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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.

15 Shipping Strategies for SMBs to Reduce Costs

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 09:24:15 +0000

Shipping is an Inevitable Cost-Center of The E-Commerce Industry

Shipping in e-commerce holds a higher priority for two reasons: One, it plays a huge role in the CX, and two, it is the second most expensive area of a business, only next to product costs.

Product costs can be cut down by making executive decisions. However, shipping, on the other hand, is one of the primary areas where merchants don’t directly take up things but outsource things to a third-party shipping carrier.

Making the shipping process effective requires merchants to invest more and more as technology advances. Also, with the risks of shipping being frequent given the events that happen outside anyone’s control, cutting down shipping costs is a real challenge.

Shipping involves substantial logistics and fulfillment expenses, including packaging, warehousing, and transportation.
With the rise of giants like Amazon, customer expectations for fast and free shipping have skyrocketed. SMBs too are forced to meet these expectations to remain competitive
Shipping is closely tied to customer service. Delays, lost packages, and damaged goods can harm a brand’s reputation
Managing returns is a complex aspect of e-commerce. Handling reverse logistics efficiently is costly but necessary to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty

All of these processes incur significant costs that cannot be avoided. However, while shipping comes with financial challenges, investments in it are crucial for e-commerce businesses aiming for sustainable growth.

Large businesses always have tricks up their sleeves to make profits but SMBs? Each time their shipping budget goes a bit high, they are forced to go back to the drawing board and relook things, cut down budgets for other areas to make room for an effective shipping process, etc.

How SMBs find it harder to manage things compared to large businesses

Luckily, time-tested strategies work for all e-commerce businesses, small and large, as cost-cutting measures. And the purpose of this guide is exactly that.

This guide is specifically designed for SMBs, particularly new merchants looking for ways to cut down on their expensive shipping bills and make profits akin to market leaders.

If you’re an SMB owner, leveraging these strategies allows you to manage your shipping costs better and stay ahead of the competition.

15 Shipping Strategies to Reduce Costs

1. Packaging effectively

Smart packaging can help reduce your shipping costs, especially if you’re sending out multiple packages in a single day.

You can start with repurposed boxes and packing materials whenever possible, reusing shipping labels is also a perfect norm in the shipping industry. Bulk buying packaging supplies can also lead to significant discounts.

As much as the packaging matters, the content within it matters too. Don’t miss out on secure packaging while cutting costs.

On an average, 1-in-10 e-commerce packages arrive damaged

Remember, damages to your packages can prove to be costly when they happen frequently in the long run. Thus, keep in mind to use proper materials like bubble wrap, packing peanuts, crinkled kraft paper, etc.

2. Adjusting based on DIM weight

Dimensional weight (or volumetric weight) was introduced because lightweight, low-density packages had become unprofitable for shipping carriers due to the amount of space they occupy in relation to their weight. So, for each shipment, carriers charge you based on the dimensional weight or actual weight of the package—whichever is greater.

DIM weight is calculated based on the formula:

Dimensional Weight = (Length x Height x Width) / DIM factor (traditionally 139)

If you’re a merchant, who deals with odd-sized packages frequently, then DIM weight would make shipping packages more expensive. It is therefore important for you to ensure that you use the right packaging techniques to save on costs.

In this case, the key is to use the right size of box that can comfortably hold your odd-shaped item without taking too much excess space.

3. Making the right shipping carrier choices

Making the right carrier choice for your shipping needs is like a falling pile of dominoes where one thing leads to another and ultimately you end up saving a lot or paying more than you ought to depending on your choice.

As a priority, you can understand your needs by asking yourself these questions:

Is my shipping volume higher than usual so that it might require frequent services?
Am I selling products that are based on urgency and require faster shipping options?
What are my most frequent shipping destinations?

Following up, you can check if your carrier offers any value-added services that can help you avoid unnecessary cost inflation.

4. Claiming refunds for carrier service failures

Order deliveries aren’t always 100% successful.

Shipping carriers are prone to mess up on deliveries and billing from time to time. In fact, there are over 50 types of carrier errors such as late deliveries, products damaged on delivery, lost packages, etc.

Unless you audit your shipments, you will never know how much you’re actually overpaying your shipping carrier.

Thus, regularly auditing your shipping invoices helps you hold your carriers accountable for their mistakes by claiming refunds for service failures. This can help you get your carrier to improve the quality of their service and also be a negotiating tool.

Auditing can be a pain if done manually, but there are automated options to make your life easier.

LateShipment.com is one of them. Check us out. We’re waiting.

5. Not falling prey to money-back guarantee waivers

Out of all service failures, the most frequent and damaging in the current e-commerce delivery scenario is the ‘late delivery’.

Around 8-12% of shipments are delivered late

Customers are already blaming the brand (you) for delivering their parcels late. So, why bear the brunt of the costs as well? Carriers too are aware of this and have their policy titled ‘money-back guarantee’ or ‘guaranteed service refunds’ that allow you to file refund claims and ensure you are rightly compensated for each late delivery incident.

However, here comes the catch. Carriers also have ‘waivers’, a small clause in the money-back guarantee policy that once signed, discourages you from claiming refunds. Of course, it is suggested under the guise of discounts and other benefits but these waivers often come with a series of pitfalls.

Therefore, ensure that you haven’t signed a money-back guarantee waiver and file refund claims for late deliveries.

6. Negotiating with your carrier

Many new SMBs fail to realize that shipping rates are negotiable.

Don’t just settle for the rate your carrier charges you. Do a thorough comparison of the rates various carriers offer before settling on a carrier, and then negotiate.

The carrier needs your business as much as you need their service. Inform the carrier representative of the rates other carriers offer. Tell them your options are still open. You will probably end up getting a sweet deal!

Also auditing your shipping invoices gives you insights into your carrier performance that you can leverage to gain an upper hand while negotiating.

7. Using multiple carriers for your shipping needs

As mentioned, each carrier has their own set of pros and cons.

One might offer superior speed for urgent deliveries, while another excels in cost-effective ground shipping. By having access to multiple options, you can choose the carrier that best suits the specific needs of each shipment.

Also, if the performance of one carrier isn’t keeping up with your expectations and is frequent with delays or service disruptions, you can still fulfill your shipping needs by seamlessly switching to another provider with minimal impact on your customers.

8. Including the cost of shipping in the final bill

This is something many small businesses overlook.

Explicitly state and include the cost of shipping on the billing page. If you don’t, the burden of paying for shipping will fall on you.

Another thing that is possible is that the customer will be required to pay for shipping on delivery. This can lead to a bad delivery experience, and the customer may choose to not buy from you again.

Also, if the shipping price varies from region to region or you plan on shipping internationally, make sure you include the relevant rates on the billing page.

P.S. On that note, absorbing shipping costs entirely might be too expensive at times and on the other hand, not offering free shipping can be a factor for the customer to avoid your business. Thus, the key is to offer ‘free shipping’ only for customers in the loyalty program or have an item/spend threshold.

9. Choosing multiple delivery options

As a shipper, you have the advantage of choosing a list of delivery options that work best for your business needs at that point. For instance,

Invest in flat rate shipping to optimize costs if your business frequently ships packages to select locations
Encourage options such as BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup In-Store) for shoppers at close distances to prevent shipping in the first place
Offer options like standard, expedited, and even same-day delivery to cater to a wide range of customers. P.S. Allow customers to see the exact cost of different delivery options upfront, empowering them to make informed choices

10. Setting up delivery areas

Creating designated delivery warehouses or hubs within your city, region, or where your shoppers frequent can significantly save last-mile delivery costs, which are often the most expensive part of the shipping process. Here’s how:

Firstly, optimized delivery routes and consolidated multiple deliveries, mean fewer stops for your carriers, thereby minimizing travel time and fuel consumption.

Secondly, reduced shipping distances and the number of individual trips needed also improve delivery speed and lower the chances of late delivery incidents.

Remember, this strategy is most effective if you have a high volume of deliveries concentrated in specific geographic areas. Individual carrier pickups might be more efficient for a low volume of dispersed deliveries.

11. Preparing yourself for the peak season

The peak season is the perfect time for SMBs to boost sales.

However, amidst all your shipping strategies, things can still go out of control during peak season times like the holidays. This is because the shipping volume increases multifold during such times, forcing carriers to strain their capacity to deliver parcels on time.

With the probability of late deliveries becoming 2-3x, things get even worse with carriers temporarily suspending their money-back guarantee owing to the increased demand.

Here’s where you can bring your a-game to the table and draft special plans for the peak season like shipping out parcels early, letting customers know that delays are imminent once we get close to the holiday season, getting familiar with carrier service schedules for closing times and last day to ship, etc,. Such actions can ensure that a sudden surge in demand has less/ no damage to your shipping.

12. Tracking your orders

Tracking your shipments, especially in real-time, empowers you to stay on top of your customers’ orders. You can then extend the capabilities of ‘real-time tracking’ by communicating the same with your customer. With customers in the loop of their orders, they are less prone to contact your support team with WISMO inquiries. This frees up staff time and reduces costs associated with fielding inquiries.

Similar to order status information, tracking also allows you to identify exceptions like delays and lost packages promptly. This enables you to take proactive actions such as course-corrective measures to minimize delays and potential re-delivery costs.

Also, frequent tracking gives you detailed records of on-time deliveries and delays for each carrier you use. This data strengthens your position when negotiating with carriers for better rates. You can demonstrate your business value and hold them accountable for performance.

Tracking packages manually is an option that is not preferable, given that there’s no room to scale. Thus, you can always make use of a real-time tracking solution like LateShipment.com that:

Provides the most up-to-date order tracking information for your support team to intervene and proactively fix issues
Enables easy access to tracking information to customers through your website, emails, or SMS notifications.
Reports of trends or recurring issues to help you optimize your fulfillment process to minimize delays

All of which can contribute to significant cost savings.

13. Insuring your shipments

Unexpected damage or missing items during shipping can be a significant financial blow for you

In such cases, insuring your shipments provides peace of mind from the financial protection that you get while covering the cost of replacing the items.

Plus, with insurance absorbing the costs and potentially impacting your cash flow, you can confidently commit yourself to resolving any issues that might arise during shipping. This builds trust and confidence, potentially leading to repeat business.

Now, you can either insure shipments with carriers or pick a third-party insurance provider that offers custom insurance rules that allow you to decide on what gets insured and what doesn’t, thereby keeping insurance cost-effective.

