Sashank RavindranathThe pandemic has largely disrupted holiday shipping in 2021, with a surge in online purchases, record shipping costs, port congestion, and inventory shortage.
Not to forget, the heavy weightage that has fallen on the operational efficiency of shipping carriers, raising concerns over their package-handling capacity and their ability to meet on-time delivery promises. Indeed, you can anticipate your customers to meet with stockouts and longer delivery timelines from all carriers this Holiday season.
FedEx Corp. is forecasting a 10% increase in holiday package deliveries over the previous record peak season in 2020 while UPS is also taking efforts like hiring 10,000 seasonal workers.
While carriers who are well aware of this demand, are responding with more fulfillment and distribution capacity besides hiring temporary workforce. They are also levying additional surcharges to meet the demands of delivering residential packages amid volume surges.
Before you start worrying over skyrocketing shipping bills, know that navigating through the holiday shipping season with mitigated damage from delays can help you save on shipping costs!
We at LateShipment.com have crafted our 4th annual report, which gives you detailed unbiased insights on delivery performances and expected delay rates during the 2021 holiday shipping season. This can give you a headstart in your process towards making data-backed decisions to optimize their supply chain during the critical Holiday season and beyond.
Let’s take a deep dive into it.
An Analysis of Shipping Performance by FedEx and UPS in 2021 Right Before the Holiday Season
The following section is the result of a trend analysis conducted on packages shipped during the 2021 Regular Operating Period (Jan 1 – Oct 31). You will find a detailed breakdown of package delays by UPS and FedEx across key States, Cities, Service-types, and Retail Categories in the United States.
In 2021, parcels shipped through FedEx witnessed Holiday-shipping- season-like delays while UPS performed considerably better than in 2020.
States, cities, and regions
States
- During the regular operating period of 2021, UPS Packages shipped to Texas faced the most delays with 10.3% of packages delivered late. While 15.34% of packages shipped to Illinois via FedEx faced the most delays.
Cities
- When it comes to cities, packages shipped through UPS to Houston faced the most delays at 8.9%, followed by New York at 8.24% and Los Angeles at 7.7%.
- Among key cities, packages shipped to Miami, Chicago, and Houston through FedEx faced delay rates of 13.8%, 13.6%, and 13.5% respectively.
Regions
- Among the West Coast – Holiday packages shipped to the State of Washington through UPS faced the most delays at 13.64%. And packages shipped to Oregon through FedEx faced the most delays at 25.66% followed closely by Washington at 23%.
- In the Central Region – packages shipped to Arkansas and Louisiana through UPS recorded the highest package delay rate at 10.49% and 9.27%. And packages shipped to Louisiana and Arkansas through FedEx faced high delay rates of 25.65% and 25.48% respectively.
- Amid the East Coast – states in the US that witnessed the most package delays were South Carolina for UPS, recording a delay rate of 8.2%. And Maine for FedEx with 19.88% followed closely by Georgia at 19.19%.
Service types
- UPS Ground Services recorded a delay rate of 10.36%.
- FedEx Ground services faced a package delay rate of very similar to the 2020 Holiday shipping season at 19%.
- UPS Express Services – 9.9% of packages shipped through Next Day Air service were delayed.
- FedEx Express Services – 14.6% of packages shipped through 2 Day service were delayed.
Retail categories
- In the 2021 Holiday shipping period, the Electronics category saw a delay rate of 14.44%, while the Sports and Health, and Fitness categories witnessed package delay rates of 10.5% and 10.7% respectively with UPS.
- When it comes to FedEx, the Jewelry category observed a delay rate of 14.4% while the Sports and Apparel categories witnessed package delay rates of 13% and 11.3% respectively.
With all our findings in the regular operating period of 2021, we have forecasted the on-time delivery performances of FedEx and UPS in the Holiday shipping period. This can help e-commerce retailers such as yourself stay aware of possible delays with the busy season to come.
Holiday Shipping 2021 Predictions, Trends & Insights
Holiday retail sales are likely to increase between 7% and 9% and E-commerce sales particularly will grow by 11-15%, YoY, during the 2021-holiday season. – Deloitte
With an unprecedented surge in online orders during the Holiday season, along with freight constraints, warehouse capacity issues, and insufficient workers, there would be an immense strain on shipping carriers to ensure timely delivery of Holiday orders.
Retailers and shoppers alike should brace themselves to face delays due to shipping network congestion, labor shortage, and COVID-19 outbreaks in some parts. There will also be stock availability issues.
Average package delay rates during the 2021 holiday shipping season to be between the range of 16% to 20%.
- UPS’ on-time delivery performance will be 2x better than FedEx (based on their 12-month track record) during the 2021 Holiday season
- Densely populated urban cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. to face record package delays, even as high as 25% to 30% during the 2021 Holidays.
- Popular e-commerce service types, Ground and Express services offered by both UPS and FedEx will remain affected, resulting in delivery delays irrespective of the service type consumers choose for their Holiday orders.
