9 Different Ways to Create the Perfect Customer Delivery Experience
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If your company delivers goods to customers, you need to pay as much attention to the delivery process as you do to the other areas of your business. By doing so, you can ensure items are delivered in an efficient and effective manner, enhance workflows, and provide a high level of customer satisfaction.
To create the perfect customer delivery experience, make sure you take note of the following nine different methods.
1. Provide Different Delivery Options
In this day and age, customers expect to be able to choose from a variety of delivery options. So, to create the perfect customer delivery experience, offer as many options as possible, such as same-day delivery, next-day delivery, and economy delivery options. To ensure that your customers have access to all of the delivery options available, you may want to consider visiting findpostoffice.org, which can help you locate the nearest post offices and explore the delivery services they offer.
If you have the right infrastructure in place, you can also allow customers to choose time windows for a more precise delivery time, such as between seven a.m. and noon or between noon and six p.m.
By enabling customers to choose more precise delivery times, you can ensure they remain satisfied with your service. There’s nothing more time-wasting than waiting for a package to arrive, so put yourself in your customers’ shoes and provide them with the most helpful options.
Your company will then gain greater customer satisfaction and retention.
2. Offer Contactless Delivery, e.g. for Customers Vulnerable to Covid
Contactless delivery refers to delivering goods from a distribution location to customers without any physical contact between the people along the order fulfillment chain.
While contactless deliveries have been around for a while, contactless delivery became even more important during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and more and more customers now expect to be able to choose a contactless delivery option.
Customers who are vulnerable to Covid will certainly want to make use of deliveries that involve no human contact, but other vulnerable groups of people as well as people who are simply still acting precautionary towards Covid will also desire no-contact delivery.
To be clear, contactless delivery should mean warehouse employees, drivers, and end customers have no physical contact during handoffs.
Furthermore, by introducing contactless delivery, you can ensure your employees stay safe as much as you can make certain your customers remain safe.
3. Train Your Delivery Drivers Well
Your delivery drivers are crucial to the success of providing a perfect delivery experience to customers. After all, they are the people who represent your company and they are the only people your customers will come into contact with face-to-face.
Therefore, it’s vital that your delivery drivers are trained well in providing quality customer service. That means ensuring that they always do little things like smile and act in a friendly but professional manner.
You also need to ensure you train your drivers in how to use route optimization software effectively, how to check their vehicles before beginning delivery routes to ensure there are no problems, and how to maintain health and safety practices.
If you use drivers who are not courteous or who have little concern for the packages they’re handling, which could result in damaged items, your customer satisfaction and retention rates are sure to drop.
So, make sure you hire the right drivers and train them well.
4. Use Route Optimization Software
A successful delivery business needs to ensure that routes and schedules are planned well. Drivers also need to be able to be change routes at the last minute so that they can avoid problems like heavy traffic and road accidents and ensure they deliver items on time.
Therefore, any delivery company worth its salt uses route optimization software. With it, you can optimize routes to ensure goods are delivered in a timely manner.
And the best route optimization software uses real-time data concerning things like heavy traffic, road accidents, and bad weather to automatically adapt the routes that drivers take. If you’re interested in implementing such a solution, you might want to check this best free route planner.
5. Utilize Proof of Delivery
To ensure customers are happy, keep an eye on how well your drivers deliver goods, and have a system in place to quickly identify any delivery problems, it’s vital that your company utilizes proof of delivery. By confirming that your customers’ items were delivered on time and at the right location, customers, drivers, and managers will have peace of mind.
There are two main options available for providing proof of delivery. Firstly, you can use photographic capture, which means your drivers take photos of where they left packages using their smartphones and upload the photos to a specific mobile app.
You will have the photo and details of the delivery in your account for easy access and your customers will receive emails containing a copy of the proof of delivery photo and accompanying details. The other way you can gain proof of delivery is the old-fashioned method of getting customers’ signatures upon delivery of goods.
Though, you don’t need to use old-fashioned pen and paper. Instead, drivers will ask customers to provide signatures on digital devices that store the signatures and can send copies to the customers’ email addresses.
6. Process Orders at a Line-item Level
It’s important that all orders are processed at a line-item level so that each item that is ordered is clearly identifiable. This is especially crucial when processing multiple goods that make up one customer order when some items are out of stock.
You can then ensure some parts of the order reach the customer on time, send an email update to explain to the customer that some items in the order are not currently available, and take steps to deliver the missing items when they are back in stock.
As long as you remember to keep the customer in the loop, you can avoid customer dissatisfaction.
7. Keep Your Customers Informed About the Statuses of Their Orders
Following on from the last suggestion, it’s important that you keep your customers fully informed of the status of their orders throughout the order fulfillment process. That way, you can ensure that your customers are satisfied and they know exactly what is happening at each stage.
So, send out confirmation emails for placed orders as well as confirmations that let your customers know when their orders are being processed, when they are being dispatched, and when the items are due to arrive.
You should also provide customers with tracking tools so that they keep an eye on the status of their orders at any time during the whole order fulfillment process.
8. Consider Ways of Improving Your Packaging to Ensure It’s Protective and Raises Brand Awareness
One thing you may have not considered is the packaging you use. It’s important that all items are packaged safely to ensure they arrive in perfect condition. But it’s also important to consider how you use your branding on your packaging.
Basically, the packaging is an ideal space to advertise your company, so if you pay attention to the branding you use for the packaging as much as you pay attention to the branding you use on social media platforms, for instance, the more you will be able to catch the eyes of customers, invoke positive feelings, and help them to remember your brand.
Consider going above and beyond simply adding your logo to the packaging of the items you send out. By making your packaging as eye-catching as possible, you’ll create a higher level of customer satisfaction and retention.
Also, to make the delivery process even more rewarding for your customers, consider personalizing the packaging, such as using handwritten address labels.
9. Have a System in Place to Efficiently and Effectively Handle Returns and Deal with Customer Complaints
Even the most professionally-operated companies see items returned from customers. Therefore, you need to ensure you have an efficient and effective system in place for handling returns.
You should be able to receive returned goods easily, send out replacements quickly, and deal with customer complaints quickly in a professional manner.
The more time and effort you put into resolving customer issues and returns, the more you can retain customers and enhance their satisfaction with your company.
Summing Up
Whatever kinds of goods you deliver to customers, it’s crucial that the items arrive on time, drivers are professional and friendly, goods are tracked, and customers are satisfied with your service.
By adopting the above nine different ways, you can create the perfect customer experience. In turn, that will help you to retain existing customers, gain new ones, and grow your company.
So, if you want your delivery experience to be highly successful make sure that you:
- Provide Different Delivery Options.
- Offer Contactless Delivery.
- Train Your Delivery Drivers Well.
- Use Route Optimization Software.
- Utilize Proof of Delivery.
- Process Orders at a Line-item Level.
- Keep Your Customers Informed About the Statuses of Their Orders.
- Consider Ways of Improving Your Packaging to Ensure It’s Protective and Raises Brand Awareness.
- Have a System in Place to Efficiently and Effectively Handle Returns and Deal with Customer Complaints.
Now you know how to create the ideal customer delivery experience, take a look at these ways in which businesses can generally improve the customer experiences that they provide.
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