Four ways to fix inefficiencies in the last mile and to unlock retail growth

By Sean Sherwin-Smith, Product Director Post-Purchase

Too much of retailers’ great work to get their customers to buy from them gets wasted because something goes wrong with the delivery.

Or because customers can’t choose the sort of the delivery to fit in with their plans.  

Or they are unable to return products that don’t do what they hoped.  

Or they can’t keep track of where a delivery is.  

In fact, two thirds of logistics managers say that the last mile, from the distribution hub to the destination, is the least efficient part of the supply chain.

In practice, that means customers who have had a bad delivery experience often don’t come back. Nor do they sing the praises of their new suppliers.  And that costs retailers, in terms of the reputation of their brands, and in terms of repeat revenues from loyal customers.  

Here are four approaches that retailers and webshops can follow to address these issues and maximise their growth potential through delivery management:

1. Ensure that the management delivery software is joined up so that each element is designed to work with every other element, end-to-end.  As nShift, our market-leading suite of Checkout, Ship, Track and Returns have been developed to work together.
   
2. Deliver outstanding customer experiences.  Offer delivery options that customers expect, so they can make the choice between the cost, speed and sustainability of each delivery.  Consumers expect webshops should offer all three options, to suit their lifestyles, not the retailers’.
   
3. Select simple and speedy deployment.  Insist on straightforward integrations with retailers’ existing tech stacks, and with large carrier libraries.  Building carrier libraries manually can add significantly to the time and cost of deploying delivery management software.  Pick a partner that has the carriers in place to start with.
   
4. Set up for success with returns that drive retention.  Four out of five customers won’t shop again with brands whose returns processes fail to meet their expectations. Done right, returns policies can reduce costs while also converting up to 30% of refund requests to exchanges
   

Delivery management is crucial to customer satisfaction but can be difficult to execute at scale.  Every mistake represents a cost – and, potentially, a lost customer.  We’re seeing more and more brands opting to invest in suites which help them run deliveries smarter – while also meeting the high expectations of customer today.

Please let us know if we can help.