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How 3PL Providers Can Extend Their Capabilities With Post-Purchase Automation

Sashank Ravindranath — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 07:41:22 +0000

A report indicates that 90% of Fortune 500 businesses use 3PLs to handle their logistics and supply chain operations. The primary role of a 3PL provider is allowing their customers, i.e., primarily e-commerce and B2B businesses to scale without needing to invest in additional warehousing or labor. This includes warehousing, picking and packing, shipping, etc,.

Recently, there has been an increase in the herculean responsibility of the post-purchase phase (dealing with high customer expectations for timely, transparent, and reliable delivery). However, as your 3PL business scales and your customer base grows, managing post-purchase operations manually can become unmanageable.

The post-purchase phase comprises shipping, delivery, and returns — all of which you have almost no control over and have to rely on carriers and the experiences they provide.

As these areas, which you have no expertise in, now fall under your responsibility, achieving your fullest potential or meeting the end user’s expectations can be a real challenge.

Why Should 3PLs Reevaluate Their Post-Purchase Strategy?

1. You are overpaying shipping charges by 6-8%

Delivery issues like lost/damaged shipments pose a constant worry to the packages you’re in-charge of. While you can file claims and obtain refunds, the process to do it is difficult and time-consuming due to high shipping volumes. To make things worse, there are more than 50 carrier errors such as late deliveries, invalid delivery exceptions, incorrect surcharges, duplicate charges, etc. In the long term, this implies that you’re never actually getting full value from your carrier service.

Impact: When not kept in check, delivery issues and overcharges can lead to increased shipping costs and put a dent in your savings.

2. You have limited visibility into shipment status and carrier performance

As a 3PL provider, you often work with multiple businesses of different scales, in both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar formats, and ship through multiple carriers, each with their own tracking systems. This puts you in a position where you lack proper insights in the form of organized shipping analytics. Without a proper system in place, this can result in limited visibility into the exact status of shipments and the overall performance of carriers.

Impact: Limited visibility hinders your ability to provide accurate delivery estimates and proactively address potential issues. There’s also the lack of insights to optimize the overall efficiency of delivery operations (identifying underperforming carriers and optimizing carrier selection).

3. You lack opportunities to provide quality post-purchase experiences

3PL giants have their systems in place to scale, but what about the others? They have to compete amongst themselves to gain customers and keep them forever. Coming up with efforts to scale, such as value-added services to improve the customer experience, can be challenging, especially when you’re dealing with multiple carriers and a high volume of shipments.

Impact: E-commerce businesses always rely on 3PLs who offer the best possible service for them. This includes providers who emphasize customer experience. Lack of provisions here always puts you in the backseat, leading to low retention and revenue rates.

Of course, you can use up routine, repetitive tasks to manually optimize these processes and streamline workflows. However, these tasks are time-consuming and take away attention from more complex issues that need to be solved.

On the other hand, reducing manual effort provides you with more time to focus on important tasks around improving post-purchase processes. This can be achieved through technology and cost-saving measures, i.e, automation.

How Automation Helps 3PL Companies Maximize Value To Themselves And Their Customers

Automation is not the future. It’s already here (and you don’t want to stay left out).

By Integrating an intelligent post-purchase platform, you can join the many 3PLs that enable automation to optimize operations and thereby maximize value for you and your customers.

Automation for 3PL providers

1. Parcel audit and shipping refunds

As a 3PL provider, integrating automated parcel audit solutions into your service offerings acts as a differentiator in a competitive market.

How it works: A parcel audit system effortlessly goes through each and every invoice and manages all eligible claims, including those for lost and damaged shipments where service level agreements (SLAs) around delivery performance were not met, and automatically files claims for refunds for them.

Benefits: Automation of parcel audits and shipping refunds helps you recover costs by up to 20% associated with service failures and other billing errors. Also, by systematically identifying and addressing these discrepancies, you can reduce the time spent on manual audits and claims processing.

2. Shipping analytics

An extension of auditing shipping invoices and claiming refunds is its effect to give you detailed insights into carrier performance.

How it works: Audit systems help you with advanced shipping analytics that provide data-driven insights to identify patterns and trends, enabling you to make data-driven decisions about carrier and service selection. To make things even better, automation also allows you to track and monitor all customers’ shipments in-transit service failures in real-time and know what’s happening at a glance.

Benefits: Gain complete visibility into anticipating and resolving issues such as frequent delays. and other inefficiencies to make smarter shipping decisions that help in improving operations and optimizing shipping costs. This especially comes in handy during times like peak season, when shipping volumes are multifold and late delivery refunds with major carriers are temporarily suspended.

Automation for e-commerce businesses using 3PLs

3PL businesses need to differentiate themselves from competitors and customer retention acts as a key differentiating factor. It’s easy to connect these dots. You need to own your post-purchase process by delivering value-added services that go beyond the basics and help you improve retention (and revenue).

1. Reduce customer inquiries

Customers are always anticipating their orders and you’re staying dependent on carriers and their delivery experiences don’t really help.

How it works: Automating key aspects of the post-purchase journey, such as real-time order tracking, enables even more in the form of proactive issue resolution and automated notifications. For instance, you can enable e-commerce businesses to keep their customers informed about their orders at all times, including issues that happen, and suggestions to resolve them. Additionally, there are also post-purchase solutions that help businesses take things up a notch via branded tracking experiences.

Benefits for e-commerce businesses: Real-time shipment tracking with proactive order status updates and support alerts for shipment issues to reduce WISMO calls by 72%. Additionally, including marketing assets on order tracking pages and notifications can increase recurring revenue by 12%.

2. Streamlined returns experiences

Additionally, when things go wrong with deliveries, you don’t have to direct brands to external returns platforms by partnering with a post-purchase automation platform, you can integrate returns into your existing workflows.

How it works: Automated returns solutions make returns self-service for end users. For instance, customers with a need for a return will no longer have to reach out to support reps but instead initiate returns and exchanges on their own.

Benefits for e-commerce businesses: Post-purchase solutions with flexible return options, automated returns updates, and a self-service process can reduce returns processing time by up to 95% and increase revenue by 40%.

With a complete post-purchase automation system in place, you can now enable e-commerce merchants to offer excellent post-purchase experiences to their customers and have an assured chance at improving retention.

The exceptional value you can gain by implementing automation is evident. You can not only elevate your client relationships but also transform your logistics operations. This is where LateShipment.com comes in – to back up automation with post-purchase solutions that are designed specifically for 3PL providers.

Lateshipment.com: Empowering 3PL Businesses Like Yours To Deliver Exceptional Value To Your Customers

LateShipment.com understands the unique challenges faced by 3PL providers in the post-purchase space.

You can trust LateShipment.com to automate key post-purchase processes, optimize your delivery performance, protect your shipments, and keep your customers coming back for more.

Here’s how LateShipment.com can help you grow together – empowering your e-commerce clients while boosting your 3PL’s success:

Gain full visibility into your shipping costs and recover lost revenue with precise, automated audits and claims management
Enhance customer retention through branded sub accounts that offer a centralized master dashboard to track and monitor all customers’ shipments in-transit service failures in real time
Boost your revenue via partner commissions for any additional LateShipment.com products your customers sign up for

In crust, our platform seamlessly integrates real-time order tracking, proactive issue resolution, automated shipping insurance, and efficient return management into ONE powerful solution.

LateShipment.com also integrates with leading e-commerce and helpdesk platforms to enable seamless automation of existing workflows

With LateShipment.com, 3PLs can enhance transparency, reduce operational costs, and improve customer satisfaction.

That’s it from us! It’s time to create a win-win partnership with advanced post-purchase solutions — help your clients retain customers while you gain increased retention, differentiated services, and greater efficiency. Together, we drive growth and success.

We specialize in empowering 3PL businesses like yours to deliver exceptional value to your customers.

See why top 3PLs choose LateShipment.com as their post-purchase partner:

Discuss your strategic post-purchase goals, unique needs and challenges
Put money back into your business with an in-depth understanding of your shipping performance for optimization and value-added features that enhance customer retention
Learn about our 1200+ integrations with shipping carriers and e-commerce apps

Book a consultation call with our product experts today.