14. Optimizing order returns and return shipping

Contrary to popular beliefs of being a cost center, when optimized, order returns can be a goldmine for cost savings for your business. Here’s how:

Returns are a necessary evil. Thus, they need to be kept to a minimum to display high customer satisfaction metrics. Start with high-quality product photos, detailed descriptions, and size charts to ensure customers receive what they expect. This minimizes the chance of unwanted returns due to size or feature mismatches
Apart from ensuring reasons for return and a nominal return window, you can also offer and incentivize customers to opt for exchanges/ store credits over refunds
Also, tracking and analyzing the reasons for returns can help identify recurring issues and areas for improvement in your product descriptions, packaging, or fulfillment process, etc, and can lead to fewer returns and lower costs in the long run.

Apart from cost-cutting, if you’re also a CX-obsessed brand, you can choose a tool like LateShipment.com that makes returns self-service and helps you boost buyer confidence.

With an easy returns portal, flexible return methods, seamless return shipping, automated and immersive returns tracking, LateShipment.com can be your one-stop solution to offer return experiences that your customers truly love.

15. Using a 3PL for your shipping needs

For SMBs fairly new to the market or ones struggling with managing shipping costs, a 3PL partnership can be a strategic decision.

Since 3PLs have expertise with shipping packages of multiple SMBs, they already have established relationships with major carriers and can leverage this buying power to negotiate significantly lower shipping rates.

Outsourcing warehousing to a 3PL eliminates the need for SMBs to lease or manage their own warehouse space, reducing overhead costs like rent, utilities, and equipment. Also, with shipping-related tasks now outsourced, your staff can now focus on core business activities, and you can reduce labor costs associated with in-house fulfillment.

How Lateshipment.Com Helps You Save On Shipping Costs

Want to make the right choice of shipping carrier?

Want to reduce your WISMO tickets-related costs?

Want to build return experiences that retain profits?

Want to reduce your shipping costs by up to 20%?

Look no further.

LateShipment.com is the ultimate all-in-one post-purchase success platform for e-commerce retailers, D2C brands, and businesses shipping small parcels, no matter their size or shipping volume.

Delivery Experience Management (DEM): To build memorable experiences that prevent bad delivery experiences and also boost recurring revenue during order tracking moments.

Returns Experience Management (REM): To make returns hassle-free with flexible return options and smart automations to help retain revenue.

Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds: To save big on shipping costs through automated shipping refunds and drive supply-chain optimization with in-depth shipping analytics and insights.

Shipping Insurance: To simplify protecting your e-commerce parcels from lost and damaged packages via fully customizable and automated processes for maximum cost savings.

LateShipment.com seamlessly integrates with 600+ Shipping Carriers and Business Tools that include E-commerce platforms, Order Management Systems, Helpdesks, and Marketing Automation tools to help you drive post-purchase experiences and shipping cost savings, at scale.

The post 15 Shipping Strategies for SMBs to Reduce Costs appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

An E-Commerce Business’ Guide To Shipping Policy

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 15 May 2023 15:44:24 +0000

You might have some of the best products that are also the customers’ need of the hour. You are confident of making a sale but somehow the customer who has passed through stages of funnels doesn’t become your customer. A little analysis of your customer behavior at this stage or simply asking for their feedback will give you an insight into how your shipping policy impacted their purchasing decision.

But why are these shipping policies so crucial that 67% of shoppers check a store’s policy before making a purchase? If you’re a retailer who has just opened an online store, this article stands to provide you with everything you need to create a fine shipping policy that works out well for your business. If you’re someone with experience but still looking for ways to perfect your shipping policy and improve conversions, then you’re at the right place as well. Stay tuned to learn more about shipping policies and the role they play in your business.

The Role of Shipping Policies in Your Business

For the e-commerce novice here, let’s revisit things a little.

Shipping policies are simply a document that covers a set of guidelines and procedures to highlight the ways an e-commerce business handles the shipping and delivery of its products to customers.

While a shipping policy might simply seem like a webpage that communicates your shipping procedures to customers who’d like to shop with you, in reality, it holds more power to help your business:

Set clear expectations about your shipping and delivery times with your customers to offer them convenience and by extension a positive experience as they are awaiting their orders
Improve conversions by including all necessary details to have a comprehensive and shopper-friendly shipping policy

Craft your shipping policy to suit your business’ needs when it comes to aspects such as returns and exchanges to prevent frauds such as wardrobing and reduce unnecessary costs in the long run.

The Whats And Whys of Shipping Policies

Starting a shipping policy from scratch or looking to make changes to your existing one? Here are some things that you need to include (also learn how these additions bring benefits to your business).

1. What are the shipping methods available at your e-commerce store?

The most crucial detail that you cannot afford to miss out on is highlighting different shipping methods for your customers to choose from. For starters, mention whether you provide expedited shipping, BOPIS, international shipping, etc. Remember, providing multiple options when it comes to shipping methods is always better as customers feel in control of their decision by choosing an option that best suits them.

2. When can customers expect their orders?

Mentioning estimated delivery times answers a major question on the customers’ minds “How soon will I receive my package?”. Start by displaying the order processing time and include delivery times based on different shipping methods. By keeping your customers in the loop of such information, you can reduce their pre-parcel anxiety and ensure a positive experience.

3. How much do you charge for shipping?

48% of shoppers abandon their carts due to extra costs. Adding to these woes is 16% of shoppers bailing out early because they couldn’t see or calculate the total cost of the order upfront (Baymard’s study). Thus, it is always a good ploy to display shipping costs to your customers before they start adding items to their cart. Also, highlight what is the minimum purchase for shoppers to become eligible for free delivery, etc to motivate them to spend more. In case if you are shipping internationally, you can add a breakdown of the increase in costs based on international taxes and other additional charges.

4. Are there any shipping restrictions?

In addition to delivery ETAs, you can also include a message in your shipping policy in case there have been unexpected incidents such as bad weather, peak shipping periods like the holiday season, lockdowns, supply chain crises, etc, to inform customers of their orders, possibly taking more time than usual to reach them. Shipping restrictions also occur in the form of your products facing customs regulations at certain domestic or international destinations. For your shoppers from such locations, you can highlight a clause on where you ship to.

5. Where can customers track their orders?

Customers are increasingly anxious regarding their orders and with growing technology, they expect brands to provide them with the ability to track their orders at all times. At that moment, you cannot expect them to reach out to your support team and wait for a response. Instead, add a “track order” button that sends them to the order tracking page, where they can periodically track their shipments. You can also mention that regular shipping updates will be sent to them via notifications to ease their anxiety.

6. How can customers reach out to support teams?

Customers during the post-purchase phase demand support for two major reasons: when they are unable to determine the status of their package or to file a complaint when it gets lost or damaged. While this is a problem for your support reps on its own, what makes it worse is customers’ being unable to find where to reach support for help. In such cases, their frustration worsens and they are prone to take their grievances on social media and tarnish your brand’s reputation. To avoid this, simply add and highlight simple steps on how they can reach your support (via chat, email, or phone) to make things convenient. Keep in mind that this is a short term fix at best. For overall reduced post-purchase-related support queries and saving your support reps’ time, take a proactive approach to resolve delivery issues.

7. What should the customers do in case there’s a need for a return or an exchange?

The average e-commerce return rate is 20-30%. While brands such as yours often assume returns to be a headache, the customers don’t feel that way. They are more likely to choose a brand that offers seamless returns. Thus, it is wise to take the opportunity of capturing your customers’ attention by mentioning the time it takes from your end to process a return, the steps involved, the details and actions needed from their end, deadlines, refund policy, costs (if any), etc on the shipping policy page to provide easy access.

Bonus: Things To Cover While Working On Your Shipping Policy

The points we have discussed so far are the bare minimum when it comes to shipping policy. You have no option but to cover them to satisfy your customers before they start adding items to their carts. To stay ahead of the competition and delight your customers, you need to do certain things more.

For starters, you can add an “additional information” section where you cover details such as:

The carrier(s) you work with (for queries),
Store working days (for calculating order processing time)
Time taken to credit the refund when an order gets canceled before delivery
Clauses of holiday/peak season shipping policy, etc.

If you have extensive information at hand but feel all of it should be clear enough for the customers to understand, then the best option is to set up a FAQ section on your shipping policy page that covers all the bases. You can populate your FAQ section with common questions on the customers’ minds like:

How long will it take for the order to get delivered?
What is the price for the shipping?
What if the order doesn’t get delivered? etc.

Once you’ve planned everything on your shipping policy, the next step is to create and publish them. There are several places on your website to display your shipping policy to have the best effect. You can go with a footer link, in the hamburger menu that takes customers to your help center. Additionally, you can add links in their checkout process, shipping confirmation notifications, etc.

(If you haven’t already) You don’t have to start from scratch to develop a shipping policy for your e-commerce store. Sites like Shopify can help you with a template that you can modify to create your own.

Final Word

Thanks to increasing competition, today’s shoppers have a lot of options to choose from for their shopping needs. If you’re an e-commerce merchant who would like to place their business at the forefront, aspects like shipping policy should be well-crafted. Your shipping policy is a necessity that customers checkout even before adding items to their cart, thus, suiting your customers’ needs should be a priority to make a great first impression and improve conversions.

The post An E-Commerce Business’ Guide To Shipping Policy appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

What to Do If a Package Arrives Damaged—or Not at All

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 05:59:02 +0000

How many times have you sent out a customer’s package and stayed eager to know their feedback, only to learn from them that it was damaged or didn’t make it to them at all?

Truly a haunting experience, given that all your efforts to convert the customer have now taken heavy ‘damage’, thanks to no fault of yours.

But if you think about the scale of these issues, you can clearly see that it is not something trivial. In fact, 7% to 11% of customers’ online orders arrive broken or damaged and close to 50% of Americans had claimed that at least one of their packages was lost.

Not just the scale. Even the intensity of lost and damaged packages is high for e-commerce merchants such as yourself. Let’s take a look at the consequences to better understand the issues at stake.

Problems a Retailer Faces Due to Damaged and Lost Packages

To understand the seriousness of packages getting lost and damaged, put yourself in the shoes of your customers. They’ve anticipated long enough to collect their order, only to discover that it’s arrived broken or is missing.

While this is frustrating enough, the situation can turn out to be worse if their purchase is a gift for their loved ones. Such instances can instantly escalate things and infuriate your customers, who might make hasty decisions that can prove to be costly for you.

