Webinar: Why package protection is more important than ever

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If there is one thing we all can agree to is that shipping doesn’t always go according to the plan. eCommerce merchants work all year round to engage with their customers, offer exciting deals, and close sales. But all these efforts and the entire experience can be ruined in a matter of a few moments if the package the customers were hoping to receive on time doesn’t arrive within the expected number of days.


Packages are sometimes lost, stolen, or damaged while in transit, and the cost of that can sit heavily with the shoppers and merchants alike. While merchants bear a hefty cost to compensate for the poor customer experience, shoppers are left with undelivered packages and a bad post-purchase experience. To remedy this, shipping insurance is a service both merchants and consumers today must invest in to protect them when a package doesn’t reach its destination due to loss, theft, or damage.


In this new webinar, Kristine Co. from AfterShip and three other eCommerce industry experts came together to shed light on the benefits of shipping insurance and how ​​AfterShip® Protection can help brands secure their packages and improve their bottom line.


You’ll Learn How To:


Watch the webinar to learn more about :

  • What post-purchase features does AfterShip bring to the table
  • Why shipment insurance is the need of the hour for online retailers
  • How AfterShip® Protection can help brands secure their in-transit packages

Featuring

Kristine Co

Kristine Co

Senior Product Marketing Manager, AfterShip

Anish Samuel

Anish Samuel

Sales Manager, UPSC

Katina Davis

Katina Davis

Claims Manager, UPSC

Chandler Peacock

Chandler Peacock

Marketing Manager, UPSC

View recording

Transcript

Kristine: ...out as a follow-up. So, let us jump right in. Okay. So, before we jump into the agenda, let's do a quick round of intros of the folks that you'll be hearing from on this call. So, you already know me, I'm Kristine on the product marketing team at AfterShip, based here in Los Angeles. We have Chandler Peacock. Chandler has multiple years of channel marketing experience with a focus on supply chain technology. And prior to starting at UPS Capital, he served in numerous roles across FedEx's digital marketing organization. Anish brings over 15 years of experience in the shipping insurance space, including 9 years at UPS Capital. As sales manager, he's now focused on UPS Capital's Channel Partner programs. And finally, we have Katina, and she joins us from UPS Capital where as director of claims, she is focused on building and maintaining a best-in-class claims experience.

Okay. So, here is what we're going to be covering today. We're gonna start with a brief overview of AfterShip, go into the why shipment insurance matters, followed by the how it all works, get into the Q&A, and then the raffle. So, as a heads up, we will be sprinkling some poll questions throughout the presentation, so definitely participate in those since they'll make for a much richer conversation. And we'll be taking Q&A at the end, so if there are questions that you have, please submit them through the Q&A feature in Zoom, and then depending on time, we'll be able to tackle what we can at the end.

Okay. So, a bit about AfterShip. So, you're probably familiar with us, but we are a leader in the post-purchase e-commerce SaaS space looking to provide the best post-purchase experience so that e-commerce businesses like all of you on this call can drive loyalty and additional sales. So, some fast facts about our business. So, 2021 was a very large milestone year for us. We raised a Series B funding with Tiger Global, which is awesome. We've been around for over a decade, and on top of that, we are a global company. We have about 400 employees across 5 offices. And we're heavily invested in our product and R&D, meaning that we can pivot and react quickly to our customer's feedback. We empower some of the world's largest brands and retailers with our solutions, with over 13,000 paid customers like TOMS, Harry's, and Gymshark, and even the largest marketplaces in the world like Etsy and Amazon. And some of you are probably already familiar with our suite of post-purchase solutions, ranging from label generation with Postmen and a robust returns portal with a return center, along with all the various features offered with our flagship product of AfterShip.

