Online shoppers are growing in huge numbers year after year, and so are their delivery expectations. According to a study, there were 268 million digital buyers in the United States in the year 2022 alone. This number is said to climb up to almost 285 million in 2025.
Also, 62% of online shoppers in the US say delivery speed is what makes for a good purchase experience. This has pushed retailers to double down on their delivery efforts in the last mile.
Despite all the efforts, what’s stopping your retail and e-commerce businesses from providing excellent delivery experiences to your customers?
Barriers to providing phenomenal delivery experiences
Being retailers, you have been pulling out all the stops to provide your customers with delightful shopping experiences. But you are hitting a brick wall due to below delivery challenges:
1. Increase in Delivery Exceptions
Delivery exceptions occur when the an unforeseen incident occurs during the delivery process and hinders timely delivery. Increased delivery exceptions can be costly for operations and negatively impact a company’s profitability.
They can also damage customer relationships. In essence, improving operational performance in the last mile is all about minimizing delivery exceptions.
2. Lack of customized delivery options
Every customer is different. Retailers must cater to the unique delivery preferences of their customers. Many retailers fulfill customer preferences in attempting to adhere to faster delivery timelines, but fail in the long term due to capacity and cost constraints.
This pushes them to provide subpar delivery experiences to customers. As retailers, you need a robust logistics solution that helps in aligning your capacity with customers’ delivery preferences.
3. Failed deliveries
What’s worse than late deliveries? Failed deliveries. A survey stated that the average cost per failed delivery in the United States of America is $17.2.That’s a lot.
The primary reasons for your failed deliveries range from fuzzy addresses to unoptimized route plans. So as retailers, you should leverage cutting edge technology solutions to overcome this major roadblock.
4. Steep shipping costs
According to a survey, 2,000 US retail shoppers say that the primary factor (58%) for cart abandonment is high shipping costs. Retailers often partner with third-party carriers to deliver goods.
Choosing a suitable carrier can save money and elevate your customer experience. To get this right, you should have an efficient contract management tool to manage carriers better.
5. Visibility gaps for customers
When you’re unable to provide speedy and predictable deliveries along with real-time alerts on the delivery process, customers abandon shopping with you.
Every customer wishes for transparency in this era of digitalization. With a real-time order tracking feature, your customers can easily know if an order reaches them on time or not. Also, it provides internal visibility to your operation managers regarding any delivery failures, exceptions or delays and rectifies them before it gets bigger.
6. Carbon emissions
From recent reports, we could see that carbon emissions are rising to alarming levels causing serious damage to the globe. Today, customers are leaning more and more towards sustainable deliveries. A recent study shows that customers are ready to pay more and wait longer for their packages if brands have sustainable delivery options .
As retailers are looking to minimize carbon emissions and attract more customers, they are increasingly investing in technologies like fleet tracking software.
Above are all the challenges that retailers face when their logistics system is not aligned with customer expectations. But what if we told you that all your conundrums in providing superior delivery experiences can be overcome by adopting last-mile delivery software?
Technology to help retailers provide customized delivery experiences
In this digital era, technology is revolutionizing the way retailers do business. From e-commerce to home deliveries, digital transformation has elevated customer experience to new heights. However, modern customers continue to seek faster, predictable, and customized delivery experiences.
Here’s what your last-mile delivery software should possess to build a wider and loyal customer base:
1. Delivery Linked Checkout
Retailers should implement a customized slot-based delivery system that factors in fleet, cost and customer preferences before they set out to dispatch orders. . With this delivery system, you can easily adhere to the preferred time windows of customers without compromising operational excellence. But how to implement this customized slot-based delivery system?
By investing in a logistics solution with an in-built delivery-linked checkout feature, you can effectively build capacity-led delivery plans. This helps you serve your customers at their preferred time slots and make your deliveries profitable.
2. Smart geocoder
Failed deliveries usually happen due to wrong addresses. To locate the right address, the driver roams around and as a result fails to deliver the order on time. With a robust dispatch management platform, you can convert improper and ambiguous geographical addresses to accurate geographical coordinates.
This helps to decrease the chances of failed deliveries and cut down the empty miles and improve your drivers’ satisfaction.
3. Cut down carrier costs with contract management
Partnering with the right carrier will help you cut down shipping costs and retain customers. Dispatch management solution with an in-built contract management system helps in managing your carrier partners effectively by recommending the right carrier for your delivery needs based on cost, cargo size, track record, etc., giving you the best shipping price to quote for your customers.
4. Real-time tracking
A major chunk of customers that include Millennials and Gen-Z, want complete visibility of their order fulfillment journey from the time of placing their order. This has necessitated retailers to provide their customers with end-to-end visibility after they place their order.
By using technologies like fleet tracking software, you can share the real-time status of the order and timely alerts on Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) with your customers. This helps them get more visibility on their orders and avoid missed deliveries.
5. Optimal route plans to minimize carbon emissions
Implementing a solution that reduces your fleet’s time on the road is the first step towards achieving sustainability in last-mile delivery. A last-mile delivery solution that offers optimized route plans can help your drivers complete their deliveries faster without worrying about traffic, bad addresses or other typical roadblocks.
Beyond maximizing your First Attempt Delivery Rates(FADR), it minimizes the time your drivers spend on the road, thereby minimizing carbon emissions.
Conclusion
Most, if not all of retailers’ challenges pertaining to delivery can be solved by adopting a robust last-mile delivery software equipped with a customized slot-based delivery system. Being a retailer, it helps you provide stellar delivery experiences without compromising operational excellence.
Author Bio
Nishith Rastogi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Nishith Rastogi, Chief Executive Officer at Locus, drives business strategy and innovation at the company. He is responsible for business expansion across geographies and heads product globally. Prior to founding Locus, he worked for Amazon, where he built algorithms to counter credit card fraud.
Nishith also co-founded RideSafe, a real-time route deviation detection application for women’s safety. He is a published author in the field of experimental physics and holds patents in Machine Learning.
Nishith was profiled by Fortune India for the 2022 ‘40 under 40’ list and by Forbes Asia in 2018 ’30 Under 30’ list.