The post How 3PL Providers Can Extend Their Capabilities With Post-Purchase Automation appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

What Does “Out for Delivery” Really Mean?

Sashank Ravindranath — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 06:31:54 +0000

“Get ready to jump with joy as your order is out for delivery”.

A message that all online shoppers can’t wait to see on their device, as this is a sign that their package is nearing them and is about to be delivered soon.

From your (the merchant’s) perspective, while the emotions might differ, seeing the message on the carrier’s page and sharing these notifications with your customers holds the same importance because,

The package has successfully evaded almost 80% of all delivery issues (barring cases of delivery exceptions, order returns, or package theft) and
This is the only thing between your customers and their most exciting orders, the time when you are rewarded for your product and service via customer satisfaction and loyalty

This makes the out for delivery notification special compared to other transactional shipping notifications sent during the post-purchase, order delivery phase of e-commerce.

But what makes this delivery stage so special? To know that we’ll start with what being out for delivery means and where it sits in the e-commerce last-mile order delivery process.

What Does Out for Delivery Mean?

Let’s split ‘out for delivery’ into two perspectives where you stand between. From the shipping carrier’s perspective, this indicates that the package has left the shipping facility and is in transit to the customer’s address. From the customer’s perspective, on the other hand, this implies that the package’s arrival on the specified delivery date is almost confirmed.

Packages that are marked “out for delivery”, will reach their destination on the same day or the next day, given the distance and situation between the carrier’s transportation hub or fulfillment center and the customer’s doorstep.

To get a better context, let’s look at where it sits in the e-commerce order delivery process

a) Where out for delivery sits in the e-commerce delivery process

The traditional last-mile delivery process usually consists of 4 simple events or transactional notifications that are sent to the customer whenever there is an update on their orders.

Shipped – When the order is “shipped”, it implies that the carrier has picked up the package.
In transit – The order is in transit when it leaves the first hub and is on its way to reaching the carrier’s hub at the delivery city.
Out of delivery – Out for delivery indicates the order is now in its final stretch. The package has left the carrier facility and is on its way to the customer.
Delivered – The order is marked “delivered” when the order sits on the customer’s doorstep

Apart from these frequent transactional notifications front, there can also be several uncommon instances such as delivery attempts, in-transit with delays, loss/damage, etc. E-commerce brands such as yours can leverage these events to send shipping notifications that alleviate your customers’ worries and also come with a great deal of benefits for you.

Going back to the context, there can still be some questions like what to do when the package has been out for delivery for 3 or more days? or where is my package that is out for delivery but has not been delivered yet?

In your mind, you need clear answers before you can communicate the same with your customers. And that brings us to dissect out for delivery as an event further.

b) Why does an out for delivery event matter to an e-commerce merchant?

The “out for delivery” event is a critical touchpoint in the e-commerce customer journey. It holds significant importance for merchants due to several reasons.

Apart from minimizing customer support inquiries and improving customer satisfaction by reducing anxiety and uncertainty, this event also comes up with a great scope for marketing opportunities.

Instead of sending your customers to the carrier’s tracking page, you can create your own branded order tracking pages that can be used to promote complementary products or services.

You can also use real estate on your tracking pages to collect customer feedback on their post-purchase purchase experience, thereby gaining valuable insights into identifying areas for improvement.

c) What happens when a package out for delivery doesn’t get delivered

In most cases, a package marked as “out for delivery,” is expected to be delivered on the same day. However, there can be instances where it takes forever to arrive and there can be multiple reasons for such delivery exceptions.

Location – The distance between the distribution center and the delivery address (i.e. the delivery address’s proximity to the distribution center)
Delivery Schedule – Carriers have specific delivery routes and schedules that they target in a day. Multiple delivery locations (stops) and complex routes can impact the delivery timeline of the other packages
Traffic Conditions – Traffic congestion, accidents, or adverse weather conditions on a particular can delay the delivery process
Volume – High shipping volume is a rare instance but probable scenario where the package volume handled by the delivery person gets too much for a single day

Out for delivery vs delivered: The final hurdle

In most cases, when an out for delivery doesn’t get updated to delivered, it means your carrier, be it FedEx, UPS, USPS, or Amazon is attempting re-delivery, dropping off the package at a nearby pickup point, etc.

However, unlike you, customers who shop with you don’t have the patience to uncover all of this. What matters to them is their package reaching on time and when they get slightly anxious about that happening, their actions can go a long way, complicating the problem further.

1. Support reps are bombarded with a huge volume of WISMO inquiries

Even when there are no issues regarding customers’ parcels, their anxiety at the last mile stage leads them to bombard support reps with order status notifications (WISMO inquiries).

Such calls negatively impact your customer satisfaction metrics by consuming all of the support reps’ time and preventing them from dealing with other important queries.

Over 30% of customer support tickets created are SHIPPING and DELIVERY-related

2. Disgruntled customers negatively impact your brand’s online reputation

Delivery issues must be resolved proactively and addressed at the earliest because the first thing irate customers do is take such issues to social media and tarnish the brand’s reputation online.

During such events, every negative review from your customers causes irreversible damage to the brand image and far worse, demotivates their close ones from shopping with the said brand.

93% of the customers say that they read online reviews before buying a product.

3. Higher costs associated with returns and customer acquisition

E-commerce businesses run the risk of losing even their most loyal customer to a competitor after just one bad delivery experience.

Trying to replace these existing customers may not be the best idea because it is 5x more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

Over 55% of customers won’t return to a brand or retailer after one bad experience, indicating that today’s consumer has nearly zero thresholds for delivery failures.

Even if they choose to stick with you, they can simply refuse to collect their orders, leading to unwanted returns and related expenses.

The saying prevention is better than cure might sound cliche but it holds true in this context. While these issues, the reasons they happen, and how to approach them depend on the shipping carrier and the circumstances — there are actions that you can take to mitigate this from becoming a serious problem.

What to Do if Your Package is "Out for Delivery" for an Extended Period

When a package has been marked as “out for delivery” for three or more days without arriving, it’s understandable to be concerned.

First things first, customers are often anxious regarding the status of orders during the last mile. So, constantly stay in touch by keeping them in the loop of their orders

Integrate your existing email and SMS marketing tools with your delivery management system and send ‘out for delivery’ notifications in the last mile. This way, the customer can stay at the location to collect the delivery or request a change to avoid last-minute delivery exceptions.

Second, it’s better to be the bearer of bad news than to be confronted by the customer on hiding things

In case you see things going wrong, proactively reach out to the customer to inform them of the delay and assure them that you’re investigating the issue.

Tracking your customers’ parcels in real-time gives you complete visibility of your shipments in transit but foresight as well for shipments that are likely to face delays.

Once you gain control over your in-transit shipments facing issues, you can step in before they impact your customers and resolve them. In cases with uncommon issues such as weather delays and roadblocks, a simple preemptive acknowledgment can work in your favor as equal as resolving issues.

Keeping a close eye on the package’s tracking information for progress can help you see if the situation gets better. If not, be prepared to offer solutions like discounts or store credits to compensate for the inconvenience. P.S. Be empathetic and offer sincere apologies (even when the issue is not your fault).

Thirdly, there can be a worst-case scenario with the package getting lost or the customer simply refusing to accept the package owing to the delay

In such cases, you need to be prepared to offer solutions like reshipping or refunds. Don’t worry about these costs because you no longer have to bear the blame and shell out dollars for failures and billing errors by carriers. If the reason for the delayed delivery is due to a carrier error, then you can easily recover refunds from shipping carriers.

You don’t have to do it manually. Make use of an automated parcel audit system like LateShipment.com that identifies 50+ carrier failures including late deliveries and lost packages, thus helping you save up to 20% on shipping costs. Also, regularly claiming shipping refunds can in turn enable your shipping carriers to perform better and prevent such incidents from occurring in the first place.

Bottom Line

Implementing all these last mile best practices by yourself can be difficult. To make it easier, you can make use of a post-purchase solution such as LateShipment.com that does all the heavy lifting on your behalf.

LateShipment.com is specifically built for ecommerce retailers such as yourself to deliver phenomenal post-purchase CX and measurable results, all while effortlessly recovering refund claims from your shipping carriers.

Interested? We at LateShipment.com can’t wait to help you grow your fanbase, savings, and business.