The first action a frustrated customer would take in such situations is simply choosing to quit shopping with you, as a result of the bad experience they faced. This in turn can lead to unnecessary costs for your business in the form of:

Low customer retention rate (CRR) – Your retention rate is a metric that shows whether your customers are happy doing business with you, to the extent of staying as your customer for an extended period. A good retention rate means to profit from repeat shopping, while a low rate is a harsh truth of you losing money to customer churn.
Low customer lifetime value (CLV) – An extension of the retention rate is the customer lifetime value. It is the total amount of money a customer is expected to spend with you during the span of your relationship. When package delivery issues lead to customers dropping out, your CLV can become low or negative, implying that you are spending more on a customer than what you’re getting back from them.
Increased damage to brand reputation – A customer who has decided to end ties with you might not always go unannounced. In most cases, they take their frustrations to social media and tarnish your brand’s online reputation, leading their friends and followers (who can be your potential customers) to avoid your business. On a related note, there are definitive ways to deal with such customer rants, that you can follow to mitigate their angst as well as paint a positive picture for others.
Increased costs from order returns and cancellations – When a customer’s order is lost or damaged, it is absolutely fair that they expect you to refund them. But such returns and cancellations which happen due to no fault of yours can lead to severe costs that can lower your profit margin.
Increased acquisition costs (CAC) – The last nail in this coffin is your pining over your efforts to convert the customer after they’ve simply dropped off. While you may briefly consider simply replacing one customer with another, keep in mind that acquiring customers is more expensive than retaining a customer.

It is natural to think why do you have to stand to lose so much, especially when such issues happen outside your control and cannot be directly linked to you. Know that each purchase made by your customer is for your brand and not for your shipping partner, who works in the background. This makes the onus on taking care of their deliveries, which plays a vital part in the overall customer experience, on you. Thus, you are inclined to take actions that can avoid all of the aforementioned problems.

5 Things to Do If a Package Gets Damaged or Lost

You don’t have to panic the instant the customer comes forward with a complaint of their package being broken, missing, or lost in transit. There are several approaches that you can take to mitigate their frustrations and attempt to change their bad delivery experience into a positive one.

1. Have an empathetic approach

As we mentioned before, these customers who may sound angry have been robbed of the opportunity to get delighted while opening their package. So, it is understandable that they are frustrated and want you, the retailer, to handle the situation before it gets worse.

In such cases, the first step is to always deal with the situation empathetically. Acknowledge the incident and apologize for it (despite there being no fault of yours).

Trust me, they don’t enjoy seeing you pointing your hands at the shipping carrier for delivery issues of any kind. Take ownership of the incident and assure them that things will be resolved at the earliest.

Personalize your conversations in such a way that your customers know that they’re being treated as important and not just as a random, faceless customer.

2. Ask the customer how would they like to get the issue resolved

Assuming what the customer wants might not be the best plan of action at all times. Especially, when the customers expect you to actively listen to their concerns.

In such cases, it is best to resolve the issue based on your customers’ requirements. Don’t hesitate to ask your customer how they would like you to rectify things.

Some customers who have still not been able to come out of the bad experience might settle for a refund on their purchase while customers who badly want the product so much, would like to replace their order.

The best ploy is to provide multiple options and let your customers choose what’s best for them. This way, your customers feel in control of their decisions and gain increased confidence while shopping with you.

3. Send out replacement packages via expedited shipping

A customer who is initiating a replacement for their damaged or lost product is someone who is giving a second chance to set things right. Thus, If a customer wants a replacement instead of a return — make sure you put maximum effort to convert their angst into delight.

You can do the same by offering free return on the damaged product and sending out a replacement via an expedited shipping option out of your own pockets.

This way you have a great opportunity to reverse the bad delivery experience and set customers on the path toward satisfaction.

4. Recover costs via shipping insurance and refunds

Focus on improving your customers’ delivery experience and leaving out the costs associated with them. Don’t worry about these out-of-pocket costs each time when there’s a delivery issue, there are ways for you to start saving on them.

One way is to insure your packages, especially the high-value ones with your shipping carriers or a third-party service provider to recover any unfortunate losses on a parcel that you shipped. To get the best out of shipping insurance, you need to get your hands dirty with all the relevant information such as product qualification, documentation required, rate comparison, etc.

The other way is to start claiming shipping refunds from your carriers for each delivery failure on their behalf. If you’ve not waived your rights to claim refunds, know that not only delays, lost and damaged packages but there are over 50 carrier errors that might be entitled to refunds.

Also, manually filing claims can be a tiresome task. Instead, you can make use of an automated parcel audit solution that takes care of auditing your shipping invoices and filing claims while saving you time, effort, and most importantly money.

BONUS: The damage is done but is the package really lost?

Damages to the package are visible. Either on the cover or on the inside, making it clear of an incident. But the case isn’t the same with lost packages.

There are instances where packages that turn up after being rerouted somewhere or the issue at hand might be due to either a wrong address or a weather-related one. Quite simply, it is not unheard of for a package to turn up a day or two late.

With customer disappointment inevitable in either case, there is a remote chance that their frustrations can be mitigated when the delivery arrives a couple of days late rather than getting lost. In such cases, you need to take a different approach and treat the incident as a late delivery.

There can also be instances where the package goes missing after getting delivered. In such cases, the issue needs to be treated as a stolen package incident.

Following these steps can definitely help you take control of the situation and handle it all. However, all of these are effective only when the issues have occurred. By the time then, it becomes a bit late to work on your CX efforts, given that your customers are now frustrated.

But what if there was a way to resolve such issues even before they’ve impacted the customer?

This is where you start taking a proactive approach to things rather than being reactive to not just lost and damaged packages but all the delivery issues.

Employ Proactive Techniques in Your ‘damage Control’ Measures with Lateshipment.com

With a post-purchase automation platform like LateShipment.com, you can track parcels in real-time and gain the ability to proactively step in to resolve issues when things seem like going wrong.

For example, with a complete view of your parcels in transit, you can:

Stay aware of packages that are damaged at the loading or sorting facility (when it is about to be sent out for delivery).
Set up alerts for specific parcels that seem to be facing an issue like lagging behind schedule or getting misrouted from the intended destination.

Once you have gained these insights, you can instantly get in touch with the carrier to resolve the issue or send a quick replacement in case of a time-sensitive delivery.

Even if you’re unable to resolve the issue completely, communicating the issue to your customer (and not the other way around) via automated and personalized notifications, helps in mitigating their anxiety, gives them the confidence that you’d resolve the issue, and ultimately revives customers’ trust in your brand.

Not just providing a great delivery experience, LateShipment.com also helps you go all out with our post-purchase excellence cloud. Provide stellar delivery experiences with easy, seamless returns – all while significantly reducing your shipping spend by auditing your invoices and recovering eligible refunds for late deliveries, lost and damaged packages, and much more from your carriers.

That’s all from us for now. It is time to grow your fanbase, savings, and business with LateShipment.com.

We’re ready when you are.

The post What to Do If a Package Arrives Damaged—or Not at All appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

10 E-Commerce Shipping Best Practices You Should Know

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 15:37:48 +0000

The importance of a quality shipping experience in e-commerce cannot be stressed enough. This is primarily due to the fact that the post-purchase (shipping + delivery) takes up 50% of the overall delivery experience.

However, major e-commerce businesses leave out shipping in their strategy as they consider the onus of it to be with the shipping carrier. You need to make sure that you don’t be like them because your customers will still blame you for shipping issues.

61% of the customers will stop doing business with you after one bad customer service experience, which can often be due to shipping-related issues.

Thus, make sure you understand and follow these 10 best practices when it comes to e-commerce shipping.

1. Enforce a shipping strategy with a well-planned team

As an e-commerce business owner, strategizing and having clear goals will give you the right direction to your shipping game.

If your goal is increasing your customer base then focus on expanding your shipping to different markets.
If it is increasing conversion rates, then look at what is happening at checkout and offer services like free shipping and discounts.

Whatever your goal may be, have a team to execute this.

Make sure your marketing team is sending the right kind of messages. If you want more customers, then they have to expand their strategies as well. Having clear messaging about discounts, sales, and other benefits is essential to improving conversion rates.

The design team can take a closer look at how effective the web pages are and edit them accordingly. Your conversion rates can increase by 35% if you just change the design of your checkout page.

Train your customer service teams to interact with empathy and focus on solving customer issues. You must also have a robust fulfillment team that makes sure the shipment’s journey from order placed to delivery is smooth.

2. Offer free shipping options

61% of customers would abandon the carts if the additional fees such as taxes and shipping costs are too high. This is reasoning enough for you to consider free shipping.

However, are you wondering about your e-commerce business’ profit margins if your overhead costs become too much? Then provide free shipping but with a plan.

All your fellow competitors and market leaders do this. A minimum purchase order and after this shipping is free. Iloveplum even increased its average order value by 91% providing free shipping.

Make this clear on your website through the customer’s journey so they know free shipping is in their control.

3. Be transparent and provide shipping costs upfront

The next thing to free shipping in e-commerce to make your customers happy is being transparent.

Provide options at the beginning of their shopping experience to know the cost of shipping to their location. Ask them to enter their ZIP code and give them details.

This saves them from being surprised during checkout. Maintain a flat shipping rate so they know you are not adding additional costs. They may feel cheated with surprise charges at the end. You don’t want anyone associating your brand with such emotions.

4. Let them choose the shipping option

We know now that customers want free shipping and transparency. You can make this experience better for them with shipping options.

If they choose the kind of e-commerce shipping they want, you are putting them in charge. Whether they want to pay a little extra for early delivery or wait longer with lesser shipping – these options will help reduce the chances of cart abandonment.

5. Leverage a chatbot to improve customer experience

Chatbots are an indispensable tool for customer experience when it comes to e-commerce shipping. They provide service with the quickness and efficiency that is otherwise lacking.

Using chatbots to improve your user’s journey can be a great tool to improve conversion rates too.

It can help customers navigate the website and answer questions with ease. It could recommend products and increase AOV. It could even provide exclusive discounts if a customer is close to abandoning their carts.

Even post shipping, customers don’t have to go around looking for tracking details if a chatbot can do it for them with a simple question. It can provide them with live tracking data and understand where their package is at all times.

6. Provide multi-channel customer support

Whether your employees are attending to the customers or a chatbot – either way, the customer should have a good e-commerce shipping experience. And one of the ways to do that is to have a multi-channel approach.

Here are some customer service trends during BFCM 21.

Wherever they are trying to reach you, ensure you respond in a timely way. Maybe they are taking a concern to a social media platform because your internal team failed to provide a satisfactory resolution. Or maybe they didn’t even respond.

Make sure your team is organized and equipped to provide good customer support and understands that every customer has unique demands. Your reputation and brand loyalty can be at stake if something goes wrong. Pay heed to the customer!

7. Make order tracking easy for your customers

Several times logistics are given over to a third party. However, you must still provide customers with personalized information about you and them. The emails, messages, and notifications must have your branding and accurate details.

After making a purchase, especially if it’s the first time, customers can be apprehensive. But, providing tracking details to them before they even ask you for it, can ease their worries.

From which city is the package currently, the expected arrival date and information about any delays are imperative in providing a positive delivery experience.

82% of customers expect constant communication from brands about the delivery service at every fulfillment stage. With this, you will also increase the retention rate as well!

