THE ICONIC Customer Story

How AfterShip gave THE ICONIC a post-purchase experience that fits their name

How THE ICONIC refined their customer experience with tracking automation

With THE ICONIC’s expansion spree came the additional responsibility of giving customers what they came to their website for–an excellent customer experience. With the post-purchase expertise of AfterShip as their backbone, THE ICONIC built an industry-leading customer experience with branded tracking pages and proactive delivery notifications. The up-to-the-minute information of the orders further empowered the Delivery and Parcels Team to boost the timeliness and relevance of customer feedback through perfectly-timed NPS surveys. Additionally, consolidating the shipping and delivery data into one powerful hub helped THE ICONIC optimize supplier operations through seamless integration with their merchant partners’ delivery network hassle-free.

Industry-leading: customer experience

Reformed: customer feedback loop

Optimized: supplier operations

Fine-Tuning the Post-Purchase Experience

THE ICONIC is a Sydney-based online fashion and sports retailer. The company was launched in 2011 and is one of Australia and New Zealand’s largest fashion, sportswear, and kidswear brands.

For THE ICONIC a simple, reliable, and effortless shopping experience is the top priority. Richie Hadfield, Director of Product at THE ICONIC, focuses like a laser on this approach. Every department strives to deliver ‘seamless and inspiring’ customer experiences.

“That’s our team’s mission and how we’re driving THE ICONIC forward as a leader in the retail ecosystem,” said Hadfield, Director of Product at THE ICONIC.

THE ICONIC aspired to give its customers a simple, transparent, and hassle-free purchase and delivery experience. And to achieve this, they welcomed AfterShip onboard as per post-purchase experience expert.

THE ICONIC knew that the crux of profitability lies in delivering a seamless and inspiring customer experience wherein customers feel valued and confident when shopping online.

500,000+

Monthly shipments

Australia

Headquarters

eCommerce

Industry

The Fruit of Business Expansion is Sweeter with the Right Tools

According to the August 2020 E-Commerce Report from Australia Post, Australia’s appetite for online shopping continues to skyrocket. As the industry grew an average of fifteen percent year-over-year, THE ICONIC followed suit.

Consolidating and tracking all these shipments and their data was increasingly challenging as their business and carrier network reached new heights. Automation was the key and that’s what THE ICONIC did.

If we look back a few years, online shopping was a very different landscape. Two weeks was considered an acceptable delivery timeframe, and customers didn’t expect their deliveries to be tracked. But customer expectations changed, so we needed to adapt rapidly.

Max Antonov

Product Owner at THE ICONIC

Adapting to the Ever-Changing Online Landscape

AfterShip has been helping THE ICONIC put their post-purchase experience to the forefront by centralizing their delivery and returns data for major carrier services providers.

THE ICONIC, thanks to AfterShip’s in-depth, real-time on-time delivery (OTD) insights and carrier performance analysis, are able to build outstanding customer experiences for their customers from order placement to delivery, streamlining every critical checkpoint to the T. Unification of THE ICONIC’s order status and delivery data into one powerful hub enabled the team to manage delivery delays and improve delivery rate proactively.

AfterShip has given the team complete visibility into our delivery process. We now know where every item is and where the critical points are within our customer’s journey.

Max Antonov

Product Owner at THE ICONIC

Optimizing the Customer Feedback Loop

Customer feedback is valuable for the team, with customer experience central to operations at THE ICONIC. AfterShip provided the Delivery and Parcels team an opportunity to improve its customer feedback loop by optimizing how it delivered the NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey.

The ICONIC’s review optimization game fell short by a few notches to meet its target goal because of its mistimed and conventional “yes and no” campaigns. The company was scheduling their surveys seven days post order delivery, when the initial excitement of the customer to receive a new product was over, leading to a subpar customer experience.

The team discovered that the NPS was occasionally sent before the parcel delivery, leading to customer confusion. This mismatched timing led to low NPS scores and minimal response rates.

By using the data and insights provided by AfterShip, the Delivery and Parcels Team created an intuitive and branded customer feedback loop that automatically sent NPS surveys once the customer had received the last parcel. THE ICONIC now receives far more relevant and timely feedback from customers.