Get in touch with our expert or write to us.

The post What Does “Out for Delivery” Really Mean? appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Lost And Damaged Packages Causing Trouble During The Holidays? Here Are 5 Simple Ways To Avoid Them

Sashank Ravindranath — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 09:56:56 +0000

The holiday season should be a time for e-commerce businesses to celebrate after making successful sales but not stress about the possibility of your customers holding you accountable for their packages getting lost and damaged in transit.

On-time deliveries are a critical factor when it comes to e-commerce deliveries but in most cases, an apology paired with a replacement or a discount can make up for the delay. However, certain package issues such as theft or damage are recognized only when the package makes its way to the customer.

The good news is that you don’t have to face nightmares anymore worrying about customer frustration and churn as a result of these delivery issues. In order to help you provide a smooth and delightful delivery experience this holiday season, we’ll explore the reasons behind and challenges of loss and damage, and provide strategies to prevent them.

What Causes Lost and Damaged Packages And Makes Them More Common During The Holiday Season

No matter how hard a business tries, package delivery issues are inevitable and are more common during times like the holiday season. But a first step to cutting down delivery issues such as lost and damaged packages is to identify its source and try to cut it at the roots.

Here are some of the reasons why lost and damaged packages occur and are more common during the holidays:

High Shipping Volume: With a significant increase in shipping volume and more packages in transit as a result, carriers become overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of shipments, leading to a higher risk of packages getting lost or damaged.
Increased Handling: From the moment they leave the warehouse to the time they reach their destination, packages often pass through multiple distribution centers, warehouses, and trucks, with each transfer representing an opportunity for mishandling or damage.
Rushed Deliveries: The holiday rush often means that delivery timelines are tight. Carriers may be under pressure to make more deliveries in a shorter amount of time. In their haste, packages may not be handled with the care they deserve, increasing the risk of damage.
Weather Challenges: Winter weather can be particularly harsh on packages, making them more susceptible to damage.
Theft: Just like deliveries, package theft tends to increase during the holiday season. Porch pirates are aware that valuable items are being shipped, making unattended packages easy targets.
Misrouting: With the surge in packages, sorting errors can occur. Packages might be misrouted, leading to issues like being sent to the wrong location.

To help you mitigate the risks of lost and damaged packages during the holiday season, we have come up with a set of actions that you can take to ensure the impact of these issues is minimal on your business.

Without further ado, here are some ways for you to avoid lost or damaged packages in transit. Also, witness what reduced package delivery issues can do for your business.

5 Ways To Avoid Lost and Damaged Packages

Reducing lost and damaged packages during transit, especially during the holiday season, is crucial for your e-commerce business in terms of customer satisfaction metrics and revenue. Here are some effective ways to avoid or minimize these issues.

1. Package your items securely

How well your items have been packed plays a huge role in limiting your packages from getting damaged in transit. As mentioned earlier, holiday season packages come through multiple passages toward their destination, and with high shipping volume — there is a huge possibility of mishandling and damage as a result of human error.

To avoid such incidents, ensure that all items are properly packaged and cushioned to withstand the rigors of transit. If your forte is fragile items, you can use sturdy, high-quality boxes with adequate padding and other protective materials to protect the contents within. You can also consider using double boxes for extremely delicate items.

During times like the holiday season, if you’re shipping to regions with inclement weather, you can use weather-resistant packaging to protect packages from different temperatures.

Packaging can also play a huge role in preventing package theft. Porch pirates are more likely to steal packages that they think contain valuable items. By using plain or discreet packaging, you can make your packages less attractive to take away.

Also read: Festive Packaging Ideas To Drive Up Holiday Sales

2. Track your packages in real-time

On average, 1-in-5 parcels shipped face delivery issues resulting in high customer frustration and negative shopping experiences, which can soon lead to customer churn and a bad reputation.

The best ploy to prevent this from happening is to make use of a post-purchase automation platform that enables you to track parcels in real time.

Real-time tracking helps you monitor the progress of all your shipments and keeps you aware of any potential delays or issues.

Using this data, you can take proactive action to resolve the lost package incident (re-routing, etc) and fix the issue for your customers before the incident impacts them.

3. Proactively communicate with your customers

The post-purchase is a phase where customers are anxious about their orders due to the fear of parcels facing issues.

By staying mum about this issue, you are unknowingly feeding their ‘pre-parcel anxiety’, resulting in lower customer confidence and conversion rates.

In order to instill confidence in your customers to increase repeat purchases, you need to once again employ real-time package tracking.

An extension of real-time tracking is your newfound ability to proactively communicate order-related information to your customers. If, say, the lost package issue that you discovered is unresolvable, you can try your best to inform your customer about the incident rather than the other way around. This can help in managing their expectations.

Damage and package theft are issues that impact your customers first and they come to you with their grievance. Even in such cases, you can communicate proactively by offering empathy and discounts on future purchases to mitigate their frustration levels and ensure they continue shopping with you.

4. Insure your packages

An easy and affordable option to face lost and damaged packages is to insure your packages via shipping carriers or third-party options.

Shipping insurance serves as a safety net for e-commerce businesses and their customers by providing financial protection in case of lost or damaged packages. Here’s how shipping insurance helps in such situations:

Shipping insurance helps you with lost or damaged packages by reimbursing you for the value of your items if they are lost or damaged in transit. This offers you financial protection against losses and helps you get your items replaced.

Also, knowing that your packages have been insured gives you peace of mind knowing that your items are protected if lost or damaged in transit. This can allow you to focus on other aspects of your business or personal life.

5. Eliminate package thefts

Package thefts are one of the worst ways for a package to get lost or face an issue in general. Despite tireless efforts from a lot of people, the experience of collecting the parcel in hand is robbed from the customer just because some opportunists thought it would be a good idea to get away with the package on the porch.

With orders being high in value and attractive outside in terms of package design, theft is a frequent instance during the holiday season.

Fortunately, some suggestions exist to avoid porch pirates and eliminate package thefts entirely.

For starters, keeping your customers informed of the arrival of their package at all times is a great way to ensure they’re present at the location to collect the package and avoid it being left unattended.

In case the customer isn’t able to stay at the location, you can also offer suggestions such as an address change to ship it off to a different location (say, their workplace) or to an Amazon locker, where they can collect their package later.

Final Word

In the whirlwind of holiday e-commerce, the last thing businesses and customers need is the disappointment of lost and damaged packages. As the festive season approaches, taking proactive steps to prevent these issues is paramount.

By implementing the strategies outlined in this article, e-commerce businesses can navigate the holiday rush with confidence, ensuring that packages reach their destinations safely and a smoother and more enjoyable shopping experience for customers.

Remember, with attention to packaging, clear communication, and the safety net of shipping insurance, the holidays can be a season of delight and fulfillment instead of worrying about lost and damaged packages.

The post Lost And Damaged Packages Causing Trouble During The Holidays? Here Are 5 Simple Ways To Avoid Them appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Tips for a Great eCommerce Returns Process

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 04:57:12 +0000

What a journey has it been for e-commerce returns — From terrifying businesses with the presumption of being customer repulsive and a cost-center to becoming one of the most sought after services from a business.

However, even today, most businesses consider the order experience to end with delivery and see returns as just something trivial instead of a feature that they definitely should embrace.

But is just providing returns enough? Well, not so much in 2023 at least.

Today’s customers have increased expectations when it comes to returns experiences from brands.

Meeting, or rather exceeding these expectations, can lead to a smooth and hassle-free returns process that increases their satisfaction levels and helps you turn a potentially negative experience into an opportunity to win loyal customers.

Thus, without further ado, here are some tips to help you optimize your returns process to create happier customers and enjoy success.

Tips for Improving Your E-Commerce Returns Process

1. Simplify handling returns requests

The first step to make your returns a breeze starts with the first action that takes place when there’s a need to make a return arises from the customer’s end — initiation.

Returns initiation is nothing but the customer having a product that they’d like to return at hand and notifying you of it.

Under legacy methods, this usually involves the customer contacting the support team with a query, which becomes a ticket that needs to be followed up and acted upon.

However, this may not be the best ploy as support interactions may take time and a long initiation process can frustrate customers who may drop off without initiating AND doing business with you.