8. Use a shipping software to manage end to end processes

As your business expands, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage tasks without an end to end fulfillment software. It also makes sense to automate regular tasks and put them on an almost autopilot mode. This way you can take care of expanding your business.

Good software for shipping can help right from collating orders from multiple channels to ensuring smooth exchange and returns.

Choose a software that can help you keep a track of orders, generates shipping labels, produces invoices, provides self-return options, handles failed deliveries, gives tracking details, and other features that are important to your business. Choose the shipping software that meets your goals and pricing requirements.

9. Ensure packaging with care

When customers receive a package, it should make them happy. Packaging is part of that experience.

You might have budget constraints to personalize the packaging. But, you can still make sure the products are packaged with care. They should be able to sustain shipping without damaging the goods. In case they do receive damaged products, make sure your customer support team is on track to help them get a replacement.

Another way to improve packaging while staying within budget is to include small inserts in the packaging as a surprise for your customers. This can be a simple thank you note, a discount code for the next shopping, or a free sample.

10. Enhance the post-purchase experience

If you want customers to shop again from you, then you have to focus on the post-purchasing experience.

Interact with them through emails, SMS, and calls to understand their experience with the brand.

This lets them know you care about their interaction with you. It can give you valuable insights on how to improve your e-commerce shipping and customer experience.

Providing them with forms to answer questions to rate their experience can be a great way to build your Net Promoter Score (NPS). You can also build a repository of reviews through this initiative. You can also stay in touch with your customers through emails, newsletters, notifying them about sales and so much more!

Conclusion

These are some of the best practices you should implement in your strategy to provide the best e-commerce shipping experience for your customers. Understand how each one can make an impact on your brand in the long term and its implications on customer retention.

Prioritize those you can implement soonest and start from there. Ensure your customers are the primary factors in these decisions and you will see results from implementing such best practices.

This is a guest post by Oliver Thyra.

Oliver Thyra is the head SaaS copywriter and content strategist at Your Marketing Digest. His intense passion for marketing and his engineering background in software engineering has made him a guy who understands how to sell software subscriptions with words. In his free time, Oliver enjoys quality time with his pets (he has got 4 golden retrievers!).

The post 10 E-Commerce Shipping Best Practices You Should Know appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How to Deal With Shipping Delays

Rohan Rinaldo Felix — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 06:19:00 +0000

Shipping delays (also known as post-pickup delays) are inevitable even with the most efficient carriers (thanks to the growing consumer demand). And when they happen, they tend to drive your customers away.

That’s not all! The worst part about them is that you do not have control over such events and often feel helpless when they happen.

Worry not! Dealing with shipping delays is no rocket science but first, we’ll start with the basics.

What Are Shipping Delays?

A package picked up by the carrier is marked as ‘shipped’. There are instances where this package gets held up before getting into transit and when that happens, the shipment is considered delayed.

While looking trivial, they can be particularly frustrating because they create a sense of uncertainty and can disrupt plans (on-time deliveries and improving customer experiences).

When delays in shipping are left unattended, they lead to late deliveries or delivery delays and can have worse consequences on your business.

Shipping delays are not only inevitable but frequent. They occur daily and it is somewhat true that they largely happen because of shipping carriers failing to keep up with their promises of on-time delivery despite their busy schedules.

But that’s not the only reason why parcels take time to reach their destination. Here are some of the other reasons why these delays happen.

Why Do Shipping Delays Occur

There are many reasons why the package is prevented from leaving the sorting facility or held by the carrier.

Severe weather conditions
Transportation issues like congestion, accidents, or equipment breakdowns
Peak seasons like holidays, where huge volumes of shipments overwhelm carrier networks
Issues within the carrier’s system, such as sorting errors, poor warehouse management, lack of coordination among the people involved, or labor shortages
For international shipments, customs inspections and clearance processes can take a little extra time

While shipping delays might be inevitable, they sure aren’t unavoidable. With the right course of action, you can mitigate or even prevent their impact on customers and your business.

What You Can Do About Shipping Delays (You Have the Power)

There are a whole lot of things you can do to avoid shipping delays from becoming late deliveries. Assuming that a delay has already happened. Here’s what you can do:

Effective communication with customers in handling their complaints

While customers are prone to get frustrated seeing that there has been a delay with their shipment before getting into transit, that shouldn’t prevent you from hiding this detail from them. This can cause more damage as customers always expect you to keep them informed about the status of their orders and estimated delivery times.

Firstly, it’s incredibly important that you communicate with your customer. The last thing a customer would want to see is that there has been a delay in shipping, and there’s no communication from the shipper. Make the effort to get in touch with the customer and let them know of the status of the parcel.

Secondly, Apologize if you should. Don’t fall to the misconception that this is the carrier’s fault. Your customers do not feel that way and are more inclined to hold you accountable. Therefore, take ownership and explain the whole situation.

Take ownership of the situation

This is probably easier said than done, but make sure you own up and face the ire of the customer if it comes to that. There’s no way you can skirt the issue — understand the customer’s frustration

Aside from giving consistent updates such as order status information, and offering empathy along with alternative shipping options or solutions they prefer.

This will actually show you in a good light and ensure that the expectations of your brand have been exceeded (thanks to your efforts to address their concerns efficiently and follow up to ensure satisfaction).

Proactive Measures to Minimize Delays

Here’s another killer tip for you. Sign up for a service that will help you track your shipments in real-time. This will allow you to identify potential delays early on and respond to issues preemptively. Regularly tracking your shipments also allows you to identify areas for improvement, such as insights into carrier performance.

If shipping delays are a regular occurrence with your carrier, using multiple carriers for different delivery requirements may well be the way to go. Multiple carrier options while being armed with data can help you to make necessary adjustments such as better carrier choices to prevent recurrence.

Final Word

Shipping delays are an inevitable part of the logistics industry. While they can be frustrating, proactive measures, effective communication, and a customer-centric approach can significantly mitigate their impact.

By following the steps mentioned here, you can minimize the impact of shipping delays and maintain customer satisfaction. Remember, effective communication and proactive measures are key to handling these challenges successfully.

The post How to Deal With Shipping Delays appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Supply Chain Crisis in the US: Causes, Effects, and Corrective Measures

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 05:58:15 +0000

If you have happened to follow the news in the recent past, you might be aware of the global supply chain crisis that is happening:

The number of container ships around ports has doubled since April
Dwelling times of containers has reached 6-10 days, way above the average 4-5 days
Railyards have also been clogged, with trains at one point backed up 25 miles outside a key Chicago facility.

All of this can threaten to spoil the Holiday season joy for e-commerce retail businesses such as yours by eating into your profits.

There are more negative consequences of this supply chain crisis but before we look at them, let us find the answer to the question, what really is causing these logjams?

What is Causing This Supply Chain Crisis?

“There are going to be disruptions and shocks to the system as long as the pandemic persists and could last into 2022” – Pete Buttigieg

Americans who chose to stay home and came outside after feeling trapped at home for a long time have been equally spending dollars on shopping goods such as laptops and at places such as restaurants, triggering an unprecedented increase in demand that the nation’s unprepared logistics system was unable to handle.

Consumer goods demand is overall 22% higher compared with pre-pandemic levels (comparing February 2020 with August 2021). – BBC

This sudden increase in demand doubled with the negative consequences of the pandemic such as workers getting affected by the virus, nationwide lockdowns, shutting down of operations, etc., resulted in lower production and distribution businesses and thus businesses ended up not being able to handle the demand.

This demand > supply factor doubled down with external factors such as shortage of workers and effects of climate change, etc is said to have caused this crisis in the supply chain.

E-commerce activity has witnessed major gains and has subsequently impacted warehousing and importing, straining logistics and supply chain networks. – White House media release

Large businesses have the bandwidth to double down on their logistics operations and make sure they are least affected by this global phenomenon. But what about small businesses?

What Does This Supply Chain Crisis Mean for E-commerce Businesses?

Industry experts see momentary changes between the situation getting worse and staying at a standstill. Either way, it doesn’t look like it’s normalizing.

As the customer demand doesn’t seem to be going down anytime soon, you can expect the situation to continue into 2022 (beyond the Holiday season).

This naturally conveys that your customers’ Holiday season orders could hit a slump and would lead to a big blow on your revenue. Everything from Halloween costumes, to tech products such as computers and printers for Black Friday, Christmas decors and lights are all set to reach your customers late due to the current crisis.

The commercial pipeline that each year brings $1 trillion worth of toys, clothing, electronics, and furniture from Asia to the United States is clogged and no one knows how to unclog it. – Washington Post

If these disruptions don’t seem enough to lose revenue, your shipping and freight costs are known to increase, leading to a cut down on your customers’ discounts in order to meet ends.

Moreover, you can as well anticipate lower purchases from customers, who will shop less due to the sudden inflation.

But don’t let your hopes down. There are measures simultaneously being taken and which you can take to counter the crisis. Understand what they are and make sure that you are least affected by them.

Corrective Measures Being Undertaken and What E-commerce Merchants Can Do to Ease the Supply Chain Crisis

Even though the crisis doesn’t look to get any better, the White House primarily and others who have been affected by it have been taking appropriate measures to rectify the situation and reduce considerable damage, if not already done.

Following President Joe Biden’s urge, The White House has issued orders for congested ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to work 24/7 and keep containers out of ports by doing doubling trips
Biden also said he’s considering deploying National Guard to help ease the stress on the US supply chain as it prompts growing concern about the economy
Retail giants such as Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Samsung, etc and shipping carriers such as FedEx and UPS have all considered committing to increase usage of nighttime hours.

Similarly, experts have some suggestions for growing businesses such as yours to overcome this disruption:

Now that road and sea cargo costs have risen considerably and the fulfillment time difference being huge, businesses can consider aircargo as a better option
This year the holiday battleground is not only the CX you provide but unexpectedly the availability of your products. Therefore, look for ways to keep your inventories stocked
Encourage customers to start shopping early as 3-4 weeks during the Holiday season days, especially right before Thanksgiving and Black Friday to avoid last-minute delays on their orders
Provide a realistic estimated delivery date of delivery even before customers make their purchase so that they become aware of the crisis and refrain from blaming you in case the delivery timeline gets extended
Keep your customers in the loop of their orders via tracking information across post-purchase touchpoints to avoid getting blamed for delays that are no fault of yours.

Bottom Line

From the experts’ point of view, the past stands for an unprecedented issue, the present stands at the situation getting worse before it gets better, and the future is the calling out of the existing logistics operations model.

The supply chain and logistics system will not and should not revert to the original model that existed during the pre-pandemic times as the current scenario calls for desperate measures in the form of modernization.

While increasing operations, availability of products, getting help from everyone possible would indeed help businesses and the economy itself circumnavigate past the Holiday season, the actual transformation of the supply chain model is the key for long-term benefits.