So, today, we're excited to highlight that in addition to our bread and butter offerings of shipment visibility, branded shipment tracking and notifications, and our tracking API among other products, we now offer shipment protection in partnership with InsureShield by UPS Capital. Like I mentioned, over 70% of our team is made up of product, R&D, and engineering. So they were definitely hard at work creating a shipment insurance product that would work seamlessly for merchants like yourself to help really round out that post-purchase experience because we all know that shipment mishaps are very much a part of what can make or break a customer's experience. Okay. So, now that I've gone through an overview of AfterShip, I'm gonna pass it on over to Chandler who's going to walk us through a bit of the why shipment insurance matters.

Chandler: All right. Thank you, Kristine. And thank you again to everybody for hopping on today. As Kristine mentioned, my name is Chandler Peacock and I work in marketing at UPS Capital. So, we're gonna ask you all a handful of questions throughout the remainder of this presentation. And I'd like to kick off my portion with question number one, which you can answer by responding to the popup poll on your screen that should show up now.

Kristine: Yeah.

Chandler: Perfect. Hopefully you guys are seeing that. So, question number one from me, have you personally experienced a case of porch piracy? Yes or no? We'd love to see your response. And I'll give you guys about 10 seconds to respond to that one.

All right. It looks like the responses are in. Thank you guys for taking the time to participate. So, it looks like 89% of you guys said yes. That's definitely a higher percentage than I was expecting. I know that I'm part of that statistic as well, so definitely, we'll continue to talk about that throughout the rest of the presentation. So, Kristine, next slide, please.

Look, these are some intense times, right? E-commerce sales have exploded more than 30% since 2019 to $4.9 trillion worldwide, and this number is expected to be $7 trillion by 2025. And customers expect every digital experience to be like Amazon Prime, purchases delivered quickly and returned easily, right? That's the new gold standard. But with indefinitely more packages and parcels being shipped, those customer expectations are facing a harsh reality of a corresponding rise in shipping issues, from catastrophic events like floods, fire, or canal blockages, to small things like damages, delayed deliveries, lost and porch-pirated packages. In fact, according to a recent report published by UPS Capital, over 210 million packages disappeared from porches across America in 2021. I know we just saw that large statistic with 89%. I know I was one of the many impacted by this and it's not fun.

Next slide, please. As an online retailer, you might think you have to handle everything on your own. So, when care liability won't cover a loss, you resort to dealing with it yourself, and unfortunately, there's very little room for error. If a claims experience is cumbersome or claims are getting denied, customers get frustrated. And we've all seen this, we've all been here, but if they're unhappy with the product or service from one business, they'll just write a bad review and jump to someone else, damaging your reputation and ultimately putting your revenue and profitability at risk.

Next question or slide, please. That brings me to question number two for you guys. Hopefully you are able to see this, but how does your business handle porch-pirated theft? Immediately replace the product and pay to reship? Immediately credit the customer? Wait for the carrier to determine a loss before taking action? Or no action? And we'll give you guys about 15 seconds on that one. All right. Kristine, let's see those results. Okay. It looks like the majority of you guys put, "Immediately replace the product and pay to reship." Okay. All right. Kristine, next slide. We'll continue to talk about that.

In the past year, 60% of merchants experienced at least one shipping mishap. And as mentioned, those can negatively impact the post-purchase experience and lead to negative customer reviews. You can see some of the stats and percentages there on the right-hand side. Seventy-two percent of SMBs report that shipping incidents like porch piracy, loss, and damage have negatively impacted their business' customer reviews in the past year. And similarly, 66% of consumers say issues with packages never arriving or arriving damaged is the number one reason that drives them to leave a negative review.

So, the question here is, who's supposed to resolve or pay for those mishaps, the carrier, the customer, you guys, the shipper? Businesses like yourselves are getting a lot of pressure to perform like the Amazons and the Walmarts of the world who are constantly raising the bar for how all retailers, regardless of size, should handle issues. They're able to make things right quickly and with little to no information required. I know I've seen it personally. Now, that's tough. It's hard to compete when your attempt at elevating customer service eats in the profits and cash flow, as I'm sure you know, customer service in the business can be a balancing act. Next slide, please.

