The Order Edits
Playbook for Shopify
How Top Tech & Ops Leaders Achieve CX Ops excellence //
Featuring:
Three £35M-£100M retail Tech & Ops leaders discuss pre-fulfilment order edits CX strategy - incl. how they reduced CS tickets by 14%-25% - over complex, ecommerce and POS global operations.
Ops and Tech leaders know self-service-first is a foundational pillar of modern CX excellence, and customer self-serve pre-fulfilment order editing makes up a big part of this.
The problem today is mid market enterprises who do offer customers to change their sales orders pre-fulfilment, through assisted CS or customer self-service, typically jump through many operational manual processes over multiple Ecom/ERP/WMS/etc systems, where autonomous order changes are partially or not supported. Then, what happens when CS operators deviate from defined or automated processes, or the order is not changed due to disconnected or unreliable system integrations? It’s no wonder why many retailers avoid changing orders pre-fulfilment and those who do typically have a multitude of CX issues undetected in the background.
So, why do the operational system challenges occur downstream, what does pre-fulfilment self-serve CX order editing excellence look like, and what should Ops and Tech leaders look out for?
In this guide, you’ll learn how the industry’s best leverage the “Top Down Strategy” to drive and pioneer pre-fulfilment order editing operations, both CS assisted and customer self-serve - and why these enterprises use Dot On to seamlessly orchestrate platforms like Shopify, Brightpearl, and Peoplevox, ensuring all their order editing and fulfilment processes run smoothly without needing to manage multiple disconnected systems.
We spoke with:
Andrew Showman, CTO and Co-Founder at CurrentBody, where the company has experienced significant growth in the beauty tech space;
Jon Petrie, CEO and Co-Founder of Dot On, who has 20+ years ‘real world’ experience in both retail and mid-market enterprise retail tech vendor businesses.
Ben Buxton, pioneering Ecommerce Manager who has been instrumental at Fairfax & Favor, a rapidly scaling, multi-award-winning brand;
Hamish McKay, Co-Founder of OrderEditing customer self-serve portal app for Shopify, working with Fairfax & Favor and CurrentBody.
John Knights, Business Systems Manager at Fairfax & Favor who has led the project to deliver Dot On’s technology within F&F;
Driving Customer Experiences
‘The Power of Order Editing’ Pre-fulfilment
Imagine this, your customer has just placed an online order for a new outfit and can't wait to try it on - but then, 5 minutes after placing their order, they realise they ordered the wrong size or colour. What can they do?
For many customers, the answer is to contact customer service and hope for the best. Unfortunately, this can be a frustrating and time-consuming process. And for businesses that don't offer a flexible order editing process, it can lead to increased returns, customer dissatisfaction, and operational inefficiencies. That's why it's so important to allow customers to make changes to their orders before they're shipped.
By offering customers the ability to change their orders, you can:
Reduce returns: Customers are less likely to return items if they can make changes before they're shipped.
Improve customer satisfaction: Happy customers are more likely to return and recommend your business to others.
Increase operational efficiency: Self-service order editing can free up your customer service team to focus on more complex issues.
"By introducing customer self-service order edit portals, inbound customer support tickets are reduced by as much as 25%…and in fashion & apparel, we've had reports back from merchants that their weekly return numbers have dropped by 15 or 16%”, said Hamish (OrderEditing).
Before we dive into the challenges and strategies of pre-fulfilment order editing, let's take a look at why customers actually want to make changes to their orders. We asked Andrew from CurrentBody, Ben and John from Fairfax & Favor, for the most common reasons why their customers change their orders:
Changing the delivery address
Changing the shipping method
Adding or removing products
Updating contact information
Applying a discount code
Changing the delivery date
Cancel the order
By empowering customers with flexibility to make these changes, you can provide a more personalised and satisfying shopping experience.
As operations and technology leaders, you know first-hand that incorrect delivery addresses are a major pain point for online retailers. In fact, according to Hamish, they account for 36% of all pre-fulfillment order edits. But the problem goes beyond just customer frustration. A study by Loqate found that inaccurate delivery addresses are a primary cause of failed deliveries. This can lead to increased shipping costs, wasted time, and a negative customer experience. It's clear that solving this issue is essential for any online business looking to improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs.
Fairfax & Favor recently introduced a customer self-serve order editing portal which "instantly allowed over 1500 orders to be self served within the first 5 weeks, and freed up our CS team by reducing tickets by 14%, so they can now spend more one-on-one time with customers - so it's not only logical to introduce, but has driven CX to a whole new level”, said Ben (Fairfax & Favor).
In short, if you're not offering customer self-service order edits, your competitors will be - and your customers expect the best-in-class CX.
