One of the most important aspects of running any successful ecommerce business is customer retention. This means finding a way to make one-time customers keep coming back. In fact, for the average e-commerce store, 40% of its revenue is created by only 8% of its customers.
In this blog post, we’ll be showcasing our latest addition to our feature list, the repurchase option, and how this benefits both the consumer and your store.
Repurchasing & Extending rentals
Imagine this: your customers are enjoying their day and the activity they booked their gear for. Unfortunately, they had only booked it for a couple of hours, and the weather forecast is making them consider doing the activity for the rest of the day.
What could happen is they call your shop and see if they could extend the rental and return to the shop to handle the payment OR handle it upon return. In this case, this could lead to forgotten payments and monetary loss.
Alternatively, imagine a scenario where the customer, mid-activity, takes out their phone and extends their rental via the link they received upon getting the confirmation text message. In case there are no conflicting bookings, they can take care of the payment automatically and continue their activities. No risk of double bookings or loss of money.
What do you think? Which scenario is more profitable for you while significantly improving the customer experience?
The new repurchase option
The new repurchase option is like having your own rental app for your customers.
Customers will now receive order confirmations as text messages together with links for the rental overview. This includes a live time tracker where the customer can see the time left on their rental.
The feature also allows your customers to extend their rentals on the go easily from their mobile devices, with the payments being charged automatically through the same page.
The rental overview shows the customer's order details with a live time tracker.
More efficient usage of equipment
Buying equipment for renting isn’t cheap, which is why you want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. This means having your gear rented out as much as possible so it does not only pay itself back - but also bring profit.
With the possibility of extending orders, your equipment that would otherwise be left unused for the rest of the day gets a chance to be put to good use. It not only means that you’ll get your money’s worth, but it also means that you’ll have an additional way of generating more revenue.
Avoid double-bookings
Giving the customers the opportunity to extend their booking on their own means taking away the need for you to get involved in confirming the extension or repurchase. While this eases your job and saves your time, it presents a possibility of extending the rental over someone else’s booking, resulting in double bookings. This, on the other hand, leads to confusion on the inventory management’s side, as well as displeased customers, which is something we all want to avoid at all costs.
The feature is flawlessly linked directly to your rental inventory and booking calendar. This means the feature will only offer the extending possibility when there are no conflicting bookings with the equipment in use and handle the payment straight away.
This means no double-bookings and more revenue without any headache.
Extending the booking time & handling the payment are all done on the same page. In case the product is not available, the ''app'' will notify the customer and not go through with the extended booking.
Build customer retention
The new repurchase option allows your customers to oversee and handle their orders with ease from whatever device is most convenient for them. The added flexibility and convenience to the whole renting experience will improve customer satisfaction, as well as their relationship with your brand.
As the saying goes — first impressions matter. If the overall experience for a first-time customer is smooth, there’s a high chance that they could become loyal customers in the long run. Longer engagements with your brand also mean a higher possibility of them coming back to your business over and over again.
Thanks to the latest update, you can now offer even more seamless renting experiences for your customers.