Up to 40% of customers will stop doing business with a company if the process for initiating returns is complicated.

Worry not! There’s a better way to do this.

Have a clear returns policy

Tailor your returns policy in a way that it meets your objectives as well as is clear enough for your customers to understand.

When customers know what to do and what to expect there is less friction in the initiation process, thus leading to:

Happy customers due to increased satisfaction and reduces frustration levels
Reduced workload on customer service reps
Increased savings on shipping and processing costs, thanks to lower number of returns

Make the returns initiation process as simple and straightforward as possible

Ensure that doing returns with you, comes with a host of benefits such as:

Multiple channels to request returns, such as a dedicated returns portal on your website, or even a chatbot – to display your commitment to providing customers with a great returns process
Flexible return methods such as exchanges and store credits – to make the process more convenient and encourage repeat purchases
Automated and prepaid return labels – to retain control over return-related costs

All of this can make the returns initiation process quicker and easier, and ultimately reduce the chances of your customers giving up on doing returns by enhancing their satisfaction.

2. Deliver a great returns experience

A seamless returns initiation process to begin helps you improve customer satisfaction among other things.

Riding high on that wave, your next action is to provide a great returns experience that boosts loyalty.

92% of shoppers say they will buy again if the returns process is easy.

This means your chance to redefine returns as a growth driver and not customer repulsive is here and well-defined.

Proactively Process Returns

Once returns are received, process them promptly and efficiently to ensure that your customers don’t get any second thoughts regarding continuing business with you.

Aim to issue refunds or exchanges as quickly as possible, demonstrating your commitment to resolving any issues proactively.

You can also employ automation to manage inventory, track the status of returned items, and ensure that items are returned to the correct location and that they are available for sale again.

Provide seamless returns status tracking

Providing customers with real-time updates on the status of their returns builds trust and transparency.

Send proactive updates on returns requests, via automated email and SMS status notifications and provide a live tracking page, to allow customers to stay in the whereabouts of their package. This works in reducing support inquiries and enhancing customer experience, thereby leading to increased customer confidence.

Being proactive with returns also helps in reducing the time taken on handling returns and frees up your support agents and warehouse operators time.

3. Reduce the number of returns

Almost all returns are valid but not all of them have to be refunded or initiated as returns. This is because almost 70% of all returns are size and fit related.

These returns, if not cut down, can prove to be a costly problem for e-commerce businesses, and lead to lost revenue and increased shipping costs.

Lucky for you, there are a number of things that e-commerce businesses can do to reduce unwanted returns.

Implement return reason analysis

Analyze the reasons for returns to identify patterns and potential areas for improvement.

If the data suggests that there are recurring issues with product quality, size discrepancies, or incorrect descriptions, etc, you can take efforts to address the problem at its root cause and implement corrective actions to reduce future returns.

Understanding return reasons can also guide product development and improve product descriptions, leading to a better shopping experience for your customers.

Leverage returns data for business insights

Returns data can offer valuable insights into your business in the form of specific products or categories, seasonality trends, and the impact of marketing campaigns on returns.

This data-driven approach allows you to make informed decisions and fine-tune your inventory, marketing and customer service strategies.

Final word

Improving your returns process is not only crucial for customer satisfaction but also an opportunity to gain a competitive edge in the e-commerce industry.

By offering a clear and user-friendly returns policy, simplifying returns initiation, and efficiently processing returns, you can create a positive post-purchase experience for your customers.

Leverage returns data to make informed business decisions and continuously improve your operations.

Remember, a seamless returns process can turn dissatisfied customers into loyal advocates for your brand. Invest in enhancing your returns process, and watch your e-commerce business thrive.

The post Tips for a Great eCommerce Returns Process appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

E-commerce Delivery Experience Management (DEM) to Drive Customer Delight

Rohan Rinaldo Felix — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 11:24:42 +0000

Customers are no longer just interested in low prices, fast shipping, and free returns have constantly been the three must-haves for an online business to make the cut in today’s market.

They want e-commerce brands to treat them with the proper experience that can lead them to shop again.

However, most brands unwillingly make the mistake of not giving the same level of attention to their post-purchase as they do to their pre-purchase. This is because brands feel the customer journey ends with the ‘buy’ button. Which is not the case.

This lack of attention and leaving out the post-purchase order delivery phase at the hands of the shipping carrier often leads to bad delivery experiences and ultimately a post-purchase CX gap that can cost you customers and money.

In order to close this existing gap and create the opportunity to delight customers in the post-purchase phase, brands must start crafting stellar delivery experiences. Here comes Delivery Experience Management (DEM) that can help you do just that.

To get better context, let’s start with what DEM stands for.

What is Delivery Experience Management (DEM)?

Delivery Experience Management (DEM) is the process of being proactive in ensuring that your customers receive their orders on time and how they expect. It also involves taking action as required to correct delivery issues and constantly engaging customers in the post-purchase phase to validate brand promises.

Organizationally Delivery Experience Management (DEM) sits at the very intersection of onsite customer experience, post-purchase customer experience, and order fulfillment.

DEM is all about offering each of your customers a memorable post-purchase experience that not merely satisfies but also delights and makes them advocates of your brand.

But why does your e-commerce business in particular need DEM?

Why Does Your Business Need Delivery Experience Management (DEM)

DEM, still largely untapped, is sure to provide you a competitive advantage and allow your hitherto unprecedented control over your post-purchase phase. Here are only a few reasons why your business needs DEM:

Resolve critical shipping incidents before they happen with real-time updates – leads to 70% reduction in delivery inquiries
Strengthen customer relationships by keeping your customers informed of their orders – open rates are around 80% for personalized email and SMS notifications
Leverage tracking moments to increase brand awareness – 30% increase in brand recall
Decode customer sentiment and engagement to provide a positive delivery experience – 25% lift in repeat purchases

DEM is chock-a-block filled with aspects, if I may, that can help you craft the perfect delivery experience and drive customer delight. Let’s take a deeper look at tools for a complete understanding on DEM.

How DEM Helps You Craft the Perfect Delivery Experience and Drive Customer Delight

Real-time visibility is an aspect of DEM that allows you to stay on the pulse of each of your parcels in transit (from the moment they’re picked up by a shipping carrier up until it is delivered to its designated destination) and identify issues they face, thereby giving you ample time to set things right.

A lack of visibility into your delivery often comes with a horde of challenges, in the form of:

You, the business becoming aware of a delivery issue only when an angry customer calls in and
Your customer support reps are forced to handle repeated WISMO (Where Is My Order?) inquiries as there is a lack of information to deal proactively with delivery issues.

However, DEM simply eliminates this case by affording a real-time view of all parcels in transit across different shipping carriers and also working predictively to flag delivery issues even before they arise. This arms businesses with all the actionable information required to thwart a possible negative delivery issue for the customer even before it arises, thus enabling customer loyalty over time.

Proactive customer service is enabling your customer support reps to address and mitigate delivery issues before customer impact. This shows your strong commitment to keeping up with the high standard of customer experience you offer.

Not just unresolved issues, even simply being reactive to delivery issues can also hurt your business in the following ways:

Even your most loyal customer can stop shopping with you, leading to lower lifetime value (CLV) and higher acquisition costs (CAC)
Your brand’s online reputation takes a massive hit as frustrated customers post a negative review on social media and demotivate their followers, friends, and family from shopping with you.

This is where a DEM solution can make a major difference.

By providing unbiased real-time insights on the status of each of your parcels in transit, it can prepare you to respond in time when a specific parcel is facing a delay. This is a surefire way for your business to demonstrate to each customer that they are valued, thereby preventing the possibility of them switching over to a competitor.

Also, it considerably reduces the number of calls about parcel whereabouts that a support agent has to face and frees up their time to tend to product-specific issues. Over time, this helps in improving the scores of every member of the support team for which they will be thankful to you!

Handing over the control of the package causes a broken customer experience in the order delivery phase and is also a lost opportunity to monetize tracking moments.

Delivery Experience Management corrects this imbalance by helping e-commerce businesses provide on-brand order tracking experiences that can make more of a mark on their customers and, indeed, delight them.