All right. And with that, one more question from me personally, question number three. Hopefully you guys are able to see that. How much of a pain point are shipping mishaps for your business? Not at all, somewhat painful, just painful, or extremely painful? Let us know. We'll give you about 10 seconds. Thanks, guys.

All right. Results are in. We got some somewhat painful, some painful, and a lot of extremely painfuls. Okay. I'm there with you. Kristine, next slide. We'll continue to touch on that. So, as discussed, you've likely been trying to solve shipping mishaps by eating the cost of losses or adding time and resources to keep your customers happy. Instead, you should be finding a way to make your post-sales process rock solid so you can satisfy and keep your customers even when things don't go according to plan. With that, I'm going to pass things to Anish Samuel to fill you in on AfterShip Protection and how it can help protect your bottom line while also enhancing your customer experience. Anish, take it away.

Anish: Thanks, Chandler. It is absolutely imperative that we reach that gold standard that Chandler was just talking about. Well, what if you could offer a best-in-class post-purchase experience? Now, that post-purchase experience is your opportunity to continue that conversation with that customer, to build trust, to build loyalty with your brand. Now, you have in the event of a loss or a mishap, right, you have two options. You can make things right, right away, like we saw in that poll. A lot of you guys do. Or you can be the other 31% who said you wait for the carrier and then you probably make things right. Well, it's a business decision, it's a difficult decision, we get it, because it is a drain on your cash flow, right? What if we said that most of your claims will be paid, right, and you'll get your claims check relatively fast under a week? That should give you confidence, right? When you insure shipments with AfterShip Protection, powered by InsureShield shipping insurance, you unlock quick and reliable claims payments. Now, that truly would be good customer service, but let's take a look... Kristine, next slide.

Now, let's take a look at what it might cost you, right? If you are insuring directly with the carrier, I could tell you right now, stop and pay attention because that is absolutely coverage that you do not need. Now, for those folks who don't know what I'm talking about when I say carrier coverage, UPS, FedEx, DHL, parcel carriers, they cover up to the first $100 in protection. Thereafter, there's a cost involved, right? What if we gave you the opportunity to allow your customers to control that post-purchase experience for just around 1% of the insured value? That allows you to save time, money, and stress. Kristine, next question. So, this leads me to our fourth question. Would you rather control and pay for insurance or pass the choice and cost along to your customer? So, control and pay for insurance or give customers the option to choose and pay. It can work both ways, but excited to see your responses. All right. All right, Kristine, you wanna see what we got?

Kristine: Let's do it.

Anish: All right, 50-50. Yeah, it does work both ways and it works well both ways with AfterShip Protection, so you do have the option. So, thanks, guys. Appreciate the participation. Next slide, Kristine. Well, we talked about you guys insuring, right? Now, the other side is what happens when you have to put a claim through? In 2021, UPS Capital, we commissioned a study, a post-shipment experience study, and we did learn that it takes about 72 minutes on average, that's an hour and 12 minutes to file a claim. That's a lot of time just to file the claim. We're not talking about managing it, tracking it, following up. All right?

Now, the next part of that is that claim needs to be approved. Now, if you're once again insuring with the carrier, we do know that the carrier only pays out 40% to 50% of the time. So, let's just say you're lucky and your claim was approved. Well, now you gotta wait for the claims check. It takes on average 35 days to receive that check in your hand. Well, I can tell you this, this is truly a big pain point for a lot of customers, and we know that from the survey that we just did. AfterShip Protection gives you full visibility all on one platform. And we do it under five minutes.

Now, let me show you guys exactly how that would work. Well, first, all you have to do... Well, first of all, when you look at this screen, right, you only see four steps. If you've ever done a claim with a carrier, those steps are a lot longer. But we're only asking for basics, right? We're saying, "Tell us what happened. Is it a lost, damaged, or stolen package? What was the content inside? And then give us a few more details if you can. Upload pictures for damaged packages or give us a proof-of-loss invoice. And that's it, you're done." Your customer files that claim. And then on the flip side, conversely, we'll show you what it looks like on the merchant side. Kristine, if you wouldn't mind.

