How Peak Design Improved eCommerce Customer Satisfaction With Post-Purchase

About Peak Design

Peak Design is an award-winning bags and camera accessories brand. They design truly radical gear, unparalleled in thoughtfulness, and have managed to build an equally radical company in their 12 years of doing business. Founded in the US, today Peak Design is truly international: many of their online clients are abroad and the company has stores in San Francisco, New York and Tokyo. The retailer is certified B Corp, and give 1% of their gross revenue to environmental nonprofits through their 1% For The Planet membership.

The Challenge: Restoring order visibility to international clients post-purchase

Peak Design’s main obstacle starting out was that their customers didn’t have visibility over the status of their online order. Around 30% of their customers are international and, as such, many were waiting 7-10 days to receive their package and had to pay duties plus taxes to pick up their order from a depot.

Due to these long waiting times coupled with customers often being unaware of these extra taxes due to third-party carriers failing to update them, many customers grew frustrated and contacted customer support or returned their order to sender. The process of returning orders was time consuming and costly for the camera equipment company, as they would have to pay to ship the order back out.

Poor order tracking is a significant issue for retailers and can have a dire impact on customer satisfaction: our 2023 consumer study found that 60% of online shoppers say they don't receive enough updates or find tracking information confusing or inaccurate, and 70% wouldn’t shop again after a poor delivery experience.

Peak Design has always prided itself on transparency with regards to their production, so it was of utmost importance to them that this visibility was also present with regards to their shipping – particularly considering the quality and corresponding price points of their products.
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‍Our Solution: Keeping customers in the loop all throughout delivery while proactively collecting feedback

The best indicator of the success of Peak Design’s branded notifications in improving the customer experience is the fact that the online retailer has achieved an average Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 79 since it was implemented five months ago – over 50% higher than the average for eCommerce.

With Shipup, which the online retailer has been collaborating with since 2018, Peak Design is able to keep their customers updated all throughout delivery with 46 fully branded notifications. They are able to fully control post-purchase communication with their customers, send them the ‘Package Shipped’ email, but also more specific ‘Custom Clearance Complete’. They can even send smart states not available from carriers, triggered when an event doesn't occur, such as ‘Waiting at pickup point’ or 'Late Package'. These unique notifications make all the difference in terms of offering their clients– particularly international– a seamless and reassuring customer experience as customers eagerly anticipate their order. Peak Design’s email notifications have a 61% open rate on average– that’s 20% higher than the industry average.

"Peak Design's updates regarding the shipment were fantastic."

^{– International Peak Design Client, Sweden}

"We really love the fact that Shipup offers notifications for multiple delivery touchpoints."

^{– Jen Howell, Head of Customer Service & Logistics}

The online retailer was able to measure their customer satisfaction via Shipup’s Feedback feature, which provides a centralized view of all customer comments on Peak Design’s delivery experience including the NPS for any given time period, the option to view the distribution of satisfied and unsatisfied customers and even how dissatisfaction reasons are spread out.

This data is based on feedback surveys automatically sent to customers upon delivery in an ‘Ordered delivered’ email. Peak Design’s delivery email notifications enjoy an exceptionally high open rate of 65%, capturing valuable feedback at a time when clients are most engaged.

With feedback forms, comprising 3,700 answers collected since implementation back in May 2023, the support team is automatically notified to reach out to customers having experienced delivery issues upon survey completion. The feature makes it easy for customers to be heard with the option to rate the delivery experience, add comments and even attach photos of damaged products directly on the platform. As a result, potential detractors are turned into happy, long-term customers.

And while customer comments were addressed efficiently with Feedback, the overall contact rate was decreased by a whopping 8% over the course of 6 months thanks to detailed notifications, alleviating the stress from customer support teams.

What’s more, feedback forms encourage repurchase by redirecting clients straight to Peak Design’s website, prompting customers to continue shopping.

In fact, Shipup is responsible for 12% of Peak Design’s global repurchase rate. Reassuring notifications and feedback surveys that make the customer feel heard undoubtedly contribute to exceptional customer retention. However, this figure can also be explained by Peak Design’s tracking page embedded on its own website. This dedicated tracking page— which is viewed a staggering 4.5 times per order— features a banner enticing customers to view its newest products.

Looking ahead: Carrier performance analysis, simplified

Beyond tracking notifications and feedback forms, Peak Design has been increasingly using Shipup’s Logistics dashboards to evaluate performance of their new third party fulfillment provider in Baja California. Initially, they had some concerns that due to needing to cross the border, there would be some delay in shipping and delivery times.

However, with Shipup’s Carrier analysis dashboard they were able to compare the performance of their new fulfillment provider to that of orders coming from their long-standing Los Angeles warehouse with regards to delivery time. In fact, they were even able to go beyond delivery time, and compare the carriers’ performance concerning time to ship and time to presentation for any given time period – all from one centralized page. And the results are in: both carriers’ performance are right on par!

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"The Logistics dashboards are very easy to use & customize and do not require assistance from our tech team as many other solutions do."

^{– Jen Howell, Head of Customer Service & Logistics}

What would have taken several hours – involving manually researching different data points and tracking numbers they would have to retrieve from carriers – only took several minutes.

Beyond saving time, Jen Howell– Head of Customer Service & Logistics at Peak Design– emphasizes the ease of use of Shipup’s platform. While she was initially apprehensive about comparing the two fulfillment providers, she quickly realized that navigating the Logistics dashboards, from comparing different carriers to adjusting time frames, was intuitive and didn’t require the support of the tech team. She was even able to filter by destination country and warehouse.

Shipup was also commended for its flexibility, consistently anticipating Peak Design’s needs, regularly exchanging feedback and providing tailored experiences. Case in point: from the very beginning of their collaboration, Shipup sought to optimize the accessory brand’s returns experience by extending carriers to its warehouses internationally in Hong Kong, Australia and Canada.

The Results

Thanks to Shipup, Peak Design was able to provide a seamless and reassuring post-purchase experience, achieving a phenomenal global NPS of 79 since implementation five months ago - soaring 50% above the average eCommerce NPS of 50. 

This high customer satisfaction directly translates into customer retention, with Shipup contributing to 12% of the online retailer’s global purchase rate via its notifications, tracking page and feedback surveys. These surveys contributed to reducing their customer contact rate by 8% over the last 6 months.

Looking to the future, Peak design was recently able to have complete visibility over carriers’ performance with its Logistics dashboards, taking only minutes to compare performance that would have otherwise taken hours.

"Shipup feels like a partner, not a vendor."

^{– Jen Howell, Head of Customer Service & Logistics}