In terms of branded customer engagement, DEM helps you:

Keep customers informed of delivery status through automated & personalized email and SMS notifications that are triggered and sent to customers when their parcels reach specific events during the shipping process.
Provide customizable branded tracking pages that makes it possible for a customer to track their parcels within your website rather than being taken to the tracking page of a shipping carrier.

Leveraging order tracking moments can work as your e-commerce store’s next marketing advantage by ensuring brand recall and opening up upselling and cross-selling opportunities for your business. Also, adding relevant product information can help reduce unwanted returns.

There has always been a dearth of data when it comes to the error-prone stage of the logistics cycle, the post-purchase phase. This includes the gap in understanding customer satisfaction metrics as well.

While you have CSAT and NPS to know how satisfied your customers are and how likely they are to recommend your brand to others, you still don’t have clarity on when exactly customers feel let down by your business.

Worry not! DEM provides access to a wealth of unbiased data on the delivery performance of your shipping partner(s); data hitherto unavailable to e-commerce businesses like yours; data that shipping carriers have always been hesitant to share with businesses.

This unbiased view of customer sentiment about the quality of delivery experience you offer enables you to:

Take delivery-related decisions that are bound to delight your customers
Know how your shipping carriers’ performance impacts your customers and hold this data to account for their SLAs
Shine a light on the quality of your post-purchase phase
Helps protect your brand’s reputation from negative feedback.

How DEM Integrates with Your Existing Tech Stack

The beauty of a good DEM solution lies in the fact that it allows you to simplify workflows and boost organizational productivity without disrupting your pre-existing solutions.

For instance, a DEM platform like LateShipment.com gives you everything you need to create delightful delivery experiences for every shopper, every time. And the best part, it works with all the tools you work with.

LateShipment.com’s DEM suite is designed to seamlessly integrate with most shipping carriers, eCommerce platforms, order management platforms, CRMs, and helpdesk tools.

Additionally, LateShipment.com also can integrate with custom-built tools and platforms. Our API makes it easy to enable such integrations. This allows you to tap into all the great benefits that can take your business to the next level.

Do Bigger Things with Your Post-purchase

Don’t stop with a great delivery experience. With LateShipment.com, go all out with your post-purchase excellence. It combines stellar delivery experiences with easy, seamless returns – all while significantly reducing your shipping spend by auditing your invoices and recovering eligible refunds from your carriers.

It takes less than 2 minutes to see LateShipment.com in action without any change to your existing workflow.

Try for free now.

The post E-commerce Delivery Experience Management (DEM) to Drive Customer Delight appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How to Ensure Better Performance from Shipping Carriers

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 13:29:44 +0000

The Importance of On-time Delivery

On-time deliveries are a business’ best practice. Yet they do not captivate customers like same-day delivery or free shipping promises do. However, failing to make on-time deliveries gives you a bad reputation.

But..but…keeping deliveries on time is not so easy, given that on-time delivery is in the hands of your shipping partner.

In such situations, it is natural to ensure a better performance from the shipping carrier that you’re using.

To do that, we’ll have to first understand the role shipping carriers in ensuring on-time deliveries.

The Role of Shipping Carriers in Ensuring On-time Deliveries

Once the package has been handed over to the shipping carrier, they take control of your customers’ post-purchase experiences as well.

Despite carriers’ efforts to deliver your customers’ parcels on time, delays occur daily, largely because of carriers straining their capacity to meet on-time deliveries.

That’s not all! 7 out of 10 common causes of delays are because of the shipping carrier — ranging from poor warehouse management to failed delivery attempts.

And the worst part about these delays is the fact that the responsibility falls on you rather than the shipping carrier.

Customers who have faced a delay on packages that are most valuable to them will definitely not shop with you again. And if that’s not enough, frustrated former customers also end up posting negative reviews on social media and deter potential customers from choosing your business.

Thus, it is clear that your shipping carriers’ performance has a significant effect on your customer experience (and wallet!).

That said, you can make use of a solution such as LateShipment.com that helps you deliver phenomenal post-purchase CX and measurable results such as a better quality of service and an on-time delivery guarantee from your shipping partner.

How E-commerce Businessses Can Ensure On-time Deliveries and Better Performance from Shipping Carriers

1. Collect delivery feedback from customers to identify areas of improvement

Your customers are the ultimate end users when it comes to order deliveries.

If they are not satisfied with the delivery experience provided, they would not only show their frustration at the carrier but also at the business that is making use of the carrier as well. Therefore, it is wise to understand what they think of the delivery experiences they receive.

Collect your customers’ feedback on delivery experiences to know whether all that time, money, and effort you spent is working in your favor. You can then use this valuable data to make the right decisions when it comes to shipping and identify areas of improvement such as delivering on time.

With the help of LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management (DEM) platform, you can:

Capture your customers’ Delivery Satisfaction (DSAT) rating after every order delivery and
Monitor the average DSAT scores of customers to optimize the shipping & delivery process

Consistently improving your customers’ post-purchase can help you promote your brand’s credibility.

2. Review carrier performance scores via comparison reports

Shipping takes a lot of effort, time, and most importantly money. It is only smart that you review and evaluate your choices and decisions with the help of good data

LateShipment.com provides you a detailed assessment of how your carrier’s delivery performance fares against service-specific delivery standards in the form of intuitive reports.

With this data at hand, you can get a single consolidated view of delivery performance metrics across carriers, services, and geographies. You can then dig deeper to uncover gaps in carrier performance and know where you’re seeing profits and review areas where you’re not.

That’s not all! You can now make informed decisions and efficient last-mile carrier choices that can inevitably increase the odds of on-time deliveries.

3. Hold your carriers accountable by regularly collecting refunds for their service failures

About one-third of customers won’t repurchase from a merchant after a late delivery.

So, why bear the brunt of delivery issues?

It’s only fair to hold your carriers accountable for their mistakes. And you can do that by regularly auditing your shipping invoices and claiming refunds.

Each package shipped through major carriers comes with a service guarantee. It’s an assurance that the package will be delivered within a committed time, failing which they offer a complete refund of the shipping cost.

There are more than 50 service failures, overcharges, and discrepancies that are eligible for refunds. When unclaimed, this money that you’re entitled to be just left on the table.

Keeping a close watch on delivery issues and claiming refunds where due, also ensures better service quality by your shipping carriers.

Bottom Line

Apart from helping you ensure a better performance from your shipping carriers, LateShipment.com also helps you do bigger things with your post-purchase by combining stellar delivery experiences with easy, seamless returns and not to forget, recovering eligible refunds from your carriers.

Try LateShipment.com for free now and grow your fanbase, savings, and business. We’re ready when you are. Ready to get started?

If you still have questions for us, we’re all ears.

The post How to Ensure Better Performance from Shipping Carriers appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Use Cases for LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management Platform

Rohan Rinaldo Felix — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 00:39:57 +0000

What is Delivery Experience Management?

Delivery Experience Management (DEM) is the process of being proactive in ensuring that your customers receive their orders on-time and how they expect. It involves taking action as required to correct issues in the last mile and constantly engaging customers to validate brand promises.

DEM is all about offering each of your customers a memorable last-mile shipping experience that not merely satisfies but also delights and makes them advocates of your brand.

However, the last-mile is most often controlled by third-party shipping carriers.

This unfortunately results in a situation where your customers’ delivery experience suffers tremendously during this critical phase of the customer journey leading to irreparable problems and lost opportunities.

Let’s take a look at some of the issues you will inevitably encounter in the last-mile without a solution to manage delivery experiences that can hurt your business in multiple ways.

Issues Your Brand Will Face Without a Solution to Manage Delivery Experiences

1. Losing Customers to Bad Delivery Experiences

The last-mile is error prone. No matter how efficient shipping carriers claim they are, 8 to 10 percent of parcels inevitably get delayed.

And when delays do happen, more often than not, customers blame the retailer rather than the shipping carrier for the bad delivery experience.

It is a fact that 47% of customers won’t shop with your brand following a bad delivery experience. Worse, they will vent their ire on social media, making it incumbent on you to offer a great delivery experience.

2. Broken Post-Purchase Experience With Inadequate Customer Engagement

While a retailer may have exclusive control of a customer’s on-site experience, this is lost once the parcel has been handed off to their shipping partner.

