Audience

The intended audience of this document is team members at a retailer that have purchased the Convey Engage product.

Purpose

This purpose of this document is to assist the E-Commerce, Shipping/Logistics, IT/Product/UX and Operations teams in implementing the Convey Engage product.

What Is Convey Engage

Convey Engage is one of Convey’s suite of products designed to allow retailers to take control of the customer delivery experience. The goal of Convey Engage is to enable a retailer to become proactive to customer delivery requests and issues, thereby providing an improved customer delivery experience, and driving higher customer satisfaction, NPS, loyalty and repeat.

Convey Engage is focused on in-transit visibility – from the time when the shipment is picked up by the carrier at the retailer’s dock until it is successfully delivered to the customer.

Convey Engage consists of two components that work in tandem to improve the customer delivery experience. The first is Tracking Page, which is the delivery communications hub for the customer. The second is Command Center, which provides a real-time view of all shipments in transit across common carriers.

Convey Engage is intended to be used by several different teams at a retailer, including the shipping and logistics team and the customer care team. It is also used by the retailer’s customer.

While Convey Engage is primarily focused on improving the customer delivery experience and therefore outbound transit of packages from the retailer to the retailer’s customer, Convey Engage supports inbound transit use cases as well. Any shipment that Convey Engage can discover, it can monitor and manage.

Implementing Convey Engage

Convey Engage is designed to be easy and quick to implement, placing a low burden on the IT and shipping and logistics teams, while still providing powerful and flexible capabilities.

Convey Engage is a web application delivered as a software-as-service (SAAS) product, and therefore does not require any additional IT infrastructure, server provisioning, network architecture changes or firewall updates.

Convey Engage integrates with carrier systems. As a retailer, all of the technical details of carrier integration are handled behind the scenes by Convey’s platform. All that is needed from the retailer is credential information for the carrier web sites, reporting systems and APIs.

Convey Engage also supports integration to certain retailer systems, like e-commerce platforms or order management systems. While these integrations are optional, they do enable advanced use scenarios that are very valuable to a retailer. Convey recommends that these integrations are implemented after the initial deployment of Convey Engage.

Planning

All successful software product implementations require planning, and Convey Engage is no exception. The first phase of an implementation is planning; these are the four steps that we recommend.

• Notify IT team of new project
• Notify Product/UX/Creative team of new project
• Notify Customer Service team of new project
• Determine which carriers are required for launch

Notify IT Team of New Project: Convey Engage strives to place a minimal burden on the retailer’s IT team, but there is a small amount of work required. It is important collaborate with the IT team to fit the required work into their schedule.

Convey recommends you share this document with your IT team. Your Convey account team is also happy to do a phone call with your IT team to discuss any questions.

Notify Customer Service Team of New Project: Convey Engage creates a new channel of communication for your customer to give feedback about the delivery experience, and Convey recommends you discuss how this feedback will be managed with your Customer Service team.

Convey Engage also lets you become more proactive in addressing shipping and delivery issues, as opposed to strictly reactive to customer issues. Convey recommends discussing roles and responsibilities with the Customer Service and Shipping and Logistics teams for these new interactions that Convey Engage facilitates among the retailer, the customer and the carrier.

Like the IT team, the Customer Service team may have questions about Convey Engage. Convey encourages you to share this document and also to facilitate dialogue with the Customer Support team and the Convey account team.

Notify Product/UX/Creative Team of New ProjectConvey Engage creates a new customer-facing page on your website that is hosted by Convey. This page is customized to reflect your brand and promotional messaging, so some minimal design input is required from the retailer’s Product/UX/Creative team. Convey recommends that the retailer discuss this new page with your Product/UX/Creative team and collaborate with them on the design.

Determine Carriers Required for Launch: Convey strives to provide comprehensive support for all of the major carriers on its platform – parcel, LTL, white glove, last mile, etc. Convey has spent the last three years investing in these integrations, and believes these integrations are best-in-class in the industry.

To speed time-to-market, it may make sense for a retailer to take a phased approach to implementing carriers in Convey Engage. Meaningful results can often be achieved by launching with only a few carriers initially. For instance, if a handful of your carriers are 95% of your shipment volume, you may decide to address the carriers who handle the remaining 5% of your volume later.

Implementing Tracking Page

Tracking Page is Convey Engage’s hub for communication with the customer about their shipment. Tracking Page allows customers to view the status of their shipment, to register to receive SMS or e-mail notifications and to enter feedback about the delivery.

Shipping and Logistics Requirements: Tracking Page requires carrier credentials and/or API keys to get status for an individual shipment.

For most parcel carriers, Convey is able to use its own credentials to retrieve the status of shipments.

For freight carriers, Convey needs to leverage the credentials of the retailer. Convey has documentation on how to obtain credentials for each carrier, and the Convey implementation team can walk the retailer through the process step-by-step. The Convey implementation team will work with the retailer to easily and securely transmit the credentials to Convey.

