Winona Rajamohan
Product Marketing
Imagine pulling out of a dealership with the used Honda you just spent a sizable chunk of money on as a nineteen-year-old college student, only for it to break down on you a little while after.
For Victor Black, Seel’s Senior Director of Customer Success, this was a memorable moment for him. Not because of the anxiety of being stranded on the side of the road, but because it became the best post-purchase experience of his life.
“[The person who sold me the car] and two other guys — including their finance guy — crammed into a tiny tow truck, came to get me, and towed the broken car,” Victor says. They handled everything, and he had a car ready to go soon after without any hassle.
Victor has, unsurprisingly, been loyal to Honda ever since.
What makes a loyal customer?
Moments of loyalty made after a purchase go a long way. Especially if it’s a purchase you’re anxious about.
It doesn’t have to be a car. It could be a sweater that you really need in time for your mother’s birthday, or a pair of shoes that you want to surprise your son with after watching him put in extra work the past school year. If something goes wrong, you want to be assured that the retailer you’re buying from can make it right.
Victor was joined by Laura Uruchima, Director of Customer Success at Authentic Brands Group, on stage at the CommerceNext Growth Show to talk about how post-purchase experiences like these help brands grow into household names, one happy customer at a time. In this recap, we’ll walk through a few learnings that emphasize how post-purchase can be mobilized into a growth engine instead of a reactive afterthought.
#1: Retention happens after checkout
When something breaks, a company's response either confirms your fear that you made a mistake, or it repairs the relationship on the spot.
"One of the most devastating numbers I heard came from conferences like this: if a customer hits friction during the return process, you're more likely than not to lose upwards of 28% of those customers for good," Laura said. "The place where you can build the most trust and lose customers is at the post-purchase."
Laura holds this belief in the way she operates across more than 60 brands in the Authentic Brands Group portfolio. Although each retailer has their own voice, their own set of customers, and distinct expectations for the customer experience, Laura knows that regardless of brand, the customer journey doesn’t end at checkout.
#2: Transparency is the mechanism for growth that lasts
Trust isn't built by avoiding failure, but by how visible you are when failure happens.
Laura's son had pre-ordered an art book online months before it was due to ship. When a production delay pushed the date back, the company emailed her first instead of waiting for her to come asking.
"That saved us from a more stressful moment, because my son was asking what it meant, why the package wasn't here, whether it was lost or stolen," she said. "But because the company had proactively sent that update, I felt at ease. I trust that company now, and I'll keep buying from them."
She sees the same principle at work in giving customers control, not just information. She points out how Authentic Brands Group maintains this by offering shoppers post-purchase benefits with Seel. Seel’s opt-out email sent within an hour of a shopper making a purchase is the kind of proactive disclosure that reduced her team's contacts per order.
#3: The safety net has to exist before anything goes wrong
Checkout is a moment of heightened loss aversion. Shoppers hesitate not because they expect something to go wrong, but because they're weighing a decision they can't easily undo. Behavioral research backs this up directly.
A visible return or cancellation policy lowers the perceived risk of completing a purchase, and easier cancellation policies tend to increase conversion rather than reduce it, because they lower the felt risk of committing in the first place.
Reactive resolution earns loyalty after something breaks. But brands can operate on a system that allows them to guarantee confidence even before the sale is made.
#4: Generosity only scales if it's economical to deliver
Victor’s experience with his car left an impact because three people showed up in a tow truck within the hour. That kind of response is only repeatable at scale if it doesn't cost the company much to deliver.
Returns are already an expensive line item before you add anything on top. US retail returns topped $849 billion in 2025, or roughly 16% of annual retail sales, and processing a single return typically runs into double digits per unit once shipping, inspection, and restocking are factored in. Guaranteeing a "we'll make it right" moment on every order, on top of that baseline cost, isn't something most merchants can absorb on their own balance sheet.
"Companies like Seel make it effortless for customers, if they lose their package, they have this protection for just pennies on the dollar," Laura adds. The mechanism that turns "we'll make it right" from a one-off gesture into standard operating procedure is a cost that is difficult to extend to every order unless retailers have partners that can help them take on that risk.
#5: Reactive thinking puts the experience itself at risk
It's tempting to file all of this under customer experience: better service, friendlier policies, a nicer resolution center. But that framing misses what post-purchase actually is, a standing financial commitment, not a service quality question.
The big numbers merchants bear for returns and post-purchase liability are a recurring draw on margin. If you treat these costs as a reactive fix instead of proactive infrastructure, it loses urgency and merchants are forced into drastic decisions when operations have to be tightened.
Post-purchase is built on proactive systems
Laura's closing thought reframes everything above. "Successful companies aren't the ones that don't have any friction," she said, "they're the ones that respond in a positive way."
The tenth marketing email gets forgotten, she reminds the audience. How a company shows up when something goes wrong doesn't, and that single moment is usually what decides whether a customer stays for good, or leaves for good. It’s important for merchants to set themselves up for success by treating post-purchase as a growth lever and collaborating with the right partners to make that happen.
