Post-Purchase Negative Removal Audit
Repair exceptions after checkout before buying more demand
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
When Bartlett asks for apparel-launch advice, Sutherland says marketers focus too heavily on adding positives and too little on removing negatives. He divides ecommerce into a polished sales area and an underinvested post-purchase area where unusual requests create pain. The audit therefore starts after the buy button: attempt to change, cancel, trace, return, or resolve a failed delivery. Make a human contact route easy to find, assess service teams on resolution rather than only cost and call duration, and consider letting customers choose a delivery provider. In Sutherland's account, choice accommodates local differences and gives the customer agency; without it, a courier failure is blamed on the retailer that imposed the courier. The priority is to repair these bottom-of-funnel constraints before spending more to send customers into a disappointing experience.
Origin
Extracted from The Diary of a CEO. Rory Sutherland advises Steven Bartlett to answer the phone, expose support details, improve delivery choice, and invest beyond the ecommerce purchase funnel.
Core principles
- 01Removing customer pain can matter more than adding another selling point
- 02A polished checkout does not compensate for abandonment after payment
- 03Customers need a human route when the standard funnel fails
- 04Choice creates agency and changes how customers assign blame
How to run it
- 1
Start After Payment
Map what customers must do from order confirmation through delivery, cancellation, return, and refund. Include failures and unusual requests, not only the intended path.
Pro tip Place a real test order and trigger each exception yourself.
- 2
Find the World of Pain
Identify where the customer loses visibility, choice, or access to a person. Rank failures by customer harm and frequency.
Pro tip Read support contacts and delivery complaints alongside conversion data.
- 3
Restore Human Access
Provide a visible route to a person for cases the standard workflow cannot handle. Make ownership clear until the problem is resolved.
Pro tip Measure successful resolution, not just low call volume.
Watch out A published phone number is useless if staffing or authority cannot resolve issues.
- 4
Return Useful Choice
Where operations permit, let customers choose delivery or another consequential service variable. Explain tradeoffs and honour the selected option.
Pro tip Use postcode-level evidence because provider quality can vary locally.
Watch out Too many unreliable choices can add confusion without agency.
- 5
Fix Before Amplifying
Repair the largest constraint and verify the improved exception path. Only then increase acquisition that will send more people through the system.
Pro tip Re-run the same failed-journey tests after each change.
In the wild
Sutherland argues that customers have postcode-specific courier preferences. If a customer chooses Royal Mail and the parcel fails, they may blame that provider; if the retailer imposes a courier and it fails, the retailer owns the disappointment.
→ Meaningful delivery choice can improve fit and perceived agency.
Illustrative example: before a launch, a retailer places test orders through each courier, deliberately changes an address, misses a delivery, requests a return, and calls support. It fixes the points where ownership disappears before buying launch ads.
→ The retailer validates the exception journey rather than trusting the checkout alone.
Common mistakes
Polishing Only the Happy Path
A slick purchase flow says little about what happens when delivery or cancellation deviates from plan.
Hiding Support to Reduce Cost
Preventing contact may improve an internal metric while worsening customer resolution and trust.
Buying Demand Into a Bottleneck
More advertising magnifies a disappointing experience when the bottom of the funnel remains broken.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for online retailers whose purchase flow is smooth but whose support, fulfilment, or returns generate distrust and complaints.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal as a substitute for correcting a poor product or for offering operational choices the business cannot reliably fulfil.
From the transcript
“answer the phone okay and do not hide your phone number”
“as soon as you deviate from that very narrowly preconceived sort of purchase funnel you enter a world of pain”
“the person is paying for the delivery should choose who delivers it”
From the episode
The Marketing Secrets Apple & Tesla Always Use: Rory Sutherland