IT Requirements: Tracking Page is fully hosted in the cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS). There is nothing IT needs to do to get the page stood up and available on the web; all of this work is done by Convey’s implementation team.

IT does need to make minimal changes to the retailer’s e-commerce platform to implement the Convey web link.

Shipping Notification E-Mails

The shipment notification e-mail is typically sent to the customer once a tracking number has been obtained for the shipment.

The IT team needs to update the shipment notification e-mail to provide a web link to Convey’s hosted Tracking Page. Frequently, these e-mails exist as templates in your e-commerce platform and can be updated without pushing new code to your production platform.

Format of the web link:

https://tracking.getconvey.com/[retailer-name]/[carrier-code]?tn=[tracking-number]

[retailer-name] – This is the name of the retailer in Convey’s system, as assigned by Convey. This does not change from e-mail to e-mail.

[carrier-code] – This is the 4-digit SCAC code of the carrier. Convey will provide the IT team with a list of SCAC codes for the retailer’s carriers.

[tracking-number] – This is the tracking number for the individual shipment. Only one tracking number should be used per web link.

Order Status Page

Retailer e-commerce platforms often allow customers to see a history of their orders and to check order status, including delivery status. If delivery status functionality is provided by the retailer’s e-commerce platform, Convey recommends updating the code to link out to Tracking Page.

UX/Branding Requirements: Tracking Page is branded to match the visual design and the interaction patterns of your web site.

Since Tracking Page is hosted by Convey, Convey’s implementation team oversees its technical implementation. Convey requires the retailer’s input on several aspects of the page.

• Page Header & Navigation
• Theme Colors
• Display Ad – Creative & Link
• SMS Setup

Page Header & Navigation

Tracking Page is customized to fit in the interaction design of the retailer’s site. The Convey implementation team will work with the retailer team to establish requirements for the page header and navigation of Tracking Page to integrate it seamlessly with the retailer’s site.

Theme Colors

Tracking Page is designed to reflect the brand of the retailer and the visual treatment of the retailer’s site. Tracking Page supports the concept of “theming” – configuring specific color values that are used in many different places on the page.

Display Ad

Tracking Page supports a single display ad (960x960 @ 72dpi in JPG format) that links to a web address. The Convey implementation team needs the image asset and link from the retailer.

Any time you would like to replace ad, please contact the Convey implementation team. Convey is committed to a 24-hour turnaround time for placing new creative on Tracking Page.

SMS

Twilio is the service Convey uses to send SMS message to customers. Customers must opt-in to SMS from the form on Tracking Page. Once subscribed, alerts are sent to the customer when the shipment is out for delivery, delivered or has an exception.

Convey manages all technical aspects of SMS, but the retailer is in charge of all Twilio costs per message sent or received. Pricing is minimal at $0.0075 per send. Convey will ask for your accounting department’s email, so they can be added as a user to the Convey Twilio account and input a billing credit card. We recommend loading your account with $20 initially and using the auto-reload feature.

Implementing Command Center

Command Center is the web-based application that provides a single view of a retailer’s in-transit shipments. It helps retailers discover shipments that are in distress and take action on shipments that need attention. Command Center facilitates communication among the retailer, carrier and the customer, and it allows the retailer to be proactive in solving delivery issues on behalf of the customer.

Shipping and Logistics Requirements: The Shipping and Logistics team is the main end user of Command Center. The Shipping and Logistics team must decide who has access to Command Center, including the members of the shipping team and the members of other teams at the retailer.

There is some additional carrier set up required for Command Center. Specifically, Command Center uses reports from your carriers, so these reports must be enabled and then sent to Convey. The Convey implementation team will help you with set up.

Customer Service Requirements: Command Center enables a new level of proactive response to customer delivery issues. It may be appropriate for the Customer Service team to handle many of these responses.

IT Requirements: Command Center does not require IT resources for a basic implementation.

Optionally, Command Center can integrate additional data from retailer systems like the e-commerce platform and the order management system to enable a richer experience for the retailer and the customer. This data can take the form of a “feed” from one of those systems that is sent to Convey.

Command Center’s default format for receiving feeds is a CSV file. The CSV supports the following fields:

• Order Number
• Reference Number
• BOL Number
• Tracking number
• Order date
• Estimated delivery date
• Customer Name
• Customer Phone Number
• Customer Email Address
• Origin Name
• Origin Address
• Origin Zip Code
• Destination Address
• Destination Zip Code

The Convey implementation team can give the retailer example CSV files and answer questions about transport protocols and other technical topics.

Product/UX/Creative Requirements: Since Command Center is not used by the customer, there are no Product/UX/Creative requirements for the retailer.

Conclusion

Convey Engage allows retailers to take control of the customer delivery experience. It has two components – Tracking Page and Command Center – that can be implemented quickly and deliver new insight and capability for in transit shipments.