AfterShip allowed us to reform our feedback loop. We realized timing and context are crucial, and we now send the survey as soon as the last parcel is delivered, which is triggered by data we receive from AfterShip.

Max Antonov

Product Owner at THE ICONIC

THE-ICONIC

Supporting the Next Stage of Growth

THE ICONIC expanded its operations to include a Marketplace, enabling third-party partners to sell goods directly on THE ICONIC’s platform. Unlike the existing internal warehouse model, the Marketplace allowed partners to ship from their location. This presented a new set of challenges for the Delivery and Parcels Team.

B2B online orders are more complex than the average B2C online sales. The customer acquisition cost is higher, the average buying cycle is much longer, and the delivery lifecycle operates differently from traditional B2C order tracking. The major challenge THE ICONIC witnessed with their new business vertical on board was that the third-party partners are not dependent on the Delivery and Parcels Team for order fulfillment and delivery. To streamline shipping and delivery, they were self-sufficient in fulfilling orders themselves with their own national and international carrier partners, warehouses, and pickup/drop-off locations. This left THE ICONIC with zero visibility and control over package deliveries and with no means to notify customers when the deliveries got delayed, stalled, or lost.

The Delivery and Parcels Team took on a supervisory role over the Marketplace delivery operations to remedy this situation.

THE ICONIC was looking for a delivery experience management solution that could give them centralized real-time, end-to-end order visibility and help them monitor if the Marketplace partners are meeting their service level agreements (SLAs) as promised.

We needed to keep partners accountable and have some control over the customer experience delivered by partners as they were operating on behalf of THE ICONIC.

Max Antonov

Product Owner at THE ICONIC

AfterShip was able to integrate into partners' delivery networks and collect a substantial amount of strategically relevant data.

Along with increased visibility of parcel status, account management teams received automated actionable data reports from AfterShip. This helped them build stronger relationships with partners, providing insights that identified gaps in the partners' cart to delivery" performance on THE ICONIC platform.

With better insights into the supplier delivery network, THE ICONIC improved its Marketplace suppliers' performance by introducing SLAs, standardizing the supplier's delivery process, and ultimately increasing supplier revenue and cart conversion rates on the platform.

The integration with AfterShip proved to be highly successful for THE ICONIC as they bridged the order status visibility gap between third-party suppliers and themselves. This powered their Delivery and Parcels Team to control the last-mile deliveries better to meet customers' needs for order accuracy from cart to door.

We knew there was a disconnect and AfterShip provided us with the data to formulate a strategy to approach the issue.

Max Antonov

Product Owner at THE ICONIC

Culture and Transparency are the Keys to Success

Part of the success and growth story of THE ICONIC is related to the transparency of our delivery commitments and the confidence it instills in our customers.

Max Antonov

Product Owner at THE ICONIC

Transparency continues to be a critical component of THE ICONIC’s value proposition. It is embedded in the company’s culture.

We work closely with other teams at THE ICONIC and because of the unique culture and spirit of transparency, we work effectively with different teams to help us solve problems efficiently.

Max Antonov

Product Owner at THE ICONIC

AfterShip played a pivotal role in redefining THE ICONIC’s post-purchase customer experience strategy by providing complete transparency and insight into orders and deliveries. As a result, this powered the Marketplace partners to stay on the ball, helped the team identify potential challenges, and improved the overall customer experience.

When customer experience is at the core of a retail organization’s strategy, partnering with technology solutions that help build credibility and reliability becomes a top priority.

THE ICONIC leveraged the expertise of AfterShip to help them foster an industry-best reputation across Australia and New Zealand by delivering an exceptional customer experience.

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How AfterShip gave THE ICONIC a post-purchase experience that fits their name

How THE ICONIC refined their customer experience with tracking automation

Fine-Tuning the Post-Purchase Experience

500,000+

Australia

eCommerce

The Fruit of Business Expansion is Sweeter with the Right Tools

Adapting to the Ever-Changing Online Landscape

Optimizing the Customer Feedback Loop

Supporting the Next Stage of Growth

Culture and Transparency are the Keys to Success

Create a world-class post-purchase experience