We have discussed earlier that e commerce logistics is the biggest pain point for majority of business owners. As any store scales up and starts getting more customers from various regions, the process of order fulfillment also starts getting complex.
If you are already facing issues like delayed deliveries, lost or untraceable orders, annoyed customers it’s time to look back and have a thorough review of your order fulfillment process.
Some tweaks and changes in the process can give you amazing results in the long run and as an added bonus you can win back the trust of your customers.
We bring for you top 5 tips to streamline your fulfillment process and get the best out of logistic solution for ecommerce:
Go for Third Party Services
Budget is the biggest constraint for smaller businesses and the upfront cost of tie-up with a reputed third party shipper may seem far-fetched initially. However, when you factor in the hassles of managing a local shipper or having in-house shipping, hiring staff, coordinating deliveries at various transit points you will realize that the third party services are much cheaper and more reliable.
The process becomes much more simplified if your store is built on a leading e-commerce platform. For example, StoreHippo platform offers pre-integrated logistics solutions to its clients. We have tie up with top ecommerce shipping and fulfillment companies which ensures hassle free delivery of 2-3 lakhs orders from our platform.
Offer multiple shipping options
Recent trends of Indian e-commerce clearly indicate that customers are ready to pay for premium value added services. To keep your customers happy and to ensure that your order deliveries are timely, you should offer multiple shipping options like express courier, free delivery etc. to your customers. Usually, customers prefer free shipments. But, even if 1 customer out of 10, lands on your competitor’s site because you are unable to offer faster e commerce logistics , you might be losing a considerable number of customers in the long run.
You need to spoil your customers for choices to retain them and offering various shipping options can do this for you.
Optimize your packet size
To economize your shipping charges, you should optimize your packet size. Usually shipping partners charge based on the weight of the packet. Divide orders into smaller packets or offer free delivery by clubbing 2-3 smaller orders. This could be an efficient way to upsell and cross sell. For e.g. you can add shipping cost if customer order 1 book but can offer free shipping if he orders another. You can club and ship both books together.
You can also get software for deciding the best packet size for your e commerce delivery service. This will help you optimize your packet sizes without manual calculations and can also warn you to avoid clubbing products which might damage each other. Such an automation boosts the delivery efficiency and also improves customer experience.
Ensure Streamlined Fulfillment
Brick and mortar shopping has an advantage over online shopping and that is the instant gratification of having the ordered product in your hands. To replicate this experience for your customers you should strive to bring them as close to a real shopping experience as you can.
Customers want a flawless and informed delivery after they have paid for their order. This part becomes a bit tricky as once the order leaves your warehouse things are actually not very much in your control. However, by offering detailed tracking and support services for customer order enquiries you can keep your customers informed and thus engaged. You can use email or SMS notification to update your customer as the order crosses important transit points through courier service for ecommerce.
Offer Easy Returns
Well, let’s accept the hard fact, even with the best product, pricing and delivery service you cannot please every customer. Every business owner would hate to see his product being returned, but offering free return goes a long way in infusing customer confidence and boosting your chances of re-order.
Always offer an easy to understand return, refund and reshipment policy to your customers and work out the detailed process of easy pickup and return with your e commerce delivery service provider. The faster you replace a defective product the higher are your chances of retaining the customer.
Use these tips to improve the performance and ROI of your logistic solution for ecommerce. If you have any more ideas or suggestions to improve the performance of shipping and delivery services, feel free to share them in comments below.
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