From your customers’ point of view, it looks like they’re indeed aware of what’s happening with their parcels as they would’ve been affected by the delay during the past few weeks. This is what led their work on permutations and combinations to understand where exactly the demand is cropping up.

They will also start shopping earlier this year and not wait for discounts during times like Black Friday. This is because they are well aware that higher demand, labor, and shipping costs will result in businesses, especially smaller ones, providing fewer discounts to meet ends. They will not risk their order getting stuck somewhere for some bargain, which would obviously be an awful gamble.

And as of now, follow the experts’ advice, understand the consumers’ buying behavior, and hope for the situation to get better or ‘normalize’ if there were such a thing.

The post Supply Chain Crisis in the US: Causes, Effects, and Corrective Measures appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

6 Tips to Prepare Your Dropshipping Business for the Holiday Season Surge

Ian — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:44:43 +0000

The holiday season is right around the corner, and apart from candied days, happy moments, lots of festive food, and there’s a high demand for gifts. This means a huge opportunity for your dropshipping store to cross your sales target and break your revenue records.

In 2020, the holiday season eCommerce sales in the US are projected to be $135 billion.

This shows how holiday season purchases still hold immense value despite the pandemic and can be a game-changer for your dropshipping store.

Dropshipping is gaining momentum and slowly becoming a more preferred choice than traditional eCommerce businesses as it helps businesses profit by selling products online without managing inventory on their own.

Combine it with the holiday madness, and you’ve got yourself a perfect strategy to double your revenue and to take your dropshipping store to the next level.

But, before we get into our toolkit to prepare your dropshipping business for the holiday season, let’s understand what dropshipping is and why exactly you should invest in it, now more than ever.

What is dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a method to fulfill orders by listing products online and passing them to a third-party supplier responsible for shipping them to the customers.

This business model does not require the store owner to keep a stock of the products but rather get involved in other aspects like management, customer service, and store maintenance.

While we’re talking about dropshipping, it’s safe to say it’s not a get-rich-quick-scheme.

It may look like a great way to make recurring money as you’re just listing and selling products. But, you still need to put in a lot of work in creating a properly functioning store, marketing it, taking care of listings, and customer service, above all.

But if you have a solid dropshipping strategy, it can take off your business profits massively.

Before you start dropshipping, it’s best to know some pros and cons:

Pros of dropshipping

Great source for building a passive income: Once you’ve listed the products, started marketing them, and have organized your processes to work on auto-pilot—you can earn money with little to zero further effort as orders will be placed and fulfilled automatically.
No inventory management worries: Since a supplier takes care of inventory and shipping, you can focus on marketing your store and getting more visitors to your website: more visitors, more sales, more profits.
Low overhead costs: You don’t have to maintain a brick-and-mortar shop or a warehouse for your products. There’s also no need to hire a full-fledged team to manage the store; you can hire a few freelancers on a project basis—and this way, you won’t have many overhead costs.
Lots of scope for experimentation: When you’re the supplier and seller, you need to take care of launching a new product line, but with dropshipping, you can introduce a whole line and if it doesn’t take off, simply remove it from your store. Since you’re not buying wholesale or committing to someone, you can experiment with different products and see what gets you sales.

Cons of dropshipping

Lots of competition: Dropshipping requires low capital investment initially, making it an easy entry point for anyone who wants to start a store
Low-profit margins: There’s only so much you can make by selling third-party products, and the expenses of creating and managing a store along with advertising hardly allow high profits
Minimal control over products: Since you’re just coordinating the efforts, and the supplier is sending the products to your customers, you hardly get to see the product condition or packaging. This gives you little to no control over the quality, which significantly impacts customer loyalty and store reputation
Hard to build your brand: When customers receive the product, they only care about the product, and not the shopping experience since you’re just the messenger. This makes it difficult to build retention for your business and build a sustainable brand for it.

6 top tips to prepare your dropshipping store for the Holiday season

Now that you’ve understood dropshipping from its roots, it’s time to understand how to prep your store for the holiday season. Consumers wait for festive sales because just for the gifts and discounts, hence the surge would be high during these times. This means your store needs to be ready to accommodate a high amount of visitors, checkouts, payments, and orders.

So, let’s fail-proof your dropshipping store and set it up for ongoing purchases for the holiday season with these 6 preparation tips:

1. Talk to your suppliers in advance

Managing the status of your inventory will possibly be the most difficult yet important aspect to handle. Suppose you suddenly start getting a massive number of orders, and your supplier is not prepared for it, you could end up losing customers, or worse, providing a bad customer experience.

Delays in orders, unavailability of a product even if listed on the store, poor packaging owing to order influx are some ways things could go wrong. So, the first step you should take to prepare your store is to have a conversation with your suppliers.

Quite often, dropshipping stores work with multiple suppliers, which makes this step even more crucial. Talk to them about how much they can accommodate and set up a process for the organization.

For example, you could use Google sheets to manage inventory and add them or hire a virtual assistant or intern to help manage the process.

This should be done weeks before the holiday season begins, so you have a clear understanding of what needs to be taken care of and a fallback plan if anything goes wrong.

2. Review your policies

You cannot have your standard store policies running during the holiday season if you don’t want to exhaust your operation on sorting out exchanges, returns, and other order issues.

To avoid the hassle, clearly state store policies telling users how to proceed with refunds and returns during sales. Not only will this ensure consumers are informed about your policies, but it will also instill trust in your store and shows you are committed to an excellent customer experience.

Here’s what you should clarify during the holiday season:

Returns and refunds

Many stores don’t offer returns or refunds during holiday sales.

This is because these products are already discounted, and engaging in returns or refunds can get expensive given the shipping and logistics involved. However, if you still want to offer them, ensure transparency on timelines and processes.

Shipping and taxes

Ask your suppliers if their method can handle surge orders and how much time it would take to ship and deliver them. It would be best to keep a buffer time.

For example, if you generally ship orders in 24 hours, mention you’ll ship in 48 hours. This way, the supplier would have enough time to accommodate the surge.

Similarly, be transparent about the shipping costs, and check with the supplier if the earlier rates can continue to stay or if you need to revise them.

3. Develop an advertising plan and budget

You’ll indeed see loyal customers buying from you during holidays, but you’ll also acquire many new customers. To maximize the results of your efforts, it’s best to prepare an advertising plan and budget before the season kicks in.

91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands and stores that provide relevant offers and recommendations—which makes advertising crucial.

Before you lay out your plan, it’s essential to assess your most profitable channels. Understand where you get the most customers from—organic search, paid social media promotions, email marketing, and social media channels.

The holiday season is not the time to experiment and invest in new advertising channels. Instead, you need to double down on methods that have worked best for you in the past and optimize them for better results.

Here are some steps you can take to do this:

After assessing your advertising channels, create and allocate a budget to different channels
Create an advertising strategy that allows you to prioritize channels as per past traffic and conversions
Hire a team or assign tasks to an existing team of full-time employees or freelancers so you can put your strategy into motion
Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your efforts like traffic, sources, conversions, channels, clicks, etc
Create great content, and use a solid social media strategy to build buzz around your sale and store.
Use innovative strategies like contests and giveaways, partnering with influencers, and creating a loyalty program so you can promote your holiday sale in the best manner.

Get your advertising strategy in motion well ahead of the holidays. This would provide you with time to create awareness around your store.

Once you launch your deals, people would come in for the familiarity and purchase.

4. Plan your holiday site theme

Holiday sales are not just about listing products at slashed prices on the website. It’s also about creating a memorable store experience for the consumers, so they’re pulled towards making a purchase and referring them to their friends.

Refreshing your website with a holiday theme is one of the best ways to show your store is ready to bring in some festive cheer. If it’s Christmas, customize your store with candy canes, snow trees, and red and white colors to help customers relate to the holiday. Such personalized experiences can go a long way in building customer retention.

In addition to the theme, you can also festively stack your products or bump up those related to the holiday like streaming devices, loaf pans, candles, new dining sheets, and winter clothing for Thanksgiving.

You can also use data from your previous sales and festive store surges to study customer behavior and see how you should optimize and organize the store for more sales.

5. Learn about your top-selling products

Not all products sell the same, and if you can identify and bump up your top-selling products, you could end up making higher sales.

More than offering a range of products, curating and positioning your best-selling products will help you drive more conversions and make the consumers curious to explore your store further.

To discover these products, here’s what you can do:

Study customer purchase history for the past 9-12 months and pick the products with the highest sales. Identify if the product would be relevant during the holiday season, and include it accordingly.
Analyze your previous holiday season purchase history, and cherry-pick those products which sold like crazy. Consider bringing them in again or including an upgrade to those products to push sales.

Once you’ve made a list of your top-selling products, you can position them strategically throughout the website and run promotions on them to attract more people.

Alternatively, you can also study Google trends, communities, and industry reports to understand potential best-selling products that you can also get supplied and listed on your dropshipping store.

6. Conduct a load test to handle the traffic surge

The holiday season can put a lot of pressure on your website regarding increased site visitors, fast checkouts, overburdened servers, and glitches in third-party integrations.

This can show errors to your customers or lead to a slow load time, among other issues which can severely impact their shopping experience, and thus your sales.

The best way to avoid this is to conduct a load test to ensure your site servers have enough capacity to handle sudden spikes in traffic

This will allow you to assess how your website will react to traffic surges and give you an idea of the potential bugs that can cause problems. You can use load testing tools like JMeter and LoadView to help you out with it.

Once you identify issues after running the load test, you can make improvements and optimizations to create a seamless shopping experience for your customers.

Wrapping up

The holiday season offers massive scope for eCommerce stores to ramp up their profits. With dropshipping, you can take it even further with innovative marketing strategies, sales promotion tactics, website optimization, and product experimentation.

Unlike regular eCommerce store owners, you don’t have to worry about the products so that you can optimize the store and overall experience for more sales.

Focus on personalizing the shopping experience for your customers with holiday themes and promotions, which can pull them in further for making purchases.

You can turn the holiday season into a highly profitable quarter for your dropshipping business, but only if you are prepared for it. Use this article as a checklist to prepare your store for the festive surge, and get ready to welcome happy shoppers!

This is a guest post by Hazel Raoult

Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family.

The post 6 Tips to Prepare Your Dropshipping Business for the Holiday Season Surge appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

[eCommerce 2021] 7 Ways to Speed Up Your Business’ Shipping Process

Ian — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 09:44:10 +0000

The contemporary shipping process is changing rapidly, and as a shipper, you need to streamline your process.

Streamlining your company’s shipping process implies having a more efficient and speedy supply chain, something most clients prefer.

