”

Bartels is very clear about one thing: the Zalando Fulfillment Solutions will be an exclusive feature for their partners. “We do not want to become a sole logistic service provider. Zalando will remain a fashion platform. We would not offer our fulfillment service to a brand that is not a part of our partner program – that is not the idea behind the Zalando Fulfillment Solutions.”

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