So, for you as a merchant, AfterShip Protection has created this beautiful dashboard that gives you live updates on platform. So, say for example, right now, you're filing a claim with UPS, and then FedEx, and then post office, you're going through three different places to file that claim, and you're probably having to manage timelines and your schedule really around these claims. AfterShip Protection gives you that dashboard that gives you full visibility into what's going on. It allows you to resolve claims fast so that shoppers' issues are addressed quickly while claims are being processed for payment. It gives you that ability to resolve.

Next slide, Kristine. Got another question here. Well, do you think a superior claims process could positively impact your customer experience? One for strongly agree, five for strongly disagree. I'm gonna give you guys a little bit more time on this one, about 15 seconds. I know which side that I would go to, but I'm completely biased and I know a little too much, I think.

All right, Kristine, what do we got? All right. Strongly agree, so do I. Thank you for that. All right. So, folks, we did talk about a best-in-class insurance experience, right? Shipping experience. We pay claims often and fast, and we have a comprehensive policy that we put together. No knock on the carrier, but if you look on the right-hand side of that chart over there, you can see under the carrier liability, there's a lot of Xs, and there's a reason for that. They're just limited to the terms that they offer, right? No fault of theirs. But on the AfterShip Protection side, you can see all those check marks, that's because it is a comprehensive policy, right? We do cover all shipping carriers. We cover all modes of transport, whether you're shipping parcel, UPS, FedEx, DHL, post office, or an LTL carrier, can all be covered under this program.

We do not wait for the carrier to approve a claim. That's a big hurdle right now for carrier liability. That carrier has to say, "It's our fault and now we can approve your claim." We work with you, the merchant, and that's our resolution, either you the merchant or the consumer. And lastly and most importantly, the whole point of coverage is to make you whole. So, when you do have a loss, we cover you at the full invoice value that includes shipping charges or handling charges, the full invoice value.

Kristine, next slide. Well, just a quick overview, guys, UPS Capital, we've been doing this for over 40 years. You've heard from Kristine that AfterShip is a leader in their space and we know together combined, this is a powerful partnership. But just to give you an idea of what UPS Capital's been doing for the past year, well, we've insured 450,000 of unique shippers, right? And we put together a comprehensive policy once again, right, that covers...gives you the ability to file a claim up to nine months. We give you the ability when you receive that package and that box looks completely fine, and you open up the box later and you see that the content is damaged, well, we give you 90 days to cover that because we do include that. We cover porch piracy in branded boxes. And we do this all efficiently. We pay often and we pay fast. Well, I'm excited, guys. I hope you are as well. I'm gonna hand it back to Kristine to close this out.

Kristine: All right. Thanks, Anish. So, to round out with really the so what and what this could mean to your guys' business, I wanted to highlight a proof point from one of our Protection customers. They're actually a functional athletic brand based here in my home turf of Southern California who actually saw a jump from 15% to a range of 50% to 60% of all of the customers who actually opted in to insure their packages given the seamless nature of the checkout flow with Protection. So, that's almost a 4X increase in the amount of orders that were insured after this customer made the switch from their old vendor to AfterShip Protection. And so far, they've seen almost every claim approved and the approval time is the shortest of any solution that they've used in the past. So, we love to see these proof points and look forward to helping you all take your post-purchase experience to the next level with AfterShip Protection.

So, with that, let's dig into the Q&A now with Katina Davis, our claims doctor on the UPS Capital side. So, we actually have a few pre-submitted questions that we'll jump into first, and then if there were any that came up in the Zoom Q&A, we can tackle those afterwards. So, Katina, the first question that I have is, "What if a shipment says delivered, but my customer claims to have not received the package?"

