4 Steps To Avoid Late Deliveries In Retail

Late deliveries are a nightmare for customers and retailers. Too many of them and you will find your customer retention decreasing and your sales implicitly. There is nothing more frustrating than not knowing when your order needs to arrive. Oftentimes, people will cancel plans or reschedule meetings because of poor communication. 

Not to mention the state that a package might arrive in. Logistics companies are not the best at handling fragile packages, and many times, the retailers need to pick their providers carefully. However, even with a great logistics provider, there are still quite a lot of late deliveries. 65% of retailers say that failed or late deliveries are a significant cost to their business.

Moreover, the average cost of failed deliveries per retailer is almost £200,000 a year. That is not a low number and you don’t want your customer satisfaction to suffer.

Most Common Causes Of Missed Deliveries

To understand how to avoid delivery delays, you have to establish the causes. Here are a few of the most common causes of late deliveries:

• Documentation mistakes: incorrect addresses or misspellings are usually the culprits in late deliveries; make sure you double-check the address.
  
  
• System failure: eCommerce businesses sometimes experience technical problems; frequent system failures could damage your brand’s reputation and sales, so fix these issues as soon as possible.
  
  
• Weather: bad weather like heavy snow, foggy conditions, or hailstorm can play a big part in missed deliveries, so plan accordingly for all of this; invest in the right equipment and hire skillful drivers that can handle bad weather scenarios.
  
  
• Logistical problems: poor logistics might be the most common cause of missed or late deliveries. Inability to manage stock or bad inventory can lead to numerous failed orders and can harm your business.

In fact, retailers need to make sure that with each sale, the entire delivery process goes smoothly. This takes a bit of planning to do, and in this article, we want to show you the most important steps to keep in mind to avoid late deliveries.

Step 1: Check Your Inventory

Regular checks of your inventory can save you a lot of trouble when shipping orders. You need to know how many products you have available, what’s missing, and what has already been delivered.

In many unfortunate cases, excited customers added products to their shopping cart to find out later that they are unavailable. Or even worse, they bought them and then got an apology email.

It’s crucial to check your inventory especially before the peak season approaches. Depending on your marketing efforts and the awareness you want to generate on specific products and services.

According to a survey conducted by Capgemini in October 2019, retailers respondents reported that 22% of retail stores were automated to provide product information and inventory availability to customers.

There has to be a lot of good business planning involving all your departments. You should have several contingency plans in place for handling different eCommerce scenarios. 

Step 2: Human Errors

We all make mistakes. We are only human, and it’s very normal to make mistakes when you are engaged in repetitive, manual tasks.

Or when you are handling too many responsibilities at once. Whether it’s an order processing or shipping error, it’s nonetheless going to impact your customer relationships.

To avoid this from happening or even minimize human errors, try investing in warehouse systems. They usually track orders from your eCommerce site directly to the warehouse, so you can be in charge of measuring the order accurately.

Automation removes lengthy processes that are easily prone to human error. However, it’s still a good idea if you double-check order confirmations.

Or even better, include this as part of your onboarding checklist. As you might know, lots of customers are churning during the onboarding stage, so make sure you remove all possible obstacles when signing-up new customers.

Reducing human errors is crucial in maintaining an eCommerce business. Not only could mistakes have a ripple effect across the supply chain, but they can prevent late deliveries.

Increased accuracy and higher productivity are two goals that should be at the top of your priority list. The process of handling goods and scheduling shipments can be programmed tasks that don’t slow down workers.

Step 3: Send SMS Delivery Alerts

Many times, the lack of communication between a brand and customers can result in the loss of clients altogether.

A checkout experience includes all the steps from finding the eCommerce site to receiving the order, or even better, getting a post-order survey.

To create a successful and positive checkout experience for clients, retailers should invest in SMS delivery software. Not only does SMS have the highest open rate from all communication channels, but it’s also a rapid and largely at-scale communication solution.

Fast and instant communication is the perfect method of preventing missed or late deliveries. There are multiple delivery notifications you can send when it comes to SMS:

• SMS for order confirmation
• SMS with a link to promote other products
• SMS for discount codes
• SMS with a link for payments
• SMS for a follow-up survey

Companies have to integrate their communication software into their website, CRM, logistics, and warehouse systems to create an efficient logistics process.

SMS for order notifications can be easily automated. You can integrate your business SMS platform, your point of sale, and your order fulfilment systems in a few easy steps.

Sending personalized SMS messages when an order is created or changes status shows professionalism and great customer care.

When a customer is well-informed of any changes that might occur in the shipment process, you can save your customer service team’s time. Increased customer satisfaction is a given and repeat orders are more likely to happen.

Step 4: Invest in a Logistics Software

Late deliveries can be avoided with good logistics software. Whether your online business is small or big, every process, from customer service to tracking orders, has to be on point.

That’s the reason logistics software is better than other systems. They are quite inexpensive compared to the large scale of employees and they can save you from making a lot of human mistakes.

Also, tracking your order management process is essential to identify areas of improvement. Another advantage is the lower operating costs and the improved business focus.

You won’t need to worry about tracking every single order manually, all can be done in seconds by the logistics software. Determining the best route to ship an order can be quite challenging, but with the right tool, you can leave that to the automation, and focus on more productive tasks.

For instance, making sure your customer service is exceptional to increase your repeat orders.

Conclusion

In conclusion, late deliveries can be avoided in several ways. We recommend you integrate all of the above for a higher success rate and customer satisfaction.

The best way to avoid delivery delays is to employ the best fulfilment service, leaving you to worry about boosting sales.

Remember that late deliveries could damage your brand’s reputation and revenue. And the best way to navigate uncomfortable situations where you have to deal with customer complaints is to be emphatic.

Admit you’ve made a mistake and focus on the solution. The customer is always right, so try to make this your priority. Finally, transform any customer interaction into an opportunity for growing and caring about your customers. You’ll do great!