EXCLUSIVE: True Classic estimates order arrivals with AI

A direct-to-consumer retailer of fitted men’s tees is managing post-purchase notifications using artificial intelligence (AI).

Chain Store Age recently had a conversation with Breanna Moreno, VP of customer experience, True Classic, about how the direct-to-consumer (DTC) specialty men’s tee shirt retailer is utilizing AI-based post-purchase software managed by ParcelLab to help ensure satisfaction with order fulfillment, especially for international customers.

[Read more: DTC retailer True Classic opening three stores — here’s where]

What issues was True Classic having with the post-purchase experience?

We work with third-party delivery providers, so when customers purchase an item and it ships, we send them a notification email with a tracking number. We call this the post-purchase experience. 

Previously, those emails were not providing clarity into when the customer could expect the shipment to arrive, because there is often a delivery service handoff to a local carrier. Frustrated shoppers would ask our customer support help desk when they would be getting their order or why their order hadn’t arrived.

How has ParcelLab technology helped True Classic improve post-purchase satisfaction?

With its platform’s AI capabilities, ParcelLab was able to look at average transit times and utilize that within our post-purchase experience to tell customers their shipments should arrive in a certain amount of days based on analysis of historical shipments data in that region or area. 

This has significantly reduced shipment-related ticketing in our help desk. In addition, we would previously get a lot of negative feedback from our international orders about not knowing when an order was coming in or saying that shipping was taking too long. 

Now, we trigger updates automatically with ParcelLab capabilities. From the onset, True Classic can tell a customer when they can expect their order, causing a further decrease in customers having to reach out to us asking about their packages because we proactively send them notifications and solve for that before they had to come to us. 

This improves customer experience even when things go wrong. If you're proactive and experienced in communicating issues to the consumer, chances are they're less likely to be frustrated.

We saw customer frustration significantly decrease on the support side, which had a big impact because when you're dealing with third party review sites, it's really hard to overcome those negative ratings. 

What specifically made True Classic select the ParcelLab solution?

We selected ParcelLab because of its saturation in international markets and because it is open to building custom solutions for us. 

What other results has True Classic obtained?

We have eliminated a lot of negative feedback about shipping times on third-party review sites, especially in international markets. In addition, our revenue per email (RPE) increased 29% between the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year. 

Historically, RPE is significantly lower in the first quarter than the fourth, so the fact that we obtained a 29% increase is just amazing. And we did it without changing anything in the email.

In addition, a lot of managed solutions redirect customers to their own landing page for post-purchase experience, which means they're not on the True Classic landing page. 

This scenario requires a ton of work to update and change a whole separate landing page that isn't even ours. Whereas now we have a dedicated landing page that's on our site controlled by our development team. Consumers are landing directly on our site through that post-purchase experience which is very impactful and adds incremental value.

Does True Classic have any future plans for ParcelLab?

We are going to tap into our RPE growth and see what else we can generate. We also plan to build the landing page out to provide more calls to action (CTAs).

In addition, True Classic has a lot of plans for our international business to ensure that we're maximizing the post-purchase experience above and beyond expectation. ParcelLab also globally integrated with True Classic on the return side, and we will continue to work with them there.