Outvio launches on the German market and improves the after-sales process with its software
by Kyra Molinari (exclusively for EuroShop.mag)
If there is a strong rush of customers – for example during the Christmas season – overloads of shop systems often creep in. In the worst case, such errors not only have an economic impact because deliveries are cancelled, but they also put a strain on staff who have to deal with customer complaints and an increased volume of returns.
Outvio is a company founded in Tallinn and wants to ensure that such problems do not arise in the first place. Its cloud-based B2B SaaS web applications are designed to significantly improve the after-sales shopping experience for buyers. Outvio’s solutions have also been available on the German market since December last year. Juanjo Borras, CO-Founder, explains how Outvio was founded and what advantages an automated after-sales process has for both retailers and customers.
Kaiti Tiitson and Juanjo Borras founded Outvio 3.5 years ago. Source: Outvio
Juan, what status quo in the after-sales process did you start from and how can technologisation improve this status quo? Where do you think there are shortcomings?
Juanjo Borras: We know that eCommerce is the future of commerce. But a lot of improvements still need to be made to the way we shop online. We are going to bring those improvements to life, starting with fixing the post-sales process for online shops.
Outvio was born from the pain lived by us while running an online shop with no single tool to manage everything that happens after receiving an order nor a way to control the customers shopping experience after making the sale. We were convinced there must be a better way, through technologization, so Outvio was born.
The most time and resource consuming tasks for online shops are the ones that come after a sale is made on their website: order management; picking, packing and shipping orders; giving support to customers; managing returns; supervising reviews and getting shoppers to come back to shop for more.
One of our best achievements in 2021 has been to enter the German market. We are excited to support online shops with so much potential. The German e-commerce market is growing and growing. We know that most e-commerce businesses face the above challenges. That’s why we believe that we can certainly help them.
How does Outvio’s technology work, what functions does it perform?
Borras: Outvio is a cloud-based SaaS web application. It offers a better way to manage the complete post-sales process in an interconnected way on one single platform.
The company helps online stores and eCommerce to automate and streamline post-sales processes: from fulfilment, shipping and delivery incident resolution to returns and upselling and re-marketing tools. We specialise in the automation of all post-sales fulfilment processes that are necessary after a successful checkout of an online shop to transmit the goods to the buyer.
What are the advantages of an automated after-sales process for customers on the one hand and for dealers on the other?
Borras: Throughout the whole process after an automated online checkout, the customers feel safe since they know at any time where their package is located. Furthermore, automated and easy returns, incidents and claims management increase customer satisfaction immense.
Online shops on the other hand save time and money and grow revenue by using Outvio to automate workflows and to utilise the post-sales for branding, upselling and marketing. Managing all processes from one single platform enhances and allows online shops to focus more on other challenges.
On top of that, the integration of artificial intelligence into after-sales processes, such as incident management in combination with AI, helps to resolve a delivery incident even before the customer or the online shop becomes aware of it.
Source: Outvio
How can an improved after-sales process improve customer loyalty?
One measure to increase customer loyalty through after-sales processes is offering a seamless branded shopping experience with the right messaging at precisely the right point of your shopper’s post-payment journey. It helps the customers to be informed about the status of their orders at any time.
Furthermore, the before mentioned branding during the after-sales process improves customer loyalty and leverages return purchases. This can be carried out through individualised emails and/ or notifications and additional branding in tracking and return portals resulting in a strong branding of online shops. To cover the needs of most of the customers, online shops should work with and thus provide different courier options for their customers, when making a return or exchange of products.
For which retailers and companies is Outvio suitable?
Borras: Outvio is built for mid to large online shops that get hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of orders a day. This is because the more orders an online shop has to fulfil, the bigger the post-sale problems get and the more value we can bring to them by automating their order management, shipping, tracking, returns and customer communication. Similarly, the more orders they have, the more results they will see from post-sales marketing and branding actions we facilitate.
At the same time, we welcome all starting and small online shops with big ambitions and desire to manage their post-sales the right way from day one. Any online shop that is just starting, but has real plans to grow, should start using Outvio from the start. This way they can compete with bigger eCommerce on a level playing field and grow without the growing pains – at least for what concerns post-sales.
What trends do you see for the coming years with regard to the technologization of after-sales processes?
Borras: At Outvio, we rely on our own hard-working and creative development team to constantly deliver new features. Our mission is to help online shops deliver the best customer experience to their customers.
One unquestionable trend is related to increasing customer expectations for support and service. For instance, these increasing customer demands are mainly based on trends like m-Commerce to enable customers to make their purchases from their smartphones, quick commerce to enable fulfilling orders in record time or multicarrier strategies to offer the best solution for every different order. In addition, trends as free deliveries and flexible return policies will be no longer dispensable.
With rising customer expectations, after-sales teams need to be able to respond quickly to customer requests. In addition to real-time analysis, modern master data solutions connect sales, production and the supply chain. These areas can only respond quickly to customer needs if they are carefully aligned with each other – and this significantly increases service quality and improves the customer experience.