Forbes suggests that, you need to devise effective ways to speed up the shipping process for your company to remain competitive. Therefore, we’ve come up with a few tips to help you streamline and speed up your shipping process.

1. Enhance Your Company's Warehouse Communication

Proper communication in your warehouse is crucial for a streamlined and speedy shipping process. Therefore, you should ensure that communication with your warehouse is clear and timely to avoid delays.

Ensure you communicate with your warehouse staff on how they should conduct processes to enhance efficiency. This is particularly crucial if you’re offering cross-country car shipping because timely communication prevents delays.

Ultimately, laying down proper communication channels can help speed up the shipping process for your business.

2. Partner with the Most Effective Shipping Carrier

If you’re looking for ways to speed up your shipping process, then you should partner with a reputable and efficient shipping carrier.

This means prioritizing on-time deliveries and proper handling of damages to avoid loss or damage.

Also, when choosing a carrier, ensure you select one that can handle pressure situations. Such a carrier can help you deliver urgent packages per your customers’ needs, helping you gain a competitive advantage.

3. Streamline Your Company's Internal Processes

Most shipping companies implement many systems or programs for a single internal process.

However, this ends up converting a simple task into a complex and sluggish process, leading to frustrations and delays.

Therefore, if your company’s internal processes are prolonged and frustrating, try simplifying them or developing new simple, efficient, and speedy processes.

In the end, simplifying your internal processes can help speed up your company’s shipping process.

4. Plan for Customs Clearance Beforehand

Preparing early for customs clearance is a great way to speed up your shipping process.

Often, customs clearance is a long and tiring process that can cause delays in your shipping process.

The most effective way to address this is to plan for customs clearance in advance.

Consequently, you can avoid delays and last-minute frustrations to beat the deadline for delivering packages to clients.

5. Invest in Shipping Capabilities that Meets Demand

To speed up the shipping process for your company, you have to invest in shipping capabilities that can meet customer demand.

I.e, you have to ensure that the shipping trucks you’re using are spacious to accommodate all the products they need to ship.

This way, you can speed up the shipping process for your business to meet customer needs.

6. Provide Real-time Order Tracking

Today’s customers want to know where their parcel has reached and when they expect to receive it. For this reason, you need to offer real-time order tracking for your clients to understand the status of their luggage whenever they want.

This can help improve your shipping process by keeping your clients informed about the location of their parcel.

Also, having order tracking capabilities can help you identify and resolve issues early enough to allow timely delivery.

Ultimately, providing order tracking is an excellent way to develop trust with your clients and optimize your company’s shipping process.

Having order tracking capabilities can help you identify and resolve issues early enough to allow timely delivery.

7. Implement Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

EDI is a strategy that is implemented by many shipping companies which replace traditional paperwork with electronic data.

By replacing paperwork with electronic data, your shipping company can process data faster, speeding up the shipping process.

Besides, EDI can process large volumes of data within a short period, eliminating possible delays.

Ultimately, implementing the latest data processing technology in your business can greatly speed up the shipping process.

Wrap Up

Speeding up your company’s shipping process is critical for you to meet today’s client needs.

You have to devise new and efficient ways to streamline your delivery process to meet client expectations and remain competitive.

For instance, you can enter into a partnership with the most effective courier service and enhance your company’s warehouse communication.

You can also offer real-time order tracking and invest in shipping capabilities that meet customer demands.

This is a guest post Mckenzie Jones

The post [eCommerce 2021] 7 Ways to Speed Up Your Business’ Shipping Process appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

5 Tips to Get the Best out of Your Package Shipping Carrier

Ian — Mon, 03 May 2021 11:04:00 +0000

Millions of international packages make their way to destination points and cross borders every day. And the vast majority of them are the goods people buy from eCommerce businesses operating globally.

While it’s no secret that free package shipping does not actually exist and the seller is the one who has to pay for it, international shipping either costs loads of money for a brand, requires lots of workforces, or both.

Plus, there’s always a chance of late deliveries or lost packages. And suddenly, shipping internationally becomes a true headache.

Thankfully, this struggle a seller experiences can be minimized by knowing how to get the most out of your partner shipping carrier.

Carriers often offer a bunch of additional perks to having you as a long-term partner. And it’s an important thing to have in mind when making a new agreement with a package shipping carrier.

This article will give you a basic understanding of how to make the most out of picking and dealing with a shipping carrier for your eCommerce business (or for your shipments). That way, you’ll be able to make a smart choice by saving both your money and your nerves when choosing a partner package shipping carrier.

Quit Overpaying for Shipping

Spending less on quality services is one of the top priorities for you when choosing a carrier, right?

If it’s a yes, the best way to avoid paying too much and find the cheapest shipping carrier meeting your needs is to simply compare pricing. There are many shipping price comparison sites that give you estimated costs from major US shipping carriers such as DHL, FedEx, and UPS.

Using price comparison sites will give you a primary understanding of what shipping costs to expect regarding the destination country and the country you are shipping from. And believe it or not, it usually varies greatly.

But. There’s always a but. Although DHL, FedEx, or UPS are great for international shipments due to long-term experience, smooth processes, and of course, affordable pricing, comparing a few carriers won’t give a full picture.

Regardless of these big players in global shipping, the US shipping market is crowded with less popular package shipping carriers. Possibly, some of them will also be able to offer you affordable pricing and meet your business needs.

So, do your research ⇓

Use the shipping price comparison sites ( e.g. Easyship, Upela, etc.)
Check costs manually with less-known carriers
Request a custom quote based on your unique business needs

Doing all this will guarantee you’ll find the best shipping partner for your business in terms of pricing.

Prepare to Negotiate

When you choose a shipping carrier for your business, you want to have it for a long period. You do know that bouncing from one to another is exhausting, disrupts work processes, and is wasteful.

But what you may not be aware of is that the shipping carrier needs you likewise you need their services. And you can definitely benefit from that.

When you receive a quote or a long-term offer for shipping services, know that it’s not definite. Usually, there’s plenty of room for negotiation that many businesses forget to take advantage of.

You can lay down your own conditions because as much as you’re interested in having them as a shipping partner, they’re interested in having you as a long-term client.

Want better rates, package insurance, or some extra benefits? Just ask for it!

What’s worse that can happen? Nothing. The carrier can say no and that’s it. You’re free to accept the primary offer or head to another carrier.

Be confident and persistent when making this big decision

Choose a Shipping Carrier Wisely

Picking a good shipping carrier sounds quite simple, but it’s easier said than actually done.

To make it less challenging, the best thing would be to choose a reputable and widely-known international shipping carrier. You cannot go wrong by picking from big-name courier services such as DHL, FedEx, or UPS.

However, if your shipments have a specific route, you might look for other options. Let’s say you operate in the States, but your product is purchased amazingly in the Polish market. So, you’re constantly shipping to Poland from the USA.

And what does that mean regarding picking a carrier? It simply implies that you might consider a carrier specializing in this exact route. That might save you money, shorten delivery times dramatically, and prevent shipping fails.

For example, carriers like AEC Parcel Service which specializes in delivering packages to Eastern European countries may provide a better shipping experience than those shipping to every part of the world.

Consider Convenience and Benefits

If you’re trying to actually get the best out of a shipping carrier, you have to consider what additional value the carrier has to offer.

Put simply, you have to look not only through yours as a seller, but also through the customer’s perspective. Will your customer and your business experience the best package delivery possible without any delivery issues?

What’s here to consider in a nutshell:

Figure out whether the shipper offers free package insurance covering your product.
Decide if delivery times and methods are appropriate for your business model.
Pay attention to the shipping refund policy and compensation for late deliveries.
Consider the drop-off locations and whether there’s one next to your business spot.
Will the shipper provide strong customer service for you and your clients? It should.
Check if the shipper has a real-time tracking tool for both your and your customer’s peace of mind.

Do a Feedback Research

Nothing gives a better picture of a product or service than the experiences of others. Getting familiar with opinions from former or current customers helps to compare competitors, figure out if they offer quality service, and actually makes it easy to decide if the business can be trusted.

The best way of doing it is by reading reviews online. Facebook, Google my Business, Yelp, and other sites where customers express their opinions are the most popular places to look at those stars and words about shipping carriers. In fact, in most cases reading reviews dramatically changes the first impression.

On the other hand, it’s easy to find reviews from simple customers, yet businesses do not tend to share their experiences online. So, if you’re operating in eCommerce, you might want to reach out to your business partners or even competitors asking for their experiences with international shipping carriers.

How LateShipment.com Can Help You

Regardless of which shipping carrier you’re going to choose, the top goal here is to avoid late shipment experiences and have an impeccable shipping service operating along with your business.

However, international shipping is a complex procedure and even the best carriers sometimes fail in delivering packages. That’s where LateShipment.com steps in.

LateShipment.com is the world’s only logistics cloud tool that combines shipping refunds with everything you need to create well-managed, branded delivery experiences despite the odds.

LateShipment.com drives savings in your shipping spend, gives you new revenue channels, better repeat purchase rates, and offers your customers premium delivery experiences. Here’s how we elevate the game for your business.

At LateShipment.com, we aim to transform your customer’s post-purchase journey and make it a memorable experience that encourages fierce customer loyalty.

Our Delivery Experience Management platform powers post-purchase CX success for your business by helping you:

Stay on top of delays by tracking your in-transit parcels across carriers in real-time.
Resolve delivery issues proactively with predictive alerts for shipments facing delays.
Over-communicate with customers facing critical delivery issues.
Send automated delivery status notifications via email and SMS to reduce your customers’ anxiety.
Build beautiful, branded order tracking pages, personalized for your customers.
Capture your customers’ Delivery Satisfaction (DSAT) rating after every order delivery.

Our DEM platform also seamlessly integrates with all your tech-stacks such as eCommerce platforms, CRM systems, Help desk, and Email marketing tools, etc without any change to your existing workflow.

Now, how good is that?

The best part is,

In addition to helping you elevate your customers’ post-purchase experiences, you can also SAVE UP TO 20% on your shipping costs with our Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds solution, which can help you:

Audit your monthly shipping invoices for 50+ service failures
Submit refund claims to your carrier(s) on your behalf
Deposit the refunded amount directly into your account
Save you up to 20% of your overall shipping spend.
Get better service quality from shipping carriers

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

Try LateShipment.com now.

Or, get in touch by writing to us at sales@lateshipment.com

The post 5 Tips to Get the Best out of Your Package Shipping Carrier appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Lost Packages 101: How to Handle Them

Joelah James — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:00:16 +0000

When you ship through DHL, FedEx, UPS, or USPS most packages make it to their destinations intact and on time. But, what about those rare occurrences when packages are lost in transit? Who exactly gets blamed when this happens? The seller or the shipper?

