5 tips for improving delivery times and shipping service performance
For a company that sells products online to thrive in the overly competitive market, there can be no room for any delays in order processing or shipping, nor can a parcel arrive even a day late at its destination – otherwise, your customers might never buy from your again.
Yes, it’s a booming yet competitive eCommerce world out there, and customer service should be your top priority if your goal is to sell more and boost customer acquisition and retention over time. And to achieve all of that, you have to optimize several internal processes and improve the performance of your shipping service.
While this might seem like a cumbersome task that could put a dent in your budget, keep in mind that the long-term rewards will be well-worth the initial investment of having an excellent shipping service. After all, your key objective should be to set yourself up for success over the long term. Let’s go over the crucial tips you need to follow to achieve this, and more.
Build a network of local warehouses
First things first, there’s not much you can do if your warehouses are stationed too far away from the action. Before you can start optimizing the delivery routes and the shipping times, you have to take into account the actual distance that your delivery trucks have to travel every day to reach your customers. While you could run everything from a single warehouse, keep in mind that that will needlessly put a strain on your delivery network as a whole. A more prudent solution would be to invest in a number of smaller, local warehouses that cater to a local customer pool.
Every company has customer and order hotspots around the city, the state they operate in, and the country – this is the information you can use to plan the location of your warehouses. Your goal should be to place warehouses around the map based on demand and the location of the majority of your customers and where your orders are going. This way, you will cut delivery times and financial expenditure while elevating customer satisfaction.
Optimize delivery routes, shipping times, and order processing
Now that you have optimized your warehouse network, it’s time to start optimizing the delivery routes for minimal time and financial waste. Given the fact that a single delivery truck will need to make many deliveries during the day, its route should be optimized for maximum efficiency and delivery speed, which means that there should be as little backtracking as possible. Be sure to use fleet management software to organize routes with ease.
Next, it’s important that you speed up order processing in your warehouse and cut shipping service times as much as you can. Ideally, you will confirm and ship every order the same day that it was placed on your website while shipping late orders that were placed after working hours the following day. To speed up order processing and shipping, you will need to optimize inventory management across the board.
Manage your inventory like a pro
Inventory management is one of the most important processes that all eCommerce leaders need to optimize and improve in order to make their entire business more efficient and productive, and to ultimately improve customer satisfaction. The more competitive the industry, the more important it is to make your inventory processes more cost-effective, and a prime example of that is the booming manufacturing sector.
Now that manufacturing companies are increasingly operating in the online realm, forward-looking business leaders are rapidly adopting comprehensive MRP software capable of real-time inventory management, sales, and order tracking on multiple platforms, supply chain management, and more. No matter the industry you’re in, it’s imperative that you leverage technology to improve inventory management, and thus cut costs while elevating order processing and shipment.
Nurture your relationships with carriers
Successful eCommerce has a lot to do with building and nurturing important relationship. In other words, if you take care of your carriers, they will take care of your business, prioritize your orders, handle parcels with greater care, give you better deals, and more. This requires a hands-on approach, so make sure to nurture the relationship with your carriers by delivering timely information and customer details, making payments ahead of time, and working towards creating a better mutually-beneficial partnership.
Offer real-time order tracking
Tracking your orders is important for a number of reasons, and it’s not just a feature that the modern customer wants to have. Sure, it’s important for the customer to know the status and location of the parcel, but it’s also important that you have the software necessary to track your shipments in order to resolve any delivery issues quickly and with minimal losses. Offering order tracking is a great way to build trusting customer relationships, and tracking the orders yourself is a great way to monitor the delivery process and optimize it over time.
Wrapping up
To ensure long-term success in the world of eCommerce, you need to optimize your delivery processes across the board. Use these tips to cut financial waste and speed up every process in your warehouse and shipping service, then you will have no problem elevating customer satisfaction that will quickly lead to business growth.
Jolene Rutherford is a marketing specialist – turned blogger, currently writing for technivorz.com. Interested in digital marketing and new technology trends. Love sharing content that can help and inform people.
