The majority of businesses, whether operating on a large, global basis or small, local scale, need some form of delivery service when they’re delivering physical goods. Whilst it’s easy to hold your hands up and say that the shipping or postal service is out of your business’ hands once goods have left the warehouse, that excuse just won’t fly with your customers. People expect accountability, and they expect your business to deliver on its promises when it says the correct item or items will arrive in a certain condition within a certain timeframe.
If you’re thinking back to times when you’ve let customers down not for the standard of your product or even the hard work you and your employees put into your business, but simply for a failure to deliver goods as expected, then it’s time you started to prioritise the shipping or postal process involved with your organisation’s delivery service. Here are some pieces of advice which might help your business improve the standard of its product delivery.
Accuracy.
You wouldn’t tell your customer that their brand new laptop ‘probably’ has a processing speed somewhere between 1.8 and 3 GHZ. People want accuracy, and they want to know exactly what they’re buying. In the modern world, that means your customers want to know the exact delivery date, rather than simply a guesstimate based on the shipping or postal package they chose. Whilst unexpected circumstances can sometimes arise, for which you should apologise if they do, you need to be providing a solid delivery date based on the premise that everything goes as planned.
Happy drivers.
The person who turns up at your customer’s door with their package is likely going to be the truck driver at the end of the delivery process. Whilst it’s easy to lose track of the different employees who are part of the delivery process, especially if you’re outsourcing some of the work, it’s vital that you ensure these workers are representing your business well. A clean uniform and friendly demeanour is all part of the customer service, and you need to understand that the one employee who comes face to face with your customer does so appropriately.
Information.
People like having information at their fingertips, and if your company doesn’t provide this, then your target market is going to be snatched up by competitors who do provide this information. Your customers want information about every stage of the delivery process in the modern age, so you need to be going above and beyond to provide all manner of tracking information on a relatively continuous basis. You could even look into companies such as Martek Marine to provide electronic chart displays, as the right navigational technology could improve the ability to track ships that your company uses and let customers know how the delivery process is going.
Monitor and improve.
Your business’ delivery process will never be perfect, but it can always be improved. That’s why you should be monitoring at every stage of the journey every time you deliver a good. If you notice that a certain stage is far slower than it should be, then you need to optimise this step of the process. This is about more than avoiding disappointed customers; it’s about improving the delivery service to the extent that you can offer your target market more than they expect from a courier system and impress them with incredibly fast delivery times.