This is because the post-purchase order delivery phase and its activities such as giving customers the ability to track their parcels and sending them delivery status updates are considered to be functions of the shipping carrier.

This leads to grossly inadequate customer engagement from the retailer’s side in the last mile, making customers move away from the brand as a result of a broken shopper experience.

3. Increased Customer Anxiety and Frustration Over Parcel Whereabouts

Customer anxiety while awaiting parcels forces support reps to handle a skyrocketing number of WISMO (Where Is My Order?) calls.

Not being equipped with the right technology leads to slow customer support response times and a bad delivery experience for customers.

Adding fuel to the fire, a high volume of WISMO requests affects your support team’s productivity by taking up all their time and prevents them from focusing on critical product-related concerns.

4. Lost Opportunities to Monetize Post-Purchase Tracking Moments

On average, customers track their parcels 6–8 times on a shipping carrier’s tracking page.

Unfortunately, carriers tend to withhold information on delivery exceptions such as delays, which can increase customer angst and result in a poor delivery experience.

Having insufficient or no technology in place to manage your delivery experiences is a lost opportunity to not just meaningfully engage with your customers but also to reinforce brand identity and drive sales through upselling and cross-selling.

The good news is LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management (DEM) platform has a host of use cases for a variety of organizational roles pertaining to the last mile and beyond, which can help you resolve the issues we’ve discussed.

Use Cases for a Delivery Experience Management (DEM) Platform

Use Case #1: Gaining Real-Time Visibility Into Shipments in Transit

As a logistics manager, how many times have you found it hard to keep track of the parcels you’ve dispatched to your customers?

Worry not though! LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management (DEM) platform is designed from the ground up to provide unprecedented visibility into every one of your shipments in transit, unlike the limited visibility provided on a shipping carrier’s website.

LateShipment.com intuitively categorizes all your parcels. So, a mere glance at your dashboard can provide you an immediate idea about how many of your parcels will be delivered during the day and how many are likely to be delayed.

Not just that, LateShipment.com helps you identify delays spread across carriers and service locations and provides you the ability to get as granular with your data as you please down to individual shipments.

And the best thing? Our system integrates with close to 50 shipping carriers, eCommerce platforms, order management systems, and CRMs, and this number is growing every week

Use Case #2: Keeping Support Reps on Top of Delivery Issues

As head of a customer support team, If there were some way to be aware of issues before customers knew of them, wouldn’t your customer support reps be better able to handle such situations?

Here’s a solution: Use a dedicated customer support dashboard that highlights delivery issues as soon as they are detected. This capability is present within LateShipment.com, and unlike our standard dashboard, this interface provides only the very essential data that you and your customer-support-team mates need to proactively resolve issues.

This solution not only helps you to predict delays and fix last-mile issues before they impact customers but gains your support-reps time when it comes to handling product complaints.

Use Case #3: Proactively Resolving Delivery Issues

As an online merchant, how many times have you struggled to handle relatively uncommon situations like weather-related exceptions because you were unable to inform specific customers in time that their parcels would be delayed?

At LateShipment.com, we are committed to helping you retain customers through the toughest of circumstances. This is why we provide you with the ability to send custom messages to specific customers whose parcels are experiencing uncommon delays like unexpected weather exceptions.

When your customer’s in-transit order is likely to go haywire, you can preemptively inform them of the issue and offer them a solution like re-shipping the order via an expedited shipping option, a discount, or a refund on their next purchase.

Use Case #4: Meaningfully Engaging With Your Customers Across the Last Mile

As a customer-centric retailer, how often have you wanted to keep your customers informed of parcel status so that they don’t need to constantly go to the shipping carrier’s website to check delivery status?

The solution is right here. LateShipment.com helps you set up automated email and SMS notifications that are triggered and sent to customers when their parcels reach specific events during the shipping process.

We provide you with the ability to send timely notifications to your customers about their orders for last-mile events such as “Shipped”, “Attempted”, and “Delivered”.

You can also provide a tracking link along with the mail to ease their anxiety and keep them in the know of their parcel’s whereabouts.

All you need to do to enjoy this feature is to connect your eCommerce store or CRM platform to our interface, and relevant customer data will be populated within our interface.

Use Case #5: Providing an On-Brand Delivery Experience

As an eCommerce retailer, are you taking efforts to ensure brand recall at all stages of the tracking and delivery process?

Since this is critical, LateShipment.com provides businesses like yours the ability to create a branded tracking page that customers can visit for information on their parcels.

Your branded tracking page will contain your logo and the language of your brand, thus enhancing brand recognition and keeping your brand foremost on your customers’ minds.

To unlock upsell and cross-sell opportunities, you can subtly populate your tracking page with engaging marketing assets such as personalized recommendations and offers.

LateShipment.com also provides you with the ability to place a tracking widget anywhere on your website, such as on the order confirmation/ history page. Customers can enter the tracking number in the widget and be immediately redirected to your branded tracking page.

Use Case #6: Improving Customer Satisfaction With Data-Driven Insights

As a business driven by data, do you measure customer feedback to make optimization decisions? After all, what gets measured, gets managed. Are you armed with data to help you measure the effectiveness of your delivery experience?

Unfortunately, shipping carriers generally don’t report back with relevant feedback on the delivery experiences of your customers in the last mile.

LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management suite helps retailers like you add a Delivery Satisfaction (DSAT) score system within their tracking page. This allows customers to rate delivery performance, which in turn helps you monitor your carrier’s performance.

Also, you can link your tracking page to your Google Analytics account to know how your brand is perceived by customers.

The data-driven insights you gain from collecting customer feedback on a scale of good, not so good, or bad experiences will help your business do right by customers by gaining a deeper understanding of their delivery experiences.

At the end of the day, it boils down to keeping track of the delivery experience your customers have had every single time they’ve shopped with you and ensuring corrective measures are taken if a particular customer has repeatedly had a substandard delivery experience.

These insights also arm with you relevant data when it comes to negotiating with your shipping carrier.

How a DEM Platform Can Be a Competitive Differentiator for Your Business

1. Gain Control of Customers’ Delivery Experiences

A DEM suite allows you to provide your customers a frictionless delivery experience via tools that enhance visibility of parcels across carriers and that let you communicate at critical moments with customers.

By communicating with customers when it matters the most and resolving delivery exceptions even before they become an issue, you are making your loyal customers feel more valued and understand that you, the retailer, have their back.

2. Strengthen Customer Relationships in the Last Mile

Highly engaged customers become loyal customers.

DEM provides you with the ability to meaningfully engage with your customers in the last mile through automated and customizable email updates, SMSes, and more.

When you are actively engaging with your customers, you are fostering a connection by keeping them in constant loop of their order status.

This way, you are able to make more of a mark on your customers and, indeed, delight them.

3. Improve Retention and Customer Loyalty

Providing your customers with a smooth, hassle-free delivery experience allows you to encourage repeat purchases and forge long-lasting customer relationships. This inevitably leads to increased retention resulting in higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

DEM arms businesses with all the actionable information required to thwart a possible negative delivery experience for the customer even before it arises, thus enabling businesses to be more empathetic towards their customers and encourage customer loyalty over time.

4. Increase Sales revenue and Reduce Costs

Customer loyalty is valuable for businesses. Studies show increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase your profits by more than 25%. Also, repeat customers are nine times more likely to buy from you than new customers.

By proactively reaching out to customers, retailers can mitigate customer pain and face less flak from angry customers.

Moreover, due to the efforts taken by a retailer like you, customers may avoid taking harsh decisions such as returns and continue shopping with you.

Given that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, DEM helps you cut down on costs.

Final Word

In spite of the sky-high costs, tedious process, and accumulated complications, last-mile delivery will always remain the decisive leg of the supply-chain process.

At LateShipment.com, our focus has remained steadfastly on the last mile, typically the part of the logistics chain that is the most opaque.

LateShipment.com is the world’s only logistics cloud tool that helps businesses of every size reduce shipping costs by up to 20% and provide memorable delivery experiences to customers at scale.

The best part is, it takes less than 2 minutes to see LateShipment.com in action.

COVID-19 Note: To help tide over the current crisis, we are giving all businesses full and free access to our Delivery Experience Management Platform till June 30, 2020.