- With unusually high congestion affecting every type of transportation network, both air and ground shipments are expected to face significant delivery delays.
- Expensive and fast services did not really matter! 25.2% of FedEx Overnight shipments and 11.2% of UPS Next Day Air were delayed during the 2020 Holiday season.
Delays are expected to be more than the previous years due to the added burden of the ongoing supply chain disruptions. If you’re looking to be one of those retailers who are looking to win, you will need to take measures to mitigate the impact of delivery delays on customer experience and loyalty.
Let’s see how you can do just that.
How E-commerce Retailers Can Prepare Themselves to Counter Delays in the Holiday Shipping Season 2021
The surge in online orders will see retailers and shipping carriers grappling to meet customer expectations around frictionless shipping, delivery, and returns experiences.
The shift to e-commerce is here to stay but a negative order delivery experience will have a long-lasting impact on your relationship with customers; making post-purchase customer experience (CX) key to your business’s success during this Holiday season and beyond.
But why is post-purchase CX so imperative?
The post-purchase CX mandate
Focusing on your post-purchase CX strategy is critical because it helps you:
- Establish trust and buyer confidence with clear shipping and returns policy, thereby fostering loyalty
- Improve customer satisfaction and increase loyalty by proactively resolving delivery issues
- Reduce customer anxiety by meaningfully engaging with customers during the “Order Delivery” phase
- Drive customer delight post-checkout with memorable, on-brand tracking experiences
- Boost revenue from repeat purchases by leveraging your customers’ order tracking moments
- Increase conversion, repeat purchase rate, and retain revenue by optimizing product returns on your store
As evident here, numerous benefits emanate from a well-thought-through post-purchase customer experience strategy for your online retail business. It’s time to move on to the next part — HOW to optimize the post-purchase CX?
Here’s how.
7 Strategies to Ensure Post-purchase CX Success
Taking measures to close the post-purchase CX gap and provide customers with a frictionless delivery experience can cement you as their preferred brand.
Adopting the following ways to improve your post-purchase CX will ensure a positive impact on both your customers’ lifetime value and the retention rate of your business.
1. Proactively identify and resolve delivery-related issues
Third-party shipping services are highly error-prone. Monitoring your in-transit parcels in real-time and being in the know about parcels facing delivery issues will ensure proactive and faster resolution of delivery-related customer issues.
2. Reduce customer anxiety with automated shipping notifications
Effectively engaging with your customers throughout the order delivery lifecycle will strengthen customer relationships and foster brand loyalty. With timely email and SMS alerts, keep customers informed about their order delivery status, including critical delivery issues.
3. Offer custom-built branded tracking experiences on your online store
To ensure seamless brand experiences, every customer interaction should be owned by the brand. Default order tracking pages provided by shipping carriers are dull and off-brand. Providing brand consistent order tracking pages on your store drives customer delight and increases brand loyalty.
4. Make order tracking self-service to reduce delivery-related support tickets
Over 30% of customer support tickets created are shipping-related, with most tickets being WISMO (Where Is My Order) inquiries. Addressing such tickets can be both time-consuming and expensive. Enable your customers to track their orders from within your website or app to significantly reduce customer support inquiries.
5. Leverage order tracking moments to increase sales and reduce returns
On average, customers track their orders 6 to 8 times before order delivery, that’s 6-8 additional marketing touchpoints with customers post-checkout. Boost repeat sales with product recommendations on order tracking pages, besides providing relevant product usage information to reduce returns.
6. Get customer feedback around order delivery experiences
Capture customer feedback around their delivery experiences after every order delivery to understand the detractors of a great post-purchase experience and make necessary changes to improve.
7. Optimize your returns process to make it hassle-free while maintaining profitability
Be transparent and establish trust with a clear returns policy. Make product returns effortless for your customers while providing return methods that encourage exchanges and store credit options to ensure revenue retention.
Implementing all of these strategies just as the holiday shipping season arrives won’t take long. You can make use of a post-purchase solution such as LateShipment.com to do the heavy lifting for you.
How Lateshipment.Com Can Help
LateShipment.com is the world’s only cloud-based Post-purchase Success platform built to enable retail parcel shippers of all sizes to provide memorable order delivery and returns experiences — besides reducing shipping costs by up to 20%.
Our feature-packed Delivery Experience Management platform helps improve shipment visibility and drive customer delight post-purchase.
Our customer-first Returns Experience Management platform makes returns effortless and efficient — all while retaining revenue.
Our Automated Shipping Refunds solution brings better performance accountability to shipping carrier services by recovering millions of dollars in refund claims.
LateShipment.com seamlessly integrates with over 600 shipping carriers and business tools that include E-commerce platforms, Order Management Systems, CRM, and Marketing Automation tools to help you craft delightful post-purchase experiences, at scale.
Visit www.lateshipment.com to find out more.
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