With the holiday season nearly upon us, it is more important than ever to make sure your products reach your customers without delay.
To make your customers happy and deliver on time, check out the following five helpful tips.
Use an In-house Delivery System to Give You Greater Control
You have the option of using a third party to deliver your products or delivering them directly.
The second approach can be helpful for ensuring deliveries are made on time, as you have complete control over the delivery process.
As long as you train warehouse staff, dispatchers, and drivers well, you can run a sharp operation in which everything runs like clockwork.
Furthermore, an in-house delivery system is a great way to make your customers happy. Why? Because you are in charge of training your workers. That means you can train your drivers in how to provide excellent customer service.
Third-party drivers are mostly interested in completing deliveries to the front door as quickly as possible, whereas your own trained staff can remember to always smile and represent your company values.
If you are thinking of going with in-house delivery when delivering goods to customers, check out this helpful post on how to get it right.
Use Route Planning Software to Optimize Routes
GPS technology has enabled drivers to easily find addresses every time. So, GPS should be an integral part of the delivery system your company uses. But you can further ensure your products arrive on time by making route planning software a part of your delivery system.
In addition to being able to help with tracking, monitoring, and logistics, the best thing about route planners is they include route optimization features. That means the best routes for drivers to take are automatically worked out. The routes can also be updated in real-time, so couriers can avoid traffic problems.
Monitor Your Stock Levels
To ensure your products are always delivered on time, you need to look beyond the actual courier part of your system. You need to make sure the products are available to be delivered in the first place.
By using software to ensure your inventory levels are always up-to-date, you should not go wrong.
If a customer places an order but there is a delay of a day or more in delivery, you will have an unhappy customer on your hands. So, ensure your stock is as carefully monitored as your fleet.
Maintain Realistic Production or Purchasing Schedules
Speaking of stock, you need to maintain realistic production schedules.
It is important that you know what your warehouse capacity is and continually keep production running at a manageable level if you want to avoid bottlenecks from happening.
If a bottleneck does occur during the production process or the product buying stage, it will have a knock-on effect and could end up causing delivery delays.
So, whether you purchase products from suppliers or produce your own products, make sure your production schedules are realistic and carefully monitored.
Make Your Customers Happy by Providing Them with Delivery Updates
Customers increasingly want to be kept in the loop about the statuses of their orders, so you should use software that automatically sends out tracking updates.
That enables customers to know when the item has left the warehouse, when it is in transit, and when the estimated time of delivery will be.
Because of things like serious weather conditions and road accidents, deliveries can never arrive on-time 100% of the time. But as long as you are transparent with customers and keep them updated on order statuses, they will be happy and stay loyal.
And as long as you take on board the rest of the advice in this article, you can ensure your deliveries are delivered without delay more than 99% of the time.
