What happens after a customer clicks “buy” is often treated as an afterthought. But at John Lewis, the real work—and the real opportunity—starts post-purchase. In this session at DELIVER Europe 2025, Victoria Evans (Partner & Customer Delivery Development Lead, John Lewis) and Tobias Buxhoidt (Founder & CEO, parcelLab) made the case for rethinking fulfilment and customer communications as the core engine of loyalty.

From Fragmented Journeys to Unified Experiences

John Lewis operates across multiple fulfilment centres and carrier networks, with a wide product range—from furniture to fashion. This complexity risked customer confusion, especially with multi-parcel orders and split deliveries. By integrating parcelLab, John Lewis unified their tracking communications—reducing emails by 25% while increasing relevance.

Each customer now receives a coherent, branded journey—tracking at order level, not parcel level. It’s a small change with a major impact: customers stay informed, engaged, and in control.

Clicks That Convert—Even After Checkout

Rather than outsourcing the post-purchase experience to carriers, John Lewis reclaimed the channel. By embedding relevant, shoppable content in tracking emails, they drove over £1 million in incremental revenue. Early results show strong open and click-through rates, making it a new high-performance channel.

Every visit to the website, post-purchase, is worth around 30p in value—making it a natural place to test personalisation, category recommendations, and next-purchase nudges.

Returns, Claims & Recovery: Making Pain Points Frictionless

Returns have long been a source of customer friction. With parcelLab, John Lewis has added visibility to the returns journey—acknowledging progress through the carrier network and reducing WISMO (“where is my return?”) calls. Customer satisfaction is already showing signs of improvement.

They’ve also started embedding early intervention for issues like delivery misroutes, power outages, or ghost parcels—creating proactive communications that resolve problems before they become complaints.

Future Focus: Automation, App Integration & Personalisation

Looking ahead, John Lewis plans to:

• Extend parcelLab to two-person delivery services

• Integrate app messaging with web and email

• Offer proactive refunding or compensation for failed delivery services

• Leverage returns data and sentiment to refine customer flows

The long-term vision? Frictionless journeys that blur the line between pre- and post-purchase—building lifetime value one delivery at a time.

“What we’re building is a loyalty engine powered by experience, not just price or speed,” said Victoria. “It’s about trust, transparency, and consistency.”