Do we have a choice in whether or not to offer customer self-service order edits…?
So you're excited about the idea of offering customers the ability to edit their orders themselves, and it's as simple as installing an app? Not exactly - business processes downstream over ERPs and warehouse systems, along with CX will likely fall over pretty quickly and you’ll be overselling stock before you know it.
System Hurdles, Put the Brakes On
System Challenges Downstream
In Shopify, editing orders is straightforward - customers or your team can make changes easily. But once those orders hit ERP or warehouse systems, the manual steps can quickly pile up, creating challenges.
Before using Dot On to unlock order editing pre-fulfillment, “Fairfax & Favor’s ecommerce, ERP and WMS systems were integrated with such lack of flexibility, that order edits were impossible - not only leading to negative customer experiences, but also poor reviews, increased cost from returns, and wasted effort”, says Ben (Fairfax & Favor).
We’re sure you are more than familiar with these challenges, but what are the underlying reasons?
System Design Insights
When it comes to order editing, the systems we use play a crucial role. Each enterprise system is designed, from your ecommerce platform to your ERP and WMS, with its own unique design and capabilities. These differences can make it challenging to implement a smooth and efficient order editing process. So let's start upstream and work our way downstream over the typical core systems at play:
Ecom Platforms: during the Order Processing stage, freedom to edit sales orders or not (within ecommerce platforms) typically depends on whether the sales order has reached other systems downstream, such as ERPs. ‘Fulfilment Holds’ are typically desired to extend this freedom, but the knock on inventory issues within storefronts frequently blocks this - depending on tech stack design and if multiple ecommerce stores are sharing inventory locations / warehouses.
ERPs on the other hand, are designed to handle complex, multi-departmental processes over a series of sales, fulfilment, billing, accounting, etc records throughout the sales order lifecycle. ERP APIs focus on maximising sales order throughput, whilst maintaining all of these complexities under the hood - therefore typically being not as flexible in supporting changes to existing orders through their APIs.
WMS/3PLs are designed for highly efficient order fulfilment processing and simplicity. Sales orders are typically created through APIs in batches, which is fantastic for maximising fulfilment rate throughput, but makes it very challenging to introduce any form of order editing. Although enterprises often cancel orders in WMSs to edit orders (to drive CX), this drives a whole set of manual processes over multiple systems, so is often avoided except for extreme circumstances in order to maximise efficiencies.
Imagine your customer service team scrambling to make a last-minute change to an order that's already on its way to the warehouse. It's a stressful situation that can lead to errors, delays, and unhappy customers. That's why it's important to set boundaries for order editing. While it's tempting to allow customers to make changes up until the last minute, this can create many inefficiencies for your operations team.
"The best practice is to limit order changes to be before the order reaches the warehouse, unless there's an absolutely vital need or reason to make a change later. If you do need to make changes after the order is in the warehouse, you'll need to have systems in place that can handle these adjustments without disrupting your operations”, said John (Fairfax & Favor).
System Data Challenges
You might be thinking, "Surely technology can solve this problem". After all, we have direct integrations, native connectors, and iPaaS solutions. But the reality is, these tools typically fall short. The problem is that ecommerce, ERP, and WMS systems are all designed differently, with each system having its own set of limitations which are not necessarily flaws, but a reflection of the specific needs that these systems were designed to address. Recognising these constraints can help you understand why order editing can be challenging and so that strategies may be developed to overcome them. Being designed for different data structures and processes makes it difficult to integrate them seamlessly due to lack of data to in turn make informed automated decisions.
This is especially true for order editing, which involves complex interactions between multiple systems. Even with advanced technology, it's challenging to create a solution that can handle all the nuances of the modern retail landscape.
Andrew, Ben and John added this is exactly the experience they have had, with multiple vendors being unable to keep all their enterprise systems in sync over sales order and inventory changes - until recently where they have all solved this through Dot On - but how has Dot On achieved this?
Fundamentally, each system stores only part of the sales order lifecycle, which in short blocks order edits. Dot On solves this by unifying, centrally managing, automating, highly validating and monitoring the 'entire sales order lifecycle' between all these systems spanning Ecom, ERPs, WMS and more. By having a complete and correct picture of the end-to-end sales order lifecycle, Dot On’s Intermediary Operations Platform has the ability to make informed, automated decisions over all systems - transforming and streamlining end-to-end operations, including order editing support. The result - super high efficiencies, incredible CX and huge cost savings - all at global, enterprise-scale, and powered by resilient, high quality tech that ‘just works’.
…and before you ask, Dot On is not an iPaaS, is not a direct integration. Dot On is a full blown SaaS Intermediary Operations Platform that sits in between, enhances and orchestrates Shopify, Brightpearl by Sage and Peoplevox.