In most cases, it is the retailer who bites the bullet. This is because customers the accountability of the package from checkout to delivery falls on the business they ordered from rather than the shipping carrier, a third party.

Customers who’ve lost their packages are often aggrieved and take their grievances to social media and call out your brand. Just like this:

Hey @amazon thanks for ruining Christmas and losing my brother's Christmas present. What's the point in 2 day shipping if you lose the package?
— Eddie Smedley (@GettinSomeSmed) December 23, 2018

And what exactly happens when posts like this catch the attention of their followers/ your potential customers?

Your brand reputation takes a huge hit, customer churn rate hits the roof, and staying ahead of competitors becomes next to impossible (Uff 😤)

Worry not!

Here are some tips for retailers on how to handle lost packages, (spoiler alert!) save on shipping costs, and improve customer loyalty.

Step 1: Determine if the sent packages are really lost

If a package that was en route to a customer goes certifiably missing and has not arrived at their doorstep four or five days after schedule, then it can be officially considered lost.

When you suspect your packages as lost, wait it out a maximum of seven days beyond the day of expected delivery.

Sometimes, there are packages that turn up after being rerouted somewhere along the chain (they might have also been incorrectly scanned or sorted).

In most cases though, the issue is either a wrong address or a weather-related one. Quite simply, it is not unheard of for a package to turn up a day or two late.

In case the tracking number shows that the product has as ‘delivered’ and the customer still files a complaint about the package being lost, then it has to be treated as a stolen package.

Here’s how you can prevent package theft.

Step 2: The packages are lost. Now what?

In case if your customers’ packages are truly lost, they naturally expect a refund or a replacement.

If the shipping carrier is unable to locate the packages, you need to file an insurance claim to cover the combined insured value of the lost packages. This requires the tracking number, proof of value of the item, and proof of insurance.

When you’re shipping valuable products, it is always wise to insure the shipments.

Remember that apart from the insurance sum, the carrier also has to fully refund the shipping costs for failing to deliver the package safely to the buyer.

Once the claim is filed and investigated, you will receive your dues via the original mode of payment be it through check or credit card.

Meanwhile, make sure YOU send the customer a replacement or a refund with a sincere apology.

Step 3: File a Refund Claim for the Lost Packages

File refund claims for DHL lost packages here
File refund claims for FedEx lost packages here
File refund claims for UPS lost packages here
File refund claims for USPS lost packages here

Step 3.1: How do I file a claim for lost packages?

The tracker on your package is usually true to its name and rarely allows packages to get lost. But on the off chance that the shipping label comes off, or the package is torn and the contents scattered, you’ll have no choice but to file lost package claims with the carrier.

Here are a few things you need to keep in mind if you’re going to file a claim for FedEx lost packages.

If the contents of the package cost less than $100, you can complete the entire form online and request a refund without documentation.
In the event of the package costing anywhere above $100, proper documentation is necessary for the claim to get processed.
Documentation can include FedEx pickup records, photos of the damaged or lost contents, and proof of value documentation.
Claims have to be filed within 60 days for US shipments and in 21 calendar days for international shipments (with all supporting documentation filed within 9 months of delivery date).
The tracking number that was initially allocated to the package is vital to the process and has to be provided.

After a scheduled inspection, your claim will be processed and you can track its progress.

In the case of other shipping carriers, you can file claims online through the following links and within the following deadlines.

UPS lost packages claim (file within 5 months online, within 9 months through customer service, and within 45 days if it is an uncollected C.O.D)
USPS lost packages claim (file within 60 days for all services except Priority Mail Express, First class, and Surface Mail)
DHL lost packages claim (file within 30 days)

Note: Filing Refund Claims for Lost Packages by Yourself Is a Huge Hassle

Apart from running your hectic business, manually submitting claims with shipping carriers by yourself is a huge hassle for more reasons than one:

Tedious Process – The process to file a claim manually is an exhaustive one, you will have to deal with multiple forms, proofs, and document submissions

Time-Consuming – After submitting a claim, you won’t get your refund immediately, it takes at least 5-7 days or forever to get a refund for one single package

Not Cost-Effective – The amount of time and money you will spend to get a refund will be greater than the compensation you will probably receive
Inefficient Use of Resources – This process doesn’t have a definitive output and require lots of back and forth communication along with document re-submissions

Worry not! You can make use of a parcel audit solution such as LateShipment.com to help you effortlessly recover refunds for lost packages while you focus on your core business.

Step 4: How Lateshipment.Com Helps You Handle Your Lost Packages

LateShipment.com’s Parcel Audit and Refunds solution effortlessly audits your invoices and helps save up to 20% on your shipping costs. The best part is that it takes less than 2 minutes to set-up and seamlessly integrates with your existing workflow.

Our parcel audit and refunds solution:

Not only submits claims on your behalf but also constantly follows up till issue resolution.
Makes sure that all claims are submitted within the timeframe of the carrier(s).
Not just lost shipments, but also helps you recover refunds for 50+ service failures like late deliveries.
And best of all this, you don’t have to pay anything out of your pockets. We only charge 50% of the refunds you’ve received, that too only when it is successfully recovered.

Sure, refunds are great for your business. But getting them doesn’t help in mitigating the pain of a loyal customer who might have lost packages such as birthday gifts or an anniversary surprises.

That’s when our other feature Delivery Experience Management (DEM) platform can help. DEM is particularly helpful if you are a bulk shipper who uses multiple carriers and would prefer an efficient automated workflow.

Step 4.2: How Delivery Experience Management (DEM) Platform Works

Delivery Experience Management platform keeps you in check the status of the parcel and helps you stay ahead of lost or damaged packages with ease. It is easy to use and tracks every package you send via major carriers like FedEx or UPS.

When a certain package takes a detour, DEM sends out an alert to the sender and the receiver. This helps you foresee a delay and handle it proactively.

If you send out several packages at once, and some of them are suspected lost by our automated system, you are intimated of that as well.

Since you get to know well in advance if one or more packages are flagged as lost, it gives you an edge when you get in touch with the carrier to resolve the issue or send a quick replacement in case of a time-sensitive delivery.

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

Try LateShipment.com now.

Or, get in touch by writing to us at sales@lateshipment.com

The post Lost Packages 101: How to Handle Them appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Should online sellers include shipping cost in the product price?

Naveen Selvaraj — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 09:30:50 +0000

Of the many reasons for cart abandonment, the shipping fee is among the biggest. It plays a crucial role in influencing consumers’ online purchasing behavior and decision making.

The truth is that today’s customers don’t appreciate a separate cost being added to their products at checkout.

In the Amazon era, customers are spoiled for choice by businesses offering free shipping and faster deliveries.

So, should you include the shipping cost in your product price?

The answer actually depends on a few factors.

What does including the shipping cost in the product price entail?

By making the shipping cost part of the product price, you totally blanket your customers from the idea that they are paying an extra amount apart from the product price, and provide the impression they are getting FREE SHIPPING for purchasing from your brand.

And boy is “FREE SHIPPING” a major hook!

According to Berman and Wharton marketing professor Barbara Kahn, there’s a certain psychology behind “FREE SHIPPING” that makes it almost mandatory to include shipping cost in overall product price. Kahn calls it the “pain tax.”

Pain tax: As humans, we have a tendency to segregate gains and take pleasure individually in each positive benefit, but when it comes to dealing with a loss — in our case paying an extra amount for shipping — we’d rather take it in one lump sum.

This means when the shipping cost is charged separately, customers perceive it as a loss on the whole, neglecting the benefits of the product they wanted to purchase, and they end up abandoning their carts.

Will free shipping impact my margin?

The answer depends on the choices you make.

Giving away shipping 100% free, which means you bear the full shipping cost from your margin, can hurt your business unless you charge a premium on your products from customers.

This is because shipping charges are dynamic and differ from location-to-location. Even the eCommerce giants, who get better shipping rates from shipping carriers, struggle to provide free shipping on all of their goods because it is still expensive.

In order to make optimal use of free shipping, you need to get the balance right.

Threshold-based free shipping or “condition-based free shipping,” where a minimum purchase limit is set, has seen good success among retailers.

In fact, 60% of eCommerce companies cite “free shipping with conditions” as their most successful marketing tool.

The reasons are obvious. On the one hand, it satisfies customers’ need for free shipping and on the other it increases the Average Order Value (AOV) of purchases by motivating customers to meet the threshold for free shipping.

You can also opt for shipping options that are less expensive or which have an extended delivery period. Based on the fact that free shipping is provided, customers who are not in immediate need of a product will still choose to wait it out.

So, what are the different ways of providing “free” shipping?

1.Increasing your product price to cover the cost of free shipping

You could include the shipping cost in the product price, making the customer pay for shipping. This way, the customer is technically paying for shipping, even though it feels free.

2. Setting a minimum order value

You could stipulate a minimum order value beyond which free shipping would be provided. This approach will motivate customers to exceed that limit, thus increasing your Average Order Value.

3. Limiting free shipping to certain regions

If your business is US-based, you could provide free shipping to states closer to your warehouse and charge full shipping fees for the states that are distant. This way you will not lose money to shipping on all orders.

4. Limiting free shipping to particular products

If you offer a wide range of products, you could limit free shipping to the ones that are expensive or which have high margins.

5. Offering free shipping to your most loyal customers

You could offer 100% free shipping to your most loyal customers, i.e. after a certain number of purchases have been made by them. Doing this could spur repeat purchase and contribute to increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

6. Offering free shipping with a longer delivery window

This approach has dual benefits. If you have a faster shipping option, you could nudge your customer toward paying some percentage of the shipping cost for faster delivery. For those customers who are simply unwilling to pay for shipping, the option with the longer delivery window is likely to suffice.

There are a few other approaches you could consider while charging for shipping.

What are the other ways to charge for shipping?

1. Charging real-time carrier rates

All major shipping carriers like FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, etc. provide APIs that could be connected with your eCommerce platform. These APIs enable your store to calculate shipping rates live while a customer is purchasing. Shipping rates are calculated based on the product size & weight and origin & destination.

There are two benefits with this approach. Firstly, there won’t be a risk of under charging your customers. Secondly, this will earn you points for transparency.

With this strategy, there is risk of cart abandonment, but it works well if you ship to international destinations with wildly varying shipping charges.

2. Charging a flat rate

Under this strategy, you charge the same rate for all orders. This strategy works best when you have a standard product line with items that are similar in size and weight.

The benefit of offering flat rate shipping is that it makes it easy to communicate the shipping charge to customers. It also encourages customers to order large volumes since the shipping cost does not increase as the number of products in the cart increases.

One obvious disadvantage is that you might lose a few orders, so you must maintain a balance between undercharging and overcharging customers.

There are still other ways to reduce your shipping spend. Read on to learn more.

What are some simple & effective ways to reduce shipping costs?

