From Chaos to Clarity: Unified Commerce's Path to BFCM Operational Excellence

The Operational Dilemma of BFCM

During the hustle and bustle of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM), businesses face significant challenges. The costs of customer acquisition (CAC) lead to low return on ad spend (ROAS), and increased order volumes drive up operational expenses. These hurdles represent major barriers to pursuing revenue growth. 

Picture your team working tirelessly, dedicating countless hours manually listing products and setting up merchandising and product recommendation rules for numerous SKUs — all within a tight timeframe to prepare for the BFCM shopping frenzy. Clearly, enhancing the platform's scalability to effectively showcase relevant products is essential.

While the sales surge comes with the excitement of increased sales, your customer support team also faces becoming overwhelmed by "Where is My Order" (WISMO) tickets due to shipment delays and return-related issues. Additionally, disconnected systems and batch processing can result in data inaccuracy and delayed updates of returned inventory, resulting in stock imbalances and empty-handed customers. 

As a result, scaling up operations in anticipation of a BFCM rush often leads to bottlenecks and pressing issues that require immediate resolution

The Solution: Unified Commerce

Amid these operational challenges, a ray of hope shines through: unified commerce. This all-encompassing solution can greatly simply scale your BFCM operations — from product discovery to order fulfillment and returns management.

A single, unified database and system is the key. Data accuracy is the cornerstone of unified commerce. It enhances product discoverability by providing precise information across various channels, including product descriptions, pricing, and availability. Effective content management further optimizes product listings with relevant keywords, images, and comprehensive details to attract and engage customers.

Seamless data connectivity throughout the order journey ensures smooth communication between various systems, such as order management, shipment tracking, returns processing, and warehouse management systems. This connectivity orchestrates consistent real-time notifications, minimizing operational barriers caused by system fragmentation.

Unify Your Operations with AfterShip’s All-in-One Solutions

AfterShip’s centralized merchandising center allows you to create product listings hassle-free and set automation rules for on-site product discovery and post-purchase management. This can significantly reduce manual work associated with marketing and merchandising operations, effectively addressing fulfillment and return operation challenges.

Automate BFCM product listing with AI product tagging

Powered by large language models (LLMs) and a database of 10K attributes, AfterShip Catalog AI can automate the product listing generation according to your listing guidelines, eliminate the need to manually list products and input product tags, which will help reduce operational cost and improve searchability.

Use cases include:

• Automated tag extraction: Employ advanced LLM to automatically extract tags based on product images, titles, listing descriptions, and reviews.
• Data enrichment: Enrich product attributes with additional tags when no information is available. Save time from adding tags manually.
• High customizability: Customize tags based on your industry or marketing needs. Align your merchandising strategy with customized tags.
• Product listing generation: Create titles and descriptions, and generate standard-compliant content automatically. Greatly saving manual work.

In addition, AfterShip Catalog AI offers comprehensive catalog analysis, price optimization, and predictive inventory management for informed decision-making.

Manage merchandising strategies in one place

With AfterShip's centralized merchandising management center, retailers can easily scale up the intricate merchandising strategies for the holiday season by leveraging integrated business data, algorithms, automated rules, and advanced analytics to bring eCommerce conversions to new heights.

Use cases include:

• Flexible custom rules: Pin or exclude products, prioritize product discoverability, or set automation rules to trigger specific actions based on your BFCM promotion plans. Scale merchandising strategies with ease.
• Advanced analytics: Analyze product affinity, top-selling bundles, and revenues generated across touchpoints. Discover top-performing upsell tactics and product combinations to improve your BFCM merchandising strategy.
• Built-in A/B testing: Run tests and monitor results with automated split samples. Make data-driven decisions and identify the most effective product discovery techniques.

Connect system silos with order-level data

AfterShip’s post-purchase solution works across disparate systems and data silos. Retailers can manage order details and track fulfillment and return order statuses in one place. This allows the customer service team to quickly locate shipments with specific orders, greatly improving operational efficiency.

Integrated systems provide a wealth of data that enables you to evaluate BFCM performance and continuously enhance the backend operations and overall customer experience. 

Use cases include:

• Identifying BFCM supply chain bottlenecks: Compare actual lead times against targets. Identify and address the stages and parties responsible for discrepancies, such as enhancing inventory accuracy to resolve BFCM stock shortages.
• Adjusting logistics for peak seasons: Review historical lead times and revise logistics strategies to mitigate delays. Consider expedited services, additional carriers, or preemptively notifying customers of expected delays.
• Optimizing carrier selections: Evaluate and diversify carrier options based on lead times, SLAs, and costs in various regions. Use a combination of national and regional carriers to optimize costs while maintaining service quality.

Achieve complete visibility with order lifecycle tracking

By implementing omnichannel tracking mechanisms throughout the pre-shipment, delivery, and returns & exchange stages, you can ensure order transparency, timely updates, shorter re-stock lead time, and proactive issue resolution during this shopping festive season.

Use cases include:

• Enhance delivery estimates accuracy with pre-shipment data:

Generating accurate EDD (Estimated Delivery Date) requires inputting the order processing time. With pre-shipment tracking, retailers can obtain a more precise timeline for order processing and provide customers with a more accurate delivery date at checkout. This, in turn, sets realistic expectations regarding delivery times and manages shoppers' expectations effectively.

• Boost CX with prompt status notification right after the order is placed:

AfterShip's rule-based notifications and multilingual tracking pages keep customers informed throughout the carrier's transit process, including updates on shipping, delivery or pickup, and any shipment exceptions.

Especially during peak seasons like BFCM, retailers often face challenges like warehouse overload, leading to longer fulfillment times. Providing customized pre-shipment order updates can proactively engage customers early on to establish trust, set accurate expectations, and address concerns before the delivery process begins.

• Address exceptions and process returns & exchanges timely:

Delays in receiving replacements, refunds, or exchanges and a lack of shipment visibility can significantly impact customer satisfaction. By offering transparent shipment tracking for returns and exchanges, businesses can promptly address exceptions, leverage status-triggered automation to expedite refunds and exchanges, and proactively engage shoppers through branded emails and SMS notifications. 

• Improve inventory balancing with shorter re-stock lead time:

Use returns & exchange shipment tracking data to predict restocking time and inform your warehouse team of the real-time order status. Allow your warehouse team to promptly review returned items’ conditions and restock them back into inventory for re-selling.

• Consistent order visibility for omnichannel fulfillment strategies:

AfterShip provides real-time tracking status when an order has multiple split shipments or uses mixed fulfillment strategies. Imagine a customer orders three items — one is shipped directly to their home, one is picked up in-store, and one is shipped to the store for pick-up. You and your customer will have full visibility into where each item is in the process, leading to increased customer satisfaction and fewer WISMO tickets.

You can also send shoppers a consolidated email with detailed information about split shipments. This email will provide an overview of the items to be shipped as well as information on any additional shipments containing other items.

Let your operations run on auto-pilot today

Experience seamless automation and overcome manual operational hurdles related to product listing, merchandising rules management, fulfillment, and returns & exchange processes during peak seasons. 

Through our unified database, AI capabilities, connected systems, and robust automation, you can unleash the full potential of your operations, paving the way for enhanced efficiency and increased profit margins during the bustling BFCM period. Explore our innovative solutions further and schedule a demo to experience the cutting-edge advancements firsthand!