The ‘Top Down’ Strategy
It's clear, mid market enterprise systems have explicit groups of purposes, complexities and different sets of data, which makes it difficult - often impossible - to achieve order edits throughout the systems autonomously as soon as sales orders leave ecommerce platforms, without introducing manual processes.
So how do the leading Tech and Ops leaders achieve order editing operational excellence, within their customer service teams and through customer self-serve portals?
Order Edit Strategy
By using Dot On’s Intermediary Operations Platform, brands using Shopify and Brightpearl by Sage can now leverage order editing pre-fulfilment, unlocking new levels of CX and operational excellence within your business.
To keep things simple and streamlined without the complexities of ERPs and WMSs, Tech and Ops leaders introduce an ‘order edit window’ of 30 minutes duration, so that all order edits, whether CS assisted in the Shopify admin or through customer self-serve portals like OrderEditing, can happen within the ecommerce platform before they reach downstream systems. This has been badged as “The Top Down Strategy”.
Order Edit Window - 30 Minutes
"Our customers typically edit their orders through our self-serve customer portal within the first 15 minutes, so we’ve set what we call the ‘order edit window’ to 30 minutes, which has been working really well. The order edit window has also been great for our CS team editing orders in the Shopify admin and for autonomous fraud checks, shipping address validations, reassigning orders to warehouses and more - especially as we can utilise further self service elements to place an order on hold to allow for more complex adjustment or cancellation". said Ben (Fairfax & Favor), which was echoed by Andrew (CurrentBody). Then after the order edit window, the sales order is automatically created by Dot On in downstream ERP/WMS systems, such as Brightpearl by Sage and Peoplevox WMS.
Fulfilment Holds (Optional)
By using ‘Fulfilment Holds’, businesses like Fairfax & Favor have been able to prevent shipping mistakes and save time. It has allowed their team to resolve issues before orders are shipped, which has improved both efficiency and customer satisfaction.
"Intricate, unique customer experiences are key to differentiating the Fairfax & Favor brand. I see it as a personal failing if customers have a negative experience based on something that’s within our control to manage throughout the entire eComm lifecycle. By using Dot On we are able to have complete control over how and when fulfilment holds are activated, through custom automations. Whilst only in its fledgling stages, with more utility due to be launched, this has saved us from processing over 250 orders in a month that needed adjustment or cancellation. Next, we’re really excited to take this even further for an even more seamless experience.", said Ben (Fairfax & Favor).
John at Fairfax & Favor added, “Fulfilment hold enables the team to manage the order process and allows controlled changes to be made in a single place before being released into the ERP / WMS systems, where change becomes more complicated and difficult. This has made a noticeable improvement to the order process and order integrity.”.
Inventory
What is often overlooked are the implications of inventory, as delaying sales orders from reaching ERP and WMS systems through an ‘order edit window’ or ‘fulfilment hold’ in turn stops inventory being committed in these systems and other ecommerce storefronts - and typically means inventory is incorrectly reflected in ecommerce storefronts, especially if multiple storefronts for different markets, brands, etc are at play.
In order to solve this challenge, real-time Inventory Visibility systems can be introduced which layer on top of ERPs and WMSs to distribute real-time inventory availability over all ecommerce storefronts and other channels.
“Introducing a layer of cross-platform inventory visibility means that we are able to view and handle records that would be difficult to manage separately via each of the various platforms that operate within the business. Being able to minimise inventory errors and potential stock outs is essential in delivering outstanding CX. This is all the more so with multiple sales channels and routes to the customer.”, says John (Fairfax & Favor).
“Keeping pre-fulfilment order changes within Shopify before they go downstream, keeps things simple and avoids the complexities of other systems and unnecessary manual processes.”, says Andrew (CurrentBody), who continues, “At CurrentBody, keeping things simple - both in our technology and operations - has been crucial to running efficiently and delivering excellent customer experiences, which has underpinned our fast growth.”.
Customer Self-Service Order Editing Actions
So we know how to orchestrate the ‘top down’ strategy, but what does this unlock and what do top performing mid market enterprises choose to offer customers on a self-serve basis?
Change shipping address
Change shipping method
Change or add product(s)
Update contact information
Apply a discount code
Change gift messaging
Reschedule delivery date
Cancel order
Moving Forward, Where to Start?
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"It's been an absolute pleasure writing this article - with a big thank you to Andrew, John, Ben and Hamish for contributing their invaluable expertise and experience, and for being instrumental in helping to support us on our journey at Dot On. A pleasure to work with you all as always",
Jon & Louise,
Co-founders of Dot On.
