Meet Tobi Buxhoidt, CEO of Post-Purchase Software Provider: parcelLab

Tell us about parcelLab:

We are the world’s only global enterprise post-purchase software provider.

The eCommerce market stalled in growth for the first time ever in 2022 and so our work is now critical. We help brands engage their customers in new and innovative ways and increase brand loyalty in what is now a very competitive marketplace.

Our platform allows brands to offer their customers a unique and personalised post-purchase experience to retain loyalty. The platform provides proactive communications about their orders, which increase customer satisfaction. This, in turn, increases our clients’ revenue as it makes it simpler and easier to cross-sell or upsell to customers; drives additional visitors to their websites and increases their conversion rates for eCommerce.

We also help brands drive down their operational costs with our easy-to-use returns portal, which is hosted on the brand’s domain. This reduces queries about where orders or returns are; and allows brands to make returns more sustainable.
 

 

What do you think makes this company unique?

We are the only company enabling brands to increase top-line revenue, decrease operational cost, and optimise customer experience in an unprecedented way.

We recognised that customers’ retail journey doesn’t finish the second they have hit the pay button. Our platform integrates into our clients’ websites delivering order tracking pages that deliver a superior experience for their customers. The platform is one of the most flexible on the market as it allows brands to personalise each post-purchase touchpoint. We have seen that this drives up to a four-fold increase in web traffic.

So many companies are missing out at a time when customer acquisition costs are rocketing. There are rises in advertising costs, more competition, increasing operating costs and issues in supply chains. We leverage the communications channels that companies already have and relationships that they have forged with their customers; and we empower them to build on this. The parcelLab platform drives engagement, strengthens communities, and allows companies to use the data they collect to increase reach and revenue. We help them do more with less.
 

How has the company evolved over the years?

We now manage the post-purchase experience across 175 countries, and we track the shipping data from over 350 carriers worldwide. We have grown parcelLab to a business of 200 people working across Europe, the US and APAC and we’re trusted by over 800 brands.

The eCommerce world has seen some huge upheavals over the past five years alone – the worldwide Pandemic changed the landscape dramatically. Now, post-Pandemic, the eCommerce boom has quietened down but instead we are facing economic difficulties and companies are desperate to retain existing customers and furiously vying for new customers.

We innovate to ensure our clients’ have a distinct offering that separates them from the pack. We collaborate with them to ensure a tailored package and then our implementation team works to get customers live within 30 days or less. The data from our clients speaks for itself. FARFETCH came to us for a solution and now reports 79% returning customers and 72% positive feedback in communications.

There are issues to be tackled – poor shipping experiences; impersonal engagement; a lack of information and supply chain crises – all of which parcelLab can play a significant part in ameliorating.

What can we hope to see from parcelLab in the future?

Post-Pandemic, customer expectations continue to rise so parcelLab will continue to innovate to ensure their needs are more than met. We are also moving back to a multi-channel setup, so customers need to be able to move seamlessly between channels.

Across our company, sustainability is incredibly important. Retail is, by its very nature, unsustainable so we need to find ways to dramatically improve. A key project for us is digitising the returns process. We want to prevent returns by using data to help customers to the right product in the first place. We also want to help the circular economy by collecting older items for resell or donation.

Carbon offsetting is also a key mission for us – especially the carbon impact of the delivery and returns processes. We want to work with both our clients and their customers to offset the impact of our retail choices.