Creative Ways to Use EasyPost's Tracking Webhooks
by Jillian Voege
A lot of our customers love working with our tracking webhooks. They're not limited to providing real-time tracking information, they can actually be used to automate processes and improve customer experiences. We personally love it when our customers use our API in innovative ways to improve their operations, so we've gathered a few creative ways to leverage our tracking webhooks to optimize your business.
Power Real-Time Notifications
The most obvious way to leverage our tracking webhooks is to use them to power real-time notifications for your customers. Most customers are used to businesses sending them a tracking code, which also offloads the responsibility of tracking the package onto the customer. If you go the extra mile by sending real-time updates of package movements - when it's shipped, when it's getting close, when it's about to be delivered - you'll improve your customer experience substantially. Your customers will appreciate you going the extra mile, which can turn into the kind of brand loyalty that helps your business grow.
And it isn't a major engineering project that can take months to implement. All it takes is connecting our tracking webhooks to your preferred SMS or email solution. We have integration guides for Twilio and Sendgrid that make it easy for your developers.
Automate Your Returns Process
You can also use tracking webhooks from your return labels to automate a large part of your returns process. When a customer's return label gets scanned, you can use that webhook to trigger processes in your warehouse. It can be something as simple as emailing your warehouse manager to prepare for an incoming return, or it can be something as robust as triggering a script in your OMS and WMS to update inventory counts and prep your warehouse team to receive a return.
One of our customers uses our tracking webhooks to automate their exchange process. This can be especially useful to apparel and jewelry ecommerce brands that experience a higher exchange rate. When customers like the product but want a different size, having a seamless exchange process (powered by EasyPost webhooks and automated return labels) can go a long way to cultivating customer loyalty.
Bolster Your Operations Analytics
Plugging our tracking webhooks into your reporting solutions is a great way to keep track of your carrier's performance. When you receive a tracking event, you can collate that data and analyze it to ensure carrier accountability. If packages are getting delayed or undelivered, having real-time data can help you make proactive decisions to resolve those issues. Since your carrier won't collate and organize this data for you, it's helpful to use tracking webhooks so you can keep tabs on their performance.