5 Steps to Make Sure Your Vendors Deliver a Seamless Shopping Experience

Whether you sell online, from a physical store, or both, there are probably people communicating with your customers on your brand’s behalf who are not on your payroll. It could be a delivery partner, a warranty or call center, an app that provides automated shipping updates, or a partner that provides online chat services. Each encounter shapes the overall customer experience.

The upside of outsourcing tasks to vendors is that you can focus on retail full time instead of also running a call center, delivery service, warranty center, etc. The potential downside is that people who are not your direct employees are representing your company to your customers, and they may or may not be maintaining the brand standards you’ve set.

The good news is it’s relatively simple and affordable to close any gaps and ensure a seamless shopping experience. You have more control over the process than you think. Here are five steps to help you make sure your customers’ experience reflects your brand standards:

1. Map out the customer journey. First, walk a mile in your customers’ shoes. Figure out online vs. in-store sales percentages. Trace the purchase path and evaluate every point where customers may encounter a vendor, either literally (talking to a chat agent) or figuratively (receiving an automated notice that an item has shipped). In some cases, customer-vendor contact can be extensive. For example, if you rely on contactors to deliver and set up appliances in customers’ homes, it’s critical to make sure vendor encounters meet your customer care standards.
2. Define your vendor universe. It’s worth putting some thought into this step because vendors are often added over time, and if you’re lucky, they work so seamlessly with your company that you forget they’re not part of your team. You need to know who they are to assess whether your vendors are working as seamlessly with your customers as they are with you. Does a warranty center handle customer inquiries related to products you sell? If so, it’s important to make sure they treat customers the way you would.
3. Take a look at your brand guide/voice standards. Most retailers that want to maximize lifetime customer value train employees to uphold brand standards and company values when interacting with customers. Take a new look at that guidance in the context of vendor encounters. Have you articulated your values to your partners? Do they need to be updated? If a vendor is in charge of communicating with e-commerce customers about shipping, it’s critical that they speak in your brand voice to ensure a seamless, consistent customer experience.
4. Measure what matters. You know the old saying: what gets measured gets managed. That’s another way of saying that you should measure what matters, and in today’s fiercely competitive retail economy, nothing matters more than consistently delivering a great customer experience. Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys are a quick and easy way to get a snapshot of customer sentiment.
5. Hold vendors accountable. Customer surveys provide actionable data. You can automate the survey process and follow up to get more details if the initial response indicates an issue. For example, maybe customers love the chat agent but have issues with the call center. That’s actionable business intelligence that you can use to demand better performance from vendors.

When you implement vendor-specific NPS surveys and ask follow-up questions, you can identify and address gaps — vendor touchpoints where service falls short. After you’ve communicated your expectations to vendors, you can address shortfalls in a number of ways, like implementing service-level agreements or finding a vendor that's more aligned with your brand's values.

As a retailer, you know a great customer experience requires more than stocking the right products; the way customers purchase and receive goods shapes their perception of your brand, and that means vendor touchpoints matter, so measure them. Also keep in mind that you have choices. If a vendor isn’t upholding your brand standards, find one that will. In this way, you can ensure a seamless shopping experience and build customer loyalty.

Tara Kelly is the founder, president and CEO of SPLICE Software, which offers a cloud-based solution that specializes in using big data and artificial intelligence, through the scalability of cloud storage and secure API connections, to create messages that drive customer engagement and the desired call to action.