The value we add to businesses is most evident when experienced first-hand.

It’s that simple!

The post Use Cases for LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management Platform appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

All You Need to Know About Amazon Logistics in 2019

Sriram Sridhar — Sat, 21 Dec 2019 01:24:13 +0000

Introduction

In the world of last-mile deliveries in the US, 2019 is a landmark year; For the first time in a very very long time, the duopoly of FedEx and UPS in the US market is being seriously challenged by a competitor: Amazon.

For the first time in a very very long time, the duopoly of FedEx and UPS in the US market is being seriously challenged by a competitor.

In 2019, Amazon Logistics is set to finish the year handling around 2.5 Billion shipments. This is 2x what it handled in 2018 and getting eerily close to the 3 Billion mark of FedEx and the 4.7 Billion mark of UPS. This is no mean feat even for a company like Amazon and represents more than a decade of effort behind the scenes to own the complete shopping experience of a customer from procurement to unboxing.

From the perspective of a tech company that operates in the shipping and logistics space and which is an active advocate for transparency and choice in this space, this is exciting news that can potentially disrupt this space and bring a host of positive changes to both shippers and end customers who receive those shipments.

Here we attempt to take a closer look at the impact that Amazon Logistics has had on Holiday Season 2019 and what the future potentially holds for them in the small parcel shipping carrier space currently dominated by FedEx and UPS.

Why is Amazon Logistics a big deal?

While last-mile deliveries may seem like just another component in the long list of things Amazon does, the reality is far from it. This happens to be an exceptionally important component of their “customer obsession” mission and helps them build a critical advantage over other online merchants.

When you look closer, every online merchant, including Amazon, traditionally relied on a shipping carrier like FedEx or UPS for their last-mile deliveries. This meant that a merchant’s shipping speed, costs, and delivery experience were restricted to what was offered by these shipping carriers. In a country like the US, with a near duopoly between two carriers, this often meant very little flexibility or control for merchants over their shipping.

In the US, the near duopoly between two carriers has meant little flexibility or control for merchants over their shipping.

This limitation was something that Amazon has always resented as it left the final portion of a customer’s shopping experience in the hands of a shipping carrier, which often had different objectives compared to Amazon. For instance, providing a tighter delivery window, offering flexible redelivery options, ensuring that a high-value shipment or customer is given special treatment, providing in-home deliveries to combat package theft, etc. may be of high importance to Amazon, being the seller a customer has a direct relationship with. But, a shipping carrier, which is simply paid for transporting a shipment from A to B, often has very different objectives compared to the seller and customer. This mismatch has always been a pain point for customer-obsessed businesses like Amazon.

Taking direct control of this final piece of the shopping experience will enable Amazon to have direct control over a customer’s order right from the moment a customer lands on their website to the moment the customer unboxes the product, enabling Amazon to have a remarkable customer experience advantage over the competition.

Just imagine being able to order something in the morning, pick a 30 min delivery window late next evening, rescheduling that effortlessly if needed or even giving the delivery person permission to step in and leave the product in your living room vs picking another merchant who will be delivering through FedEx or UPS throwing the delivery across your fence 3 days later. That’s the magnitude of difference in experience Amazon Logistics can bring to the table for Amazon.

How did Amazon Logistics succeed where others could not?

The biggest limitation that has prevented serious new competition from emerging in the shipping carrier space to challenge FedEx and UPS has been the very high infrastructure investment required to operate at a national level as a shipping carrier. The shipping volumes required to justify such an investment have always been very high and it remains exceptionally risky for a new entrant to bet on achieving these massive volumes to be successful.

Amazon, on the other hand, managed to circumvent this challenge by independently growing to be a shipper large enough to easily justify such investments, thus allowing it not only to become an independent carrier that satisfies their own shipping needs but also offer shipping services to other merchants who may or may not be selling on Amazon; in other words, reduce its own dependency on FedEx and UPS and offer a serious alternative for other merchants using FedEx and UPS.

How is Amazon Logistics different from shipping carriers?

Let us imagine a customer in California ordering a product from a merchant in New York and. on the same day, a customer in New York ordering the same product from a store in California. When these merchants rely on FedEx or UPS, this situation will result in two cross country shipments of 3+ days, each with a higher probability of delays compared to shipments that travel a lesser distance.

With Amazon through, since they are also the merchant and have control over inventory and shipping locations, the order from California would be fulfilled probably the same day from a warehouse in California and the order in New York similarly so from a warehouse in New York.

This direct control over inventory and shipping locations offers Amazon the ability to optimize transportation costs, performance, and efficiency far better than a traditional shipping carrier like FedEx or UPS. When Amazon Logistics makes a move to corner the non-Amazon shipping market down the line, this considerable expertise in managing fulfillment as a whole is likely to see them offering comprehensive and innovative fulfillment solutions that go beyond just the shipping services offered by traditional carriers.

How did Amazon Logistics perform this year?

This is the first year Amazon Logistics is operating at a scale comparable to FedEx and UPS and we project their performance numbers to match up to those of FedEx and UPS with Holiday performance being right around the 8% delay mark. For a first attempt, this is commendable indeed.

With the inventory and fulfillment location advantages that Amazon enjoys, we expect performance numbers to get far better than those of FedEx and UPS in the next 1–3 years, especially because Amazon is relentless in trying to improve performance and expand its footprint in this space.

Image Courtesy: www.vox.com/recode

What does the future hold for Amazon Logistics?

For the reasons stated above, Amazon Logistics is a very serious effort for Amazon; something that Amazon has put a tremendous amount of background work into over more than a decade and something we expect Amazon to be relentless in trying to perfect.

We expect Amazon Logistics to have a massive impact on the shipping space, comparable to the significant impact AWS had on cloud computing. We expect it to grow into a huge, invisible backbone that powers e-commerce across the US.

We expect Amazon to focus on perfecting its own deliveries and taking on the deliveries of merchants using FBA. 2019 saw them handling 46% of such deliveries and 2020 is likely to see that expand to around the 70% mark. At this point, we expect to see Amazon open up Amazon Logistics on a large scale, as a serious alternative to FedEx and UPS, for non-Amazon sellers and shipments. This move will likely double it’s 2.5 Billion parcel volume by 2021 and eat into the 82% share of FedEx, UPS, and USPS in the small parcel space, giving Amazon about 40% of that market by 2023.

Amazon has far more interest in focussing on delivery speed and experience than traditional shipping carriers as most shipments are sent to its own customers. This is likely to make Amazon obsessively focus on on-time deliveries and more flexible and customer-friendly delivery options such as in-home deliveries, batch deliveries, and night deliveries and tighter delivery windows.

We estimate Amazon to achieve >98% on-time deliveries all through the year, including the holiday season, with a significant rise in more customer-friendly delivery offerings by 2021.

Final Word

Irrespective of whether we take the perspective of a customer or of a merchant, Amazon’s much-anticipated entry into the last mile space is exciting news. The massive competition that Amazon brings is likely to revitalize tech penetration in this space and bring about a succession of rapid changes that are likely to enable merchants and customers more of a say in how packages are shipped between them.

_________________________________________

This is an article by Sriram Sridhar, CEO at LateShipment.com.

The post All You Need to Know About Amazon Logistics in 2019 appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Top 10 Shipping and Inventory Management Tools for SMBs

Ian — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 15:27:34 +0000

Retail has shifted significantly to online platforms today and there is no denying that. Amazon, Walmart and Alibaba have transformed retail in giant strides with some major help from technological aids. It is near impossible to stay afloat in the retail sector if your business doesn’t use the right tools to manage processes.

Larger retailers have their own custom built tools. For example, Walmart streamlines its internal processes and enhances customer experiences with its own technology incubator, Store No 8. Smaller retailers usually choose paid online tools that suit their needs.

Let’s take a look at retail tools that help with shipping and inventory in particular. 2018 has been witnessing some major trends in inventory management and shipping so far. People are confidently investing in these tools because they figure that it is an important area for optimization and enhanced customer experience. That’s not exactly surprising considering global retail E-commerce is estimated to hit $1800 billion this year. We’ve put together some of the tools that rule the roost with their multiple inventory management and fast shipping methods. With newer tools, retailers find that they can see use one platform/ tool to access all details on order fulfilment, barcode inventory and purchase management.

