Beyond the buy button: Mining the gold in post-purchase CX
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Most retail brands treat “buy now” like the end of the journey. But that’s actually where the real customer experience begins—and where most are missing the gold.
In this live webinar, TheyDo Co-Founder and CEO Jochem van der Veer sits down with Zack Hamilton, SVP of Growth Strategy and creator of Unf*cking Your CX, to explore one of the most overlooked opportunities in customer experience: What happens after the sale?
Drawing on his deep background in retail operations, e-commerce, and CX strategy, Zack lays out the hard truths, common pitfalls, and practical strategies that separate today’s winners from the rest.
“The post-purchase experience isn’t just logistics—it’s the most important mile. And most brands are missing it.” says Zack.
Here are the key takeaways from their conversation:
1. Most brands stop at the ‘BUY’ button
Customer experience strategies often focus entirely on getting the sale and then drop off once the transaction is complete. As Zack puts it, “The experience essentially ends at the ‘buy’ button.” When brands treat post-purchase like a handoff to disconnected teams, they miss out on valuable moments to reinforce the relationship. “Hope becomes the strategy,” says Zack. “And I don’t know about you, but in retail, when hope is your strategy, you can kiss your profit goodbye.”
2. Loyalty is earned after the sale—not before
Today’s customers expect more than just a product—they expect proactive updates, seamless delivery, and a continued sense of care after they click "buy." However, many brands fail to follow through. When disconnected teams or outdated systems handle post-purchase experiences, it feels impersonal and mechanical. Zack elaborates: “Everything seems very transactional and not relational. And that’s why customer lifetime value is crashing.”
In other words, when customers feel like just another order number, they’re less likely to buy again. The emotional connection that builds loyalty gets lost, and so does the repeat business.
3. The best brands build experience pods instead of silos
Most organizations treat post-purchase like a relay race: Marketing hands off to Ops, then Ops to support, and so on. But as Jochem puts it, that baton pass often becomes a "pain chain"—a series of disjointed moments where no one owns the full journey. Zack proposes a different approach, “The brands that are winning don’t pass the baton. They operate in cross-functional experience pods.”
These pods bring together CX, operations, tech, and logistics teams to focus on specific customer journeys or cohorts. Each pod is accountable from acquisition to repurchase, with shared KPIs tied to business impact. This approach is how leading brands boost repeat purchases and build real loyalty before the package even arrives.
4. Journey management is the playbook for impact
Top brands use journey management as an operational discipline, not as a conceptual exercise. Zack laid out the four essentials of leading post-purchase teams:
Map the journey cycle: From pre-purchase to repurchase
Prioritize by business impact: Tie friction to KPIs like LTV, CAC, and retention
Value-stack short wins and long-term wins: Think quick ROI and long-haul strategy
Create real-time action loops: Monitor results and redesign as needed
“Journey mapping and journey management—it’s not a theory. It’s the playbook that just gets executed at an extremely high level that delivers customer lifetime value.” says Zack.
5. Real-time action loops close the gap between insight and execution
Fixing frictions isn’t a one-time job. Leading brands build systems that monitor how changes perform and adjust when outcomes fall short. It’s about tracking impact, iterating fast, and continuously aligning with customer and business needs.
6. Speak the language your execs understand
Customer experience teams often bring forward metrics like NPS or survey themes, but those alone rarely move the needle with executives. To get buy-in, CX needs to show a clear business impact. According to Zack, that’s where his “Mad Libs” framework comes into play. This simple “fill-in-the-blank” template reframes customer pain as a business risk. Here’s how:
“Every [frequency], [# of customers] experience [friction], resulting in [impact]. If not resolved by [timeline], we risk [strategic goal].”
For example:
“Every month, 2,700 customers experience delivery delays, resulting in 2,700 additional support calls and $13,500 in costs. If not resolved by Q2, we risk missing our $10M cost-reduction target.”
This kind of framing turns friction into fuel for action and helps CX teams position their insights where decisions actually get made—in the context of revenue, cost, and growth.
7. Forget stale, dusty loyalty programs. Relevance is the new reward.
Most loyalty programs are just old-school data collection engines pretending to be perks, says Zack. “I don’t want a loyalty program that’s trying to get me to spend more. I want one that adds value to my life.”
The brands that earn true loyalty do it by showing up when it matters most—through seamless, connected, and personalized post-purchase experiences.
Wrap-up: The future of CX is post-purchase
If your brand’s journey ends at the “buy” button, you’re not just missing a step—you’re missing the most powerful opportunity to build loyalty, grow customer lifetime value, and reduce costly support overhead.
Why? Because that’s where expectations are tested, emotions are highest, and customers decide whether to come back—or walk away for good. And yet, for many brands, post-purchase is still treated as an afterthought: disconnected teams, generic communication, and reactive support.
Zack and Jochem make the case for a new approach—one where the customer journey is managed holistically, with shared accountability across the organization. The shift is clear:
From handoffs to cross-functional pods
From dashboards to real-time action loops
From transactional moments to relational experiences
From hope to strategy
“The last mile is the most important mile, especially when it comes to customer lifetime value,” says Zack. Brands that invest in journey management—not just mapping—are winning. They’re reducing churn, increasing repurchase rates, and delivering customer experiences that feel less like a process and more like a promise fulfilled.
Want to go deeper? Watch the full webinar
Webinar timestamps:
00:00 Welcome & introductions
03:01 Why post-purchase is the CX goldmine
07:17 Zack’s experience & setting the stage
08:42 Customer behavior isn’t evolving. It’s accelerating.
10:32 The customer behavior crash: Why outdated CX playbooks fail
13:49 Where 'profit leaks' really happen (hint: it’s post-purchase)
15:46 How top brands win customer loyalty
17:05 Journey management: missing link in the post-purchase experience
23:38 Speaking the language of the business (Mad Libs framework)
27:40 Are traditional loyalty programs dead?
32:43 Tiffany&Co: post-purchase experience example
46:00 Framing the journey frictions in impact
58:34 Wrap-up and goodbye