Katina: That's a great question, and we experienced that on several occasions. So, that is where the porch-piracy coverage will come into play. So, what happened in that scenario is the package shows it's delivered and the customer's saying they haven't received it. What we would expect in that case is that the claim will be filed with UPS Capital. You guys will provide the proof of value. And then you would basically submit any additional information that might be necessary for that claim. Of course, there may be certain scenarios where we may ask additional questions to validate the information that's been provided, but it's pretty straightforward, it's pretty simple. Nothing's too complicated on our side. We see that often, and we proceed with processing that claim, assuming all of the information has been provided.

Kristine: Awesome. Thanks, Katina. Okay. The next one that I have is, "Can I insure branded boxes? So, if my logo was on the outside of the box, does that still cover?"

Katina: Yeah, that's a great question. And I will definitely pull in Anish and Chandler on that one, but essentially, we really do want to make sure that we are protecting these items when they're being shipped, right? So, if you're shipping something that let's say it's jewelry, you probably don't want to put that on the outside of the box to try and reduce and prevent possibility of theft. But it really depends on what sorts of items you are shipping out, and you just wanna make sure that the item is making it to the end consumer ultimately. So, it really depends on what the brand is and what the items are that you're shipping. You don't wanna alert any potential thieves that this is a box that they would want to steal essentially.

Anish: Yeah, I can just add on to that. Yeah, we understand that merchants work hard for their brands and they do put their labels and their logos on there. There's no specific restriction for branded boxes under this program, but to Katina's point, we wanna work with you guys insuring the risk, so any help is appreciated.

Kristine: Awesome. Thanks, guys. All right. Third question here is, "Should we file a claim with UPS or FedEx first, or just file one claim directly with AfterShip Protection?"

Katina: So, really, as soon as you identify any issue with your shipment, file that claim immediately with AfterShip Protection. The sooner you can file that claim, the better, and, you know, we can then work to manage any sort of carrier notification that we'll need to do to handle segregation after the fact, but really the sooner you file, the better so that we can try and get it resolved as quickly as possible.

Kristine: All right. Okay. Another question here, "Do I have to be based in the United States to take advantage of Protection?"

Anish: I'm sorry, Kristine, can you just repeat that one more time?

Kristine: Yeah, of course. "Do I have to be based in the United States to take advantage of AfterShip Protection?"

Anish: Yeah, I'll take this one. Well, yes, right now, currently with AfterShip Protection, you have to be based, if you're the merchant, within the U.S., and if you're the consumer selecting, within the U.S. But your package can be anywhere, you just have to be based in the U.S.

Kristine: Okay, perfect. Thank you. It looks like we did get one question in the Q&A, but I think we have already answered that, so that's great. All right. I have one more question for you, Katina, and it is, "What could cause a claim to be denied?"

Katina: Yes. Great question. So, while we do approve the vast majority of our claims, really 90% plus of our claims are approved. In the instance that we do have to deny a claim, it would be for certain things such as the shipment wasn't insured. That's something that we do come across if we have to deny a claim. So, really, it's important to make sure that you're insuring every single shipment so that you can have that coverage on those shipments. Other scenarios that may pop up is the claim is filed outside of the filing window. While we do allow nine months, which is really quite a long time to be able to file that claim, we do have some instances where customers may file outside of that window and that would be a denial. Other scenarios that we have seen in the past is that the ship date on the items for the claim is outside of the policy coverage period. And those would be some examples of reasons why we would deny a claim.

Kristine: Okay. Let's see. Did we get one more question here or is this the one that we had already answered? Okay. There is one more question that we got. Actually, let's just squeeze that one in. "Is there a way for the merchant to file the claim on the customer's behalf or must it be the customer to file the claim with AfterShip Protection?"

Anish: Yeah, the merchant has the ability through that dashboard to resolve those claims as well as the customer. So, you have both options through AfterShip. Kristine: Perfect. Okay. And there was one, actually another one that came in. "What is the cost to the customer, to the end customer, to insure their shipment?" Anish: Yeah, currently, it's at 1.5% with AfterShip Protection. That's the rate on platform. And I think I see the second part of that. "What about subscription purposes that auto-renew?" Do you wanna handle that, Kristine?

