SMS and e-mail service for Russian Post and EMS parcels

Hello! For several months, I watched as my friends from the Vinyl with Cinnamon sticker shop implemented the track-parcel.rf service — SMS and e-mail escort for packages, letters, wrappers, and other matters, Russian Post and EMS Russian Post ". At first, the guys worked out the technology at their store, and now they decided to make it available to customers and administrators of online stores. Actually, you will communicate with them in the comments. And now welcome under the cut - to the essence of the service and the story of how it was created.

It all started with the fact that two years ago we opened an online store selling vinyl stickers. We sent about half of the orders by Russian Post, but about 15% of them came back. Due to the fact that most of the shipments were cash on delivery, we received less money. We began to ring up customers and find out why they did not take the parcel. Mostly they answered about the following: “But I didn’t know that she had already arrived,” “I made a mistake in the house number, and she came to another department,” “In my apartment someone constantly ignites mailboxes!” That is, for one reason or another, a piece of paper did not reach the buyer about the package getting into the post office. Well, on the whole, the answers ranged from “I don’t need an order, I changed my mind” and “I found it cheaper and decided not to tell you that I don’t need a package, and in general, who are you ?!” until the banal “I forgot to pick it up” .
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If it is difficult to do something with the human factor, it is possible to try to inform customers more effectively. At first, the manager tried to ring up all those who, according to the status of the tracking code, received a package. It turned out to be ineffective and very time consuming: many did not pick up the phone, and those who answered the call either promised to pick it up “during the week” and didn’t pick up, or else somehow refused. Well, the prices for long-distance calls (especially to a mobile number) are by no means low. In general, we quickly got tired and refused calls, having decided to try SMS.



We unloaded the base of those who need to send a message, downloaded to Unisender and, in fact, sent. The positive effect was, but time was spent a lot. And I also wanted to send not one sms, but to “accompany” the parcel during the delivery, so that the buyer would simultaneously be morally prepared to receive the order and would not disturb us with letters like “Where is my order ?!”

I wanted to simplify and automate the process. The result was a system from which the whole service grew later. The system collected all our tracks, and every day checked their status on the Russian Post website (this is another story). When one of the statuses appears, for example, “accepted for sending”, “sorting” or “arrived at the place of delivery”, the corresponding SMS was automatically sent to the recipient's number. Moreover, the text of the message was not just copied the postal status, in which it is difficult for a person to understand, but it was clearly written what and how.

So we freed up the time of the manager who had done such operations manually before, reduced the load on the call center (after all, people were aware of where their order was) and reduced the number of returns by about 5% - from 15% to 10%. Already not bad. The system has paid for itself.

We decided not to stop at this and thought that we should also automatically remind clients about ourselves if they do not take the package for a long time. They did this: if the status of the parcel does not change from the status “arrived at the place of delivery” to “handed” within five days, the system automatically sends a reminder in the form of SMS and e-mail, in which we write that you need to send the package and pick up. And so every 5 days. And it worked, reducing the percentage of returns by another 3%. Total from 15% to 7%.



However, this figure seemed to us all the same to be too big, and we did not stop the creative search, until at one of the forums we came across a very interesting technique - to intrigue the client. Before that we wrote: “Hello, Ivan! Please take your parcel, please, it will soon expire, and it will be sent back. ” And now the client received something like this: “Hello, Ivan! You still have not taken the order from the Post, but in vain! After all, inside you will find a small surprise, which we have prepared especially for you! ”(There was a real surprise.)

Focus worked very well! We have reduced the number of returns by as much as 5% and once reached for unthinkable 3% returns from the post office. Those. reduced the number of returns 5 times. From 15% to 3%. You can translate all this into a cash equivalent. Our store sends mail an average of 500 orders per month. 12% from 500 is 60 orders. Attracting, processing and sending by mail one order costs us about 650 rubles (goods, advertising, delivery, personnel, rent, etc.), i.e. we stopped losing 39,000 rubles each. monthly and with a net profit of 150 rubles. from the order began to earn "clean" 9000 rubles. In our case, it sounds maybe not very impressive, but it all depends on the average check and the number of orders per month :)

Anyway, having received these results and not finding such a service in Runet, we decided to make our system accessible to others. We officially connected to the Russian Post server (it took 3 months to do this), in February we made a module for CMS InSales - we connected about 100 stores to InSales (information transfer via API). In May, we decided to make a version that was not tied to a CMS at all (information transfer through an Excel file), Hopes & Fears magazine accidentally wrote about us, and then we received more than 1000 registrations. Recently launched a module for Bitrix. We wait.



There are plans to continue to “sow good”, that is, to scale: to do integration with CMS, CRM and ERP systems and develop the service. We want to create a system for predicting the delivery time, depending on the sorting center, which the parcel has hit. The forecast will be based on our statistics, the benefit of the tracks is now being processed a lot. Interested in us and the Mail itself. They said that the service is interesting, but the communication has just begun and will obviously be long. It is not clear where this dialogue will lead, so we rely only on ourselves.

For Habr's readers, we have a gift - a code that allows you to track up to 5 packages for the next 3 months for free. For those who buy on the Internet and receive orders by mail, come in handy! Well, if you represent an online store, then you can safely register without a code and receive a 3-week free test.

Thanks for attention!

Code for habra people: Habra

Service site: track-parcel.rf