Upgrading online shopping experience with self-service features

The pet supplies market is a significant and rapidly growing branch of the retail sector. Bloomberg predicts that it will grow from $320 billion in 2023 to almost $500 billion by 2030. As pet owners seek to improve the lives of their animal companions and look for the best products, retailers are racing to meet the increasing demand.

Establishing cooperation for swift team scaling

Our client, a major player in the pet product market, developed a multinational e-commerce retail platform. Operating in several countries, they wanted to ensure they were meeting customers’ expectations and delivering new, useful features.

Since most of the client’s products are custom-made internally, they needed engineers who could seamlessly integrate into their team. We partnered with the client to help them achieve their ambitious goals. Our engineers quickly joined their teams, delivering expected results in a short time.

Extending platform functionalities for a better shopping experience

We were responsible for complete products, working mainly in a Java environment but also with containers and the AWS cloud. Over the course of our cooperation, we were involved in several major projects.

In our first engagement, we focused on stock management. Our team developed a functionality to monitor inventory levels in each country and relay that data to the platform. This feature allowed customers to see if their desired product is available, ensuring they had up-to-date information when ordering.

Mapping metadata for easier product search

The second engagement was in the area of master data where we worked with product metadata. We needed to integrate this metadata between multiple systems.

Our developers worked on a process that would import data from the manufacturers’ systems and mapped it to the client’s product information management system. From that source, the data had then to be imported and mapped to tables in the e-commerce platform to display correctly in the customer-facing application.

We covered the process end-to-end, covering solution design, development, and testing.

Automating returns for improved post-transaction support

One of our key projects was in customer care, where our Java engineers developed various self-service automations to simplify customer experience and streamline the complaints or refund process. By automating these processes, we reduced query resolution time and empowered customers to self-service and cancel orders.

We automated tasks such as:

• Providing contextual information to agents to reduce investigation time
• Integrating with third-party applications for tasks like refunds, shipment returns, and automatic email responses
• Generating assets such as refunds, vouchers, or return shipping notes
• Support ticket generation.

We also worked on A/B testing of the new front-end applications using these functionalities. Additionally, the team integrated AI to increase automation in query processing, further improving efficiency.

Long-term partnership for consistent growth

Our effective and productive cooperation led to a long-term partnership, during which we supported the client in enhancing their e-commerce platform. New features have significantly improved the experience for customers shopping for their pets and solidified the client’s position as a leader in the pet retail sector.

Through our collaborative efforts, the client achieved remarkable growth, expanded their market presence, and continued to delight their customers with innovative solutions and exceptional service.