Top 5 tools for shipping

Fast delivery is a necessity to earn customer loyalty. Retailers have to work toward meeting this expectation using every tool in their arsenal, or signing up for an effective one. Several big retailers put a price tag on their custom built tools so that smaller players in the industry can make use of the tech. Amazon for instance, offers shipping help and all associated tools for the sellers listed on their site. Here are some of the most popular shipping tools making the rounds this year.

Ordoro

Ordoro tops most lists on retail tools. It is used by several small businesses to manage their shipping needs because of its affordability and efficiency. Pricing starts at $25 a month, and retailers get access to print shipping labels easily, audit, autofill shipping forms and select/compare shipping carriers suitable for their needs.

Image source: getapp

Why we love it

Affordably priced
Up to 67% discounted rates with USPS
Direct integration with shipping carriers
Drop shipping is available with select plans
Open API

FedEx Fulfilment

FedEx fulfilment is fairly new to the game having been introduced in early 2017. It helps smaller organizations with fulfilment needs by offering solutions for warehousing, packaging, fulfilment, transportation, and reverse logistics. The tracking facilities are excellent and all orders can be analysed in one place. FedEx makes it easy for retailers to not worry about competition with Amazon in FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon), and to fulfil international orders with ease in over 200 countries.

Why we love it

Full scale logistics services
Multiple channel order fulfilment
Suitable for ecommerce retailers of all sizes

Shippingeasy

Shippingeasy lives up to its name of making shipping easy, with its easy to avail automated shipping discounts and tracking service. Pricing begins at $29 per month for the basic version. Creating shipping labels takes no time with this app, and you can even customize your view of order details. Reviews of the app also boast an excellent support team who are available 24/7.

Image source: getapp

Why we love it

Seamless integration with major online marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, ebay, Squarespace, Shopify, etc.
The Autoship option
Absolute ease of use and customization

ShipBob

ShipBob offers order fulfilment services with same-day delivery in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Dallas and Chicago. Anywhere else in the continental US, ShipBob can reach in 2 days. There is a free version of the software to manage inventory. ShipBob is the tool you should go for when you reach out to large cities for most of your orders. ShipBob also works out to be cheap when you ship large volumes, and provides analytics and extensive reporting that helps with business decisions.

Image source: getapp

Why we love it

Quick delivery within metropolitan areas
Easy integration with stores like ebay and amazon
Basic free version
Predictive data insights, optimized shipping

Fulfillify

Fulfillify is a tech platform that boasts several strategically placed smart warehouses and boasts an order accuracy of 99%. Fulfillify lets users track orders and manage inventory with any device, and is extremely mobile friendly. You get detailed reports warehouse locations, product arrivals, status and customer orders. Alerts are automatically generated when the inventory is running low.

Why we love it

Easy integration with existing carts and softwares
Full transparency over shipments
Mobile/Tablet Friendly

Top 5 tools for inventory management

Inventory Management involves well planned strategy, management and execution. Thankfully, there are some great tools available that can be of help. Inventory management tools usually handle shipping as well, so retailers can avail dual benefit. Investing in a good IM tool can help your ecommerce business (or other businesses where you need their services) function efficiently. Here are five of the best inventory management tools available in the market right now.

Unleashed

Unleashed is one of the best rated softwares for inventory management. Designed with small businesses in mind, Unleashed can be used from anywhere in the world. The system uses a cloud based dashboard that can provide the user with reports and details on revenue, stock, and profit. Moreover, the platform is very easy to use and is available from $85 a month.

Image source: getapp

Why we love it

Tracks stock in real time
Affordably priced

InFlow

InFlow effectively manages inventory by helping small businesses receive orders, reorder stock and manage products. Its ease of use is widely acknowledged, and the recent cloud based versions do not have the problem of integration that the earlier versions did. The best thing is the free version that is available for users who have just started a small business. So, one can make use of InFlow for free till they have requirements for the paid services.

Image source: getapp

Why we love it

Easy to learn and affordable
Basic free version

AdvancePro

If you are a small retailer using QuickBooks, you can go for AdvancePro without a second thought because you can integrate QuickBooks records with AdvancePro. AdvancePro boasts a set of tools that cater to high-performing inventory and warehouse management, which can be customized according to requirements. Integration with other platforms like EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is extremely simplified, and data can be exported to PDF files or Excel sheets. The pricing depends on the package you choose but it is definitely competitively priced.

Image source: getapp

Why we love it

High performance with QuickBooks
UPS/ FedEx shipping integration can be added

Goldenseal Accounting

Designed by Turtle Creek, Goldenseal Accounting features payable and receivable accounts along with billing, invoicing and inventory management. This tool’s specialty lies in cost job details. You can keep track of equipment hours, labor hours, materials purchased, leased contracts, etc, and even get notifications when you exceed your set budget. Multiple inventory accounts can be created and maintained with ease. Designed with construction firms and similar businesses in mind, Goldenseal inventories based on both cost and quantity. It is a little expensive, with the base version starting at $395.

Why we love it

Easy to use
Customizable depending on business needs
Easy import from Quickbooks

Zoho Inventory

Zoho Inventory is very well known as a go to inventory management application for small to midsize businesses. Its multi-channel versatility and inventory control make it one of the best tools for inventory management. Accuracy, efficiency and proficiency are guaranteed as zoho is one of the pioneers of outsourced inventory control. The price is affordable, beginning with a monthly fee of $29 for basic requirements, and $249 for professional packages.

Image source: getapp

Why we love it

Easily Customizable
Integrates with multiple ecommerce sites like ebay, etsy and amazon

The post Top 10 Shipping and Inventory Management Tools for SMBs appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Internet Retailing Expo 2018: Inspiration and Innovation in Birmingham

Joelah James — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 14:14:05 +0000

LateShipment.com’s team is home from Internet Retailing Expo 2018 in Birmingham, and here are a few highlights from our time at the show. After attending the Last Mile Fulfilment Asia 2018 in Singapore, we exhibited at the IRX 2018 as well. It was an overwhelming success with solid takeaways from the ecommerce fraternity. Thanks to all the receptive attendees we met at the event. The venue was set up very efficiently with clear distinctions between the exhibiting area and the others. We had a list of speakers we wanted to listen to and had a schedule prepared accordingly. What we did not anticipate was the foot traffic at our booth that turned the two days into a huge rush! Thankfully, we didn’t miss out on keynotes and discussions like those by Caroline Hazlehurst, Samantha James, Tim Stevens and Julien Callede.

The discussion focused on important delivery issues faced by retailers, and ways to bring about the best customer experience in terms of last mile deliveries. The speakers also discussed how last-mile fulfilment is set to break or make businesses by 2020, as it will be the key ingredient to any retail business. All four panelists came out with the strategies incorporated and challenges faced by their own companies to provide a better understanding to other aspiring retailers.

Haighton Chris from shop direct threw light on the importance of tracking in providing a great customer experience. In order to provide reassurance to customers, Haighton recommends proactive communication that would constantly keep them in the loop. We could identify with his views because that’s one of the things LateShipment advocates as well.

Plenty of attendees were curious about the idea of getting refunds for shipping service failures through automatic refund claims, as they hadn’t received a single refund of the sort till date. This led to some great conversations with our logistics experts who spoke in detail about charting new shipping strategies and holding shipping carriers accountable for their performance. We could completely resonate with the carriers committing delivery errors affecting the last mile capabilities of retailers.

We got an opportunity to glimpse the retail landscape in Europe in addition to meeting some of the continent’s most successful retailers. It was great talking to them about our services and facilitating potential alliances. IRX 2018 has been one of the most successful and fun events we have attended so far, and we’d like to thank the organizers for making sure we were comfortable throughout our stay. Not only that, the organizers definitely knew how to throw a killer after party! We were able to sit back and relax after two fully packed days, with a good drink and some delicious food. Thanks for that too! We’re certain that we will be back with you for next year’s event. Looking forward to IRX 2019!

How to make the best of eDelivery Expo 2018

LMF Asia 2018: Where Last Mile Fulfilment Meets Customer Experience

The post Internet Retailing Expo 2018: Inspiration and Innovation in Birmingham appeared first on Lateshipment.com.