1. Offer local delivery

This could be a simple and reliable way for you to save on your shipping costs. When you set up a local delivery service, you can set a radius within which you want to deliver to your customers. This is quick and cheaper than the traditional way of shipping.

You can maintain a tab over where you are willing to deliver for free, or else charge a low price on deliveries to reduce your shipping spend.

The best thing about handling local deliveries in house is that it allows you to stay connected with your customers throughout the delivery process and helps you build a sense of community.

2. Claim shipping refunds for service errors

Did you know that by claiming refunds for service errors committed by shipping carriers, you could save up to 20% on your shipping spend?

Shipping carriers are prone to over 50 service failures like late deliveries, lost & damaged packages, incorrect surcharges, etc. that are eligible for 100% shipping refunds.

However, many eCommerce retailers are not aware they are eligible for refunds, while those that are in the know are put off by the time-consuming claim process that has a short submission window.

LateShipment.com’s algorithms can submit shipping refund claims on your behalf and credit your account with the refunded amount, thus helping you save on shipping costs. Since the whole process is automated, you don’t have to break a sweat. More on this later.

3. Negotiate with various shipping carriers

Negotiating with shipping carriers for better rates is an important aspect of eCommerce shipping. Generally, major carriers like FedEx UPS, USPS, and Canada Post offer you pre-negotiated rates, but you should always try negotiating with these carriers for a better deal, especially if you are starting out.

While negotiating :

Have a clear grasp of your shipping data, and use it.
Know your average shipping volumes and ask for volume discounts.
Watch out for hidden fees and surcharges.
Know the types of discounts offered by shipping carriers.

LateShipment.com’s Carrier Performance report gives you access to actionable insights that will provide you leverage while renegotiating rates with your shipping carrier.

4. Don’t stick with a single shipping carrier

A multi-carrier shipping approach gives you the flexibility to choose the carrier that gives you the best rate at any given time. It also provides you the ability to switch carriers when a carrier fails to meet delivery expectations or is facing delivery issues due to high volumes.

Using a single carrier while starting out makes sense, but as your business grows and your delivery volume increases, it would be risky not to have a multi-carrier approach because it could result in delivery issues and increased shipping spend.

5. Increase your packaging options

Since shipping carriers don’t charge only based on the volume of packages but also package dimensions, it is important to have diversity in packaging options. This will help you reduce the price that you may have to pay for the extra space in your packaging.

Space in packages may also increase your package material cost and the risk of damaging your product.

Final Word

While there are different ways and approaches when it comes to dealing with shipping costs. But, as we have seen, adding shipping cost into the product price has the definite benefit of reducing the friction for customers contemplating buying your products. Yes, 100% free shipping can impact your margin, but you can always opt for conditional free shipping, or another option best suited to your business model.

A Little about LateShipment.com

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.

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

Some of our high-impact offerings are :

Shipping Cost Savings (up to 20%) – Automate the audit of your shipping invoices and recover refunds for 50+ service failures & billing errors including late deliveries.
Real-Time Parcel Tracking – Monitor your outbound & inbound shipments across multiple shipping carriers on a centralized window, in real-time.
Predictive Delay Alerts – Pay attention to daily deliveries with predictive delay alerts and more on a purpose-built dashboard for support reps.
Proactive Issue Resolution – Proactively communicate with customers to prevent them from having bad experiences due to delivery failures.
Delivery Status Notifications – Send custom or automated delivery status notifications to your customers for events like “shipped,” “attempted,” & “delivered.”
Branded Order Tracking – Build fully-customizable order tracking pages for your customers to improve brand recall and sales.
Delivery Experience Feedback – Gather feedback from customers about their delivery experience. Measure and optimize shipping operation

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

The value we add to businesses is most evident when experienced first-hand. Try LateShipment.com now.

The post Should online sellers include shipping cost in the product price? 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.

CBD Or THC: Getting The Ball Rolling For Your Cannabis Business

Joelah James — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 15:01:44 +0000

Something strange happened in Aspen, Colorado last year. Strange, because it is the first time such an event has occurred legally anywhere in the continental US.

Marijuana sales brought in $11.3 million, eclipsing alcohol sales by a huge margin.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen. Binge drinking days are on the decline. The legalization of cannabis by Canada in 2018 has opened up a market filled with myriad possibilities.

A market with an estimated value of 23.4 billion by 2022!

Here’s a quick glimpse of investors in the market, industries with future potential and shipping cannabis.

Not a drug. A leaf.

A year ago, retailers wouldn’t have dreamt of lining up their shelves with marijuana. Now they’re dreaming up creative ways of using and marketing cannabis and its associated products.

Marijuana that is widely in use today comes from the herb Cannabis sativa. The compound in cannabis that produces the high is a cannabinoid called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). When it comes to medical or wellness products, another cannabinoid called CBD (cannabidiol) is used.

CBD is accepted for its many health benefits, while THC is not legalized in many places due to its psychoactive nature.

This is where hemp comes in. It is legal is most states due to its high CBD content. As CBD has the property of counteracting the effects of THC to an extent, hemp is relatively weaker than its relatives (the legal ones have less than 0.3% of THC!).

This fiber is well known for being a better alternative to cotton. The fact that it was illegal to raise hemp in most states prevented farmers from using this easy to grow herb all these years.

The US Farm Bill passed in 2018 legalizes the cultivation and use of hemp across the United States. The effects of this Bill are still being speculated, but what this means to retailers is obvious.

Not only can farmers grow this cash crop easily, the profits and value will far exceed that of cotton or any other plant grown for industrial use. Hemp fiber can be used to make hardier clothing, eco sustainable paper, biofuel, food and building materials. Hemp oil or CBD oil is also a hot commodity at present.

Source: Statista

A friend with weed is a friend indeed

So who’s gotten a seat at the table?

The recent legalization of cannabis in Canada has blown open the market for retailers in both the US and Canada.

As it is restricted in many states within the US, retailers are partnering up with Canadian companies like Aurora cannabis and Tilray or buying shares into Canadian cannabis businesses.

As for stocks, just the mention of cannabis seems to skyrocket them at the moment. This has been true for companies like New age beverages corp., IntelGenx technologies and Alkaline water.

Even Shopify has gotten its share of the pie by becoming the website provider for many major deals including Aurora cannabis!

Alkaline Water, Corbus Pharmaceuticals and IntelGenx saw a more than 50% hike in market shares after announcing their plans to include CBD in future products.

The cannabis market has also seen unexpected growth in Europe. A previous estimate of $200 million has now grown up to $1 billion euros due to the involvement of some big names like Anheuser Busch, InBev NV, and Novartis.

Got a friend in Canada who can produce some good stuff? You should be getting on a call with him/her right about now!

Of course we know how to roll.

Some companies got into partnerships. Others have pulled their sleeves up and jumped headlong themselves.

The sudden spike brought about by the legalization of cannabis in Canada has pushed several big names into the fray.

Nobody wants to be left behind, and the properties of CBD have become a great selling point (just like kombucha did earlier). The current US market for cannabis infused beverages is at around 6%. This could easily become 20% by 2022.

Even Coca Cola is considering setting foot into the cannabis beverage scene.

We’re talking a market worth $600 million in the next four years. This has the solid potential to outpace the growth of other retail categories in cannabis products.

Those who are currently pursuing the cannabis beverage market aggressively include Constellation Brands (producers of Corona) and Molson Coors Canada.

There are also interesting startups like California dreamin which advertise cannabis infused beverages that give consumers a light social high with just 10 mg of THC!

California Dreamin is one of those headlong divers we discussed earlier. Let’s not forget the rest who are more cautious, and choose to analyze industry data and risks before throwing in their bet.

Firms like canaccord genuity have popped up to cater to the needs of these cautious souls. Boasting a global presence, they do market/equity research as well as investment banking. With a high profile clientele like Aurora cannabis, they’ve gained quite some popularity.

Wondering where to grow?

If all these seem like high profile ideas to you, and you’re looking at something a little simpler to start off with, then you might want to consider the following options.

Cannabis accessories has become a formidable market in its own right (it helps that accessories aren’t deemed illegal anywhere).
Did you know there are even CBD infused pet snacks? They are proven to help pets with chronic pain, inflammation, arthritis and seizures.
Already in the pharmaceutical business? CBD based drugs like Epidiolex that are slowly gaining approval can help you scale your business.
Food products like nutrition bars or quick snacks that contain minimum levels of CBD (their high nutritive value is quite the USP) or even THC (if legal).
Beauty and skin care products that are infused with CBD. It’s got all the properties for clearer skin, muscle relaxation, and whatnot.

Can we ship it? Yes we(ed) can.

Shipping cannabis has always been problematic. Within the US, mailing it from a legal state to an illegal one has been happening for several years (despite being considered a federal offence). Shipping carriers have found and reported illegal cannabis being shipped through fake names and addresses.

The legalization in Canada has brought about other shipping concerns. Firstly, legal stores seem ill prepared to deal with the huge influx of orders pouring in from customers.

Secondly, they need to figure out faster shipping options to get orders delivered on time. When the latest Canada Post strike occurred, orders were delayed by over a week in Ontario and a few other parts of Canada. Figuring out an alternate shipping plan in case of such unforeseen circumstances would be beneficial to cannabis retailers.

While recreational cannabis users can accept the delay (even if it had been meant for a weekend), those who need it for medicinal uses cannot be made to wait.

If you’re shipping cannabis within the US, these are the places it is currently legal in.

Alaska
California
Colorado
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan
Nevada
Oregon
Vermont
Washington
District of Columbia
Northern Mariana islands

But you still cannot mail it like any normal package. Mailing it through the USPS is an outright federal offence even within states that have legalized cannabis use. As for FedEx and UPS, they can open any suspicious packages at will. Considering this, it is always wise to ensure

That you check the legislature of the state or place you ship cannabis to
Double check the allowed volume of marijuana even if it is legal
Alert your carrier to the new item you will be shipping through them and submit appropriate documentation where necessary
Package the contents in heat insulated air tight packaging so that they don’t smell of the trademark scent.
Clear specifications of shipping and return policies on your website

Online stores like Ignite CBD and Tweedle Farms sell legal industrial hemp that they produce. The sites give out authentic information on what consumers can expect from each of the products. The shipping and return policy for CBD oil and other products is also given in detail.

If you’re foraying into shipping out cannabis or cannabis products to your customers, creating a brand identity now will create an edge over later competitors. Gain a niche of loyal customers with well sourced products, excellent customer service and hassle free last mile deliveries. Services like LateShipment.com can help you with last mile competency and ensuring that customers receive their packages on time.

If you liked this article, you might want to check these out too.

The post CBD Or THC: Getting The Ball Rolling For Your Cannabis Business 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.