Why Last Mile Delivery Experience Matters for Any e-Commerce Brand?

Is your order fulfillment plan up to par with your customer’s expectations? Are your customers satisfied with last mile delivery experience?

Customer Satisfaction and retention are keys to any business survival. Providing an efficient and seamless shipping and delivery experience is critical to an e-commerce company’s potential success. With Delivery being such a crucial part of the e-Commerce business model and a differentiator, the services provided and the technology that powers it are rapidly evolving.

With the coming up of pandemic and 2020 being the craziest year yet, companies are finding it difficult to meet logistics operations in the last mile.

Common Last Mile Delivery Challenges faced by ecommerce sellers-

Involved Costs for Last Mile Deliveries

Even though majority of shoppers are willing to pay for expedited delivery, most businesses still find it difficult to do so without incurring losses. Following guaranteed Estimated Time of Arrival is a challenge in and of itself, particularly with penalties for delivery delays. To make matters worse, demand uncertainty makes it difficult to decide how much inventory to retain, as well as handling temporary employees is extremely difficult.

Delivery Allocation & Address Location

The consistency of an address has a huge effect on distribution profitability. This has a bearing on distribution activities as well as last-mile carrier management. A lot of brands assign workers manual operation thereby leaving room for human error. Shipments are invariably mis-allotted or skipped on a specific path. There is also the issue of poor address accuracy, incomplete addresses and lack of proper landmarks.

Customer Availability

Taking customers for granted is a common blunder made by businesses. First attempt delivery delays due to customer unavailability poses to be a huge last-mile delivery problem. Let’s presume the delivery agent arrives at the delivery location after travelling a lot of distance and he finds closed door or a guard who refuses to accept the box, causing him to get into trouble. Customers are demanding and have a sense of entitlement. After that entire endeavor, if a delivery deadline isn’t met due to a customer’s unavailability, the customer will also have a less-than-pleasant experience, which will negate all of the efforts in this direction. As a result, it’s critical that you have the appropriate checking system in place to ensure that your delivery guy and customers can collaborate and communicate effectively.

Route Optimization

Routing is an unavoidable bad. It’s mentally exhausting and perplexing and it’s based on a variety of variables ranging from fuel efficiency to environmental regulations. Nevertheless, it must be completed. Accurate route planning is essential for a reliable delivery that is both cost-effective and pleasing to customers. With increasing pressures on sustainability and controlling fuel costs, routing efficiency is becoming more important.

Why good delivery experience is important for e-Commerce brands?

Previously, things were delivered in 7-10 working days, with very few alternatives open to clients. With technological advancement, we now have access to a variety of shipping methods and possibilities. This has resulted in a complete shift in how delivery should be done. Next-day deliveries are no longer a plus; they’re instead expected. As a result, if your company doesn’t offer a choice of delivery options, it may be missing out on a large number of potential clients.  Delivery is also a customer’s last impression of your company. So, if customers face a snag, it will give them an antagonistic impression of your company, and they will be hesitant to buy from you again. There are also companies that provide same-day delivery in many urban & metro cities.

Customer’s happiness and retention are heavily influenced by the delivery experience. So, poor experiences are detrimental to conversion and retention.

How to improve customer experience?

Numerous Delivery Options

By providing multiple delivery options, you can attract a wide range of customers. There will be more than one segment. As a result, you’ll require distribution choices to meet the needs of these various sectors. Some people may have gone to your website searching for expedited delivery, while others may be satisfied with the somewhat longer wait time that comes with regular delivery. Delivery options which you can offer are –

• Same-day/One-Day Delivery
• Express/expedited Delivery
• Hyper-local Delivery
• Standard Delivery 
• Collect from store
• Collect from nearest available point
• Weekend/after-hours Delivery
• Specific Timeframe Delivery

Payment Option

Pay-on-delivery is a common option among Indian shoppers. They like to pay for their orders after receiving it. Despite the fact that we are moving toward a more digital society, a sizable portion of the public still prefers to pay for things when they are delivered to them. Payments can be collected by using cash on delivery (COD) or credit and debit cards, mobile wallets, and UPI payments (Online mode).

Packaging

When a consumer receives a package, the first thing they do is examine the sight and feel of the packing. This happens in a matter of seconds, and it usually happens unintentionally. In an increasingly competitive online retail market, there’s no reason not to take advantage of all opportunities to have a positive impact on your customers, especially with the packaging you use to deliver the products.

Implementation of Delivery Experience Management Tools

Failure to recognize delivery difficulties before they have an impact on the delivery experience is a surefire way to lose clients. There are a variety of ways to discover delivery exceptions and notify customers, ranging from a manual process involving carrier tracking tools, CRM software, and email to parcel visibility systems created expressly to address delivery experience difficulties. A cross functional team can be engaged to assess the existing process, trace opportunities and figure out solutions that enable to become flexible in order to adapt to changing needs of customers.

Have your very own Branded Tracking Page 

In the era of e-commerce, Consumers expect to know where their orders are at all times until the product is delivered to their doorstep. Until the delivery takes place, a customer is sure to visit your Branded Tracking page a number of times.

Did you know that a typical person opens shipping confirmation emails 1.5 times? Add a branded tracking page to your e-commerce business to take advantage of this opportunity. It will help your brand to curtail the number of customer queries thereby helping in cross selling, up selling and boosting customer engagement.

Reverse Logistics

Consumers also desire greater choices for returning their purchases. It makes the process go more smoothly for everyone if you provide them with reverse logistical information up front. Whether an item is sent or returned in person, the customer understands exactly how to return it. Your e-commerce business does not have to deal with return phone calls or emails.

eShipz is an amazing platform which offers all that your e-commerce brand requires for providing good delivery experience to customers. Providing poor delivery experience can impact your business adversely. In an era of digitalization, one unsatisfied customer can spread negative word of mouth which doesn’t just reach out to his neighbor but to almost all the other people who must be visiting your website. Let’s get you started with eShipz for providing your customers with superior delivery experience and help you win at your business.