Kristine: Yeah, I think this one is it's the same cost of the 1.5% premium fee, but that's something that we can definitely also follow up on just to be 100% sure that, you know, we do cover the subscription purchases on the auto-renewal.

Okay. So, I think that wraps up our Q&A here. So, thanks, guys. Thanks for your question. Thanks, Katina and Anish, for jumping in to helping us answer them. We are gonna jump right in now to our raffle. So, we're giving away some awesome gift cards here, really showcasing some of our AfterShip customers. And so the first that I'm going to raffle off is $100 to Gymshark, which is one of our accounts here. And just so that you guys know that we're being fair and square, we have this nifty little wheel that I'm gonna be using to kinda just shout these names out, but I won't make you dizzy and showcase the wheel the whole time.

So, here we are, Gymshark, $100 gift card is going to Colleen. So, congrats, Colleen, you are walking away with that Gymshark gift card. The next gift card here is for Harry's, and the person walking away with Harry's is we have Bailey. Congrats, Bailey. And let's see, we are also giving away our Baked by Melissa cupcakes as well. And what's great about this one is that you can actually see our AfterShip tracking in action. And the winner there is Travis. And congrats to Travis. We have $100 gift card for BruMate. And the winner on that one cannot be Travis again. Let's re-spin that one. It's Darren. Congrats, Darren. And then the last one that we have is $100 gift card to Etsy. And the winner of that one is we have Jordan. So, congrats guys. Thanks for sticking around through...

Anish: Congrats.

Kristine: ...the raffle there. Hope you guys all enjoy your gifts. So, what we'll do is we'll reach out on the AfterShip side and get you guys all set up with your gift cards and your cupcakes for the one that got cupcakes. So, with that, I did want to also end on additionally high note. So, for all of the webinar attendees from today, we are doing a referral program for AfterShip Protection where you will actually have the opportunity to get, you know, $200 for every qualified lead that you refer. And that also means that the lead that you bring in will also get $100. So, $200 for you, $100 for them. And, of course, we have parameters set up, so we are looking for our target customer, so that would be an online merchant on Shopify or Shopify Plus with an annual gross merchandise value of $5 million plus. And the lead, the contact would need to be a key decision maker like a head or VP or director of e-commerce, finance, or logistics. And the timing that we're running this through is going to be for the next two months. So, this will run us through October 22nd later this year. And the format will be given away through electronic visa gift cards. And it is while supplies last, so we are gonna do a max of just 20 referrals only. So, definitely act fast, guys. We definitely want you guys to take advantage of this and, you know, help us spread the word about what we think is gonna be a great new product that will help you and your fellow merchants in the e-commerce space.

Okay. And the last question that I have is wanted to just kind of get a feel for who would like to be reached out to about Protection? So, let me just pull up the screen here that I have. And that way we know exactly, you know, who is interested and who's kind of closer in that decision making or that consideration part of the journey. So, I'm gonna go ahead and launch this poll. And again, we'll use the results of this to reach out to you individually after the webinar, so that way someone from our sales team can reach out. So, I'll give you guys another 20 seconds on here.

Anish: And if you guys have questions, continue to have questions, please send 'em through. We're happy to answer them even after the webinar.

Kristine: Okay, guys. All right. So, I will end that here. We will definitely follow up for those of you that answered yes. And that, guys, brings us to really the end of our webinar. I think we zoomed pretty quickly through all of that, but, you know, I think we hopefully were able to leave you all with a little bit more information around shipment insurance and our AfterShip Protection than you came into the webinar with. So, we really, really appreciate your time this morning for the West Coasters and the afternoon for the East Coasters and really, you know, hope that you, again, learned a lot and looking forward to hopefully connecting with you guys on a later date. But hope you guys have a good rest of your day. And again, we will send a follow-up email with the webinar recording, as well as more information about the referral program. All right. Thank you, guys.

Chandler: Thank you, guys.

Anish: Thanks so much.

Katina: Thank you.

Chandler: Have a good day.

Kristine: Bye.

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Create a world-class post-purchase experience