Adam Bryant is the CEO of AxleHire, which is a last-mile delivery service in cities that offers same-day and next-day delivery.
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| Five Things E-Commerce Sellers Should Do To Provide A Quality Delivery Experience |
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E-commerce is becoming more and more important to consumers' daily lives. As people become more dependent on vendors, they expect vendors to make delivery as easy as possible. Your customer expects that their packages will always get to the right place at the right time.
As the amount of e-commerce grows by double digits every year, it becomes harder to make sure that every delivery is of the same high quality. Your brand's reputation is at risk with every package that leaves your warehouse. What can you do to make sure that your customers have a good delivery experience? Here are five suggestions:
1. Avoid avoidable deviations.
When a driver can't take your package to the address on the label, this is an exception. Even though it should go without saying, make sure you actively encourage customers to keep that information up-to-date and correct.
Most of the time, exceptions come from new homes. Apps that use geocoding or maps might not show new addresses correctly for weeks or months after they are moved in. Find out how your carrier handles these. You can avoid a lot of trouble if you can find a good technology workaround from your carrier.
Another common failure point is when security access codes are lost or changed. Make sure that your ordering process lets customers give special instructions (like access codes and where they'd like the package to go) and that your carrier's technology stack can get that information to the driver right up to the point of delivery.
2.Take care of your brand.
You can limit the number of exceptions, but you can't get rid of them completely. When a delivery fails, customers often leave one-star reviews and stop buying from the company. How do you deal with exceptions and keep your brand's reputation and sales from taking a hit?
For your carrier, handling exceptions means thinking, "We're going to solve this problem and get this package to you today." Ask your carrier how they handle things that don't go as planned. How do they learn to do it? Do they just throw the package in the back of the car and move on, or do they see exceptions as puzzles to solve? What tools are available to drivers?
At the very least, your carrier's technology should have tools that let the driver talk to dispatch and the customer directly to solve problems on the spot, and drivers should be expected to use these tools. This is not a "nice to have," it's a must.
3. Prepare to grow.
You want to grow your business, and your career needs to help you. The last thing you want is for your carrier to limit your volume during the busy holiday season, but that's what has happened to many e-commerce providers over the last two years.
An asset-heavy business model makes it hard for legacy carriers to grow. Their fixed assets can only do one thing. The new generation of tech-savvy, low-asset carriers has more freedom to add new capacity and change how they use the capacity they already have.
You need to know how your company will handle natural growth and seasonal peaks before they happen. Ask them how they will change as your company grows and changes. How quickly can they change things like sorting or moving delivery hubs to accommodate changes in delivery patterns or density? How fast can they get a new business going? Will there be a lot of people when it's busy? How much can they change to fit your needs?
4.Talk to Gen Z the way they do.
One of the most important things about the new generation of consumers is that they talk to each other all the time. As a seller, you should use this to your advantage and make communication the most important part of the buyer's experience.
From the time they place an order until they see a photo of your package on their doorstep, your customers expect to hear from you. Find a last-mile carrier with a technology stack that lets you track packages in real time and tailor messages to your brand and customers.
Having clear and frequent communication makes things feel more personal. A late delivery may not have harmed your reputation as much as it could have.This is true for all of your customers, but especially for your millennial and Gen Z customers, who are likely the fastest-growing part of your e-commerce client base.
5. "Go green."
Sustainability is an important part of quality for the new generation of consumers. Most of the big carriers are trying to get their fleets to run on electricity, but this will take time. Smart carriers are taking steps right now to make last-mile delivery more sustainable.
It should be clear that a driver who delivers 50 packages on a 10-mile route will produce less carbon dioxide per package than a driver who delivers 25 packages on the same 10-mile route. A small car or SUV driver will put out less carbon per mile than the driver of a cargo van. And an electric bike and trailer will cause less pollution than any car, van, or truck.
The key to sustainable delivery is technology that groups packages together to make delivery routes that are as dense as possible and cover the shortest distances possible, and then matches the right-sized vehicle to the right load and location to reduce emissions. That technology is already out there, and your carrier should be using it.
Customers will judge your brand and decide whether or not to buy it again based on how good their overall experience was. Last-mile delivery is a big part of how customers see your brand because it's the last time they interact with it. If you follow the tips above, you can help your customers get the most out of the good things.
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