At NRF, parcelLab’s Chief Product Officer, Julian Krenge, sat down with Jordan Gesky, formerly of True Classic, to unpack three years of hands‑on experimentation across post‑purchase, returns, and customer experience. The headline takeaway was powerful: If your post‑purchase journey has a dead end, your customer journey does too.
True Classic’s approach shows what happens when post‑purchase isn’t treated as an operational afterthought, but as a revenue, loyalty, and customer experience driver. Below, we break down the key themes, tactics, and lessons from the session.
Post‑purchase shouldn’t be the end
parcelLab’s CEO, Tobi Buxhoidt, opened the session with a mindset shift that framed the entire conversation: if post‑purchase is done well enough, it stops being post‑purchase at all. Instead, it quietly becomes pre‑purchase marketing for the next order.
True Classic leaned fully into this idea. Every confirmation email, tracking update, and returns touchpoint was designed not just to inform, but to keep customers engaged, confident, and ready to come back. A purchase wasn’t the finish line. It was just a milestone.
Building a high‑touch experience with a lean team
Despite massive order volume and cultural impact, True Classic has a surprisingly lean CX and ops team. They are proof that just because you have a smaller team, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice the experience you provide for your customers.
They make sure their priorities are clear. This means:
Make customers feel informed and cared for at every step
Proactively answer questions before customers have to ask
Eliminate the friction that drives unnecessary support tickets
A strong post‑purchase journey shows that True Classic takes its customer experience seriously. Their customers receive proactive updates directly in their inbox or via an on‑brand tracking page, often before they even thought to check.
The result? Fewer “Where is my order?” tickets and more time spent on meaningful customer interactions.
Keeping tracking and communication on‑brand (and on‑site)
One of the earliest moves True Classic made was bringing the tracking experience back onto their own website instead of sending customers to third‑party carrier pages.
This is super important because it means:
Customers stay inside the True Classic ecosystem
Embedded links made it easy to start the next purchase
Every post‑purchase email quietly drove incremental revenue
In fact, the team saw that every post‑purchase email generated roughly an additional dollar in revenue. This led to a 29% lift in the first year. It’s proof that tracking pages aren’t just informational, they’re commercial.
Proactive communication beats perfect delivery
Let’s be real: delays happen. What sets brands apart is how fast and how human they respond. True Classic implemented aggressive timelines (not aggressive messaging) for proactive outreach. If tracking didn’t update within 48 hours, customers heard from the brand first.
Instead of “Your package is arriving late.” Customers got: “We see the issue, we’re on it, and here’s what happens next.”
This approach helped:
Reduce WISMO tickets
Set realistic expectations in an Amazon‑shaped world
Kept conversations positive, even when things went wrong
Crucially, these messages were never “do not reply.” Customers could always reach a real person if needed. This maintains trust when it mattered most.
Navigating carrier changes without breaking CX
As carriers came and went, including newer, less familiar delivery providers, True Classic stayed focused on one non‑negotiable: The tracking link must work, and the delivery expectation must be clear.
When customers don’t recognize the carrier, or worse, don’t recognize the delivery method, it creates friction fast. The team even stepped in when a customer flagged that one carrier delivered packages from personal vehicles late at night.
This taught the team a valuable lesson. Choosing innovative or cost‑effective carriers is fine, but the brand experience doesn’t end at checkout. Expectations need to be clearly set with both customers and carriers.
International shipping: One size does not fit all
As True Classic expanded internationally, they quickly learned that customer expectations vary significantly by region. This led to making key adjustments, which included:
Segmenting feedback by country and region
Clearly communicating when orders are being shipped from multiple warehouses
Using post‑purchase insights to decide which SKUs to localize
The payoff was significant. Local fulfillment didn’t just reduce costs. It dramatically improved delivery speed and customer satisfaction.
Using AI to resolve issues instead of escalating them
AI played a growing role in True Classic’s post‑purchase support, but with clear guardrails. This meant feeding AI richer shipment and order data, letting AI resolve early‑stage questions automatically, and using time‑based rules (e.g., 12+ days triggers resolution paths).
The team also learned what didn’t work well. For them, this meant that AI should not respond to angry or aggressive messages, and AI should not be used as a replacement for human judgment.
The key is balance. AI handles speed and scale. Humans handle nuance, emotion, and edge cases.
Returns that retain customers
Returns are treated as a second chance to win loyalty, not a loss to minimize. True Classic offers multiple options to give customers flexibility during the returns journey. Customers can either use:
Happy Returns for fast, in‑person drop‑offs
USPS with label or QR code fallback
In‑store returns at flagship locations
But the real game‑changer was implementing uneven exchanges within their returns portal. Instead of forcing equal‑value swaps, customers could upgrade to higher-priced items or choose lower-priced items and receive the difference.
The impact:
2 out of 3 customers upgraded their exchange
Average upside of ~$22 per exchange
Customers stayed engaged instead of churning at the return
Protecting profitability without punishing good customers
True Classic’s free returns come with smart safeguards instead of blanket restrictions.
The team uses:
Return limits over defined time windows
Manual reviews for repeat or suspicious behavior
Region‑specific rules where shipping costs were extreme
In some international cases, it was cheaper (and better for CX) to refund and let customers keep the product. This was framed as a “donate it” moment rather than a loss. More importantly, bad actors were handled individually. The experience stayed frictionless for everyone else.
Solving the pack problem
Bundled products introduced a tricky challenge: what happens when one item in a nine‑pack is defective?
Forcing customers to return everything wasn’t an option. Instead, True Classic built logic within parcelLab’s platform that allowed partial pack returns, triggered only when there was a legitimate issue.
This required deep system integration, but the result demonstrated lower return shipping costs, faster resolutions, and a dramatically better customer experience
The big takeaway
True Classic’s story proves that post‑purchase isn’t about emails, tracking links, or returns labels. It’s about continuity. When communication is proactive, data‑driven, and human, post‑purchase becomes a growth lever. And when done right, the journey doesn’t end at delivery or return. It quietly loops back to the next purchase.
Watch the full NRF session above to hear the full conversation between parcelLab and True Classic.
