In the world of ecommerce, a seamless delivery experience is crucial. Unfortunately, even the best businesses can sometimes deliver a poor experience. What’s truly concerning is that after a bad delivery, many customers never return, and they’re likely to leave negative reviews online. Undeniably, a poor customer delivery experience is a tragedy for any business. In this article, I’ll spell out the three terrible costs of a bad delivery experience. Most importantly, I’ll provide you a six-step process to help you improve your customers’ delivery experience. So, let’s get started and ensure your customers are always delighted!

The 3 Major Costs When Your Customer Experiences a Bad Delivery.

A bad delivery experience adversely affects your business in 3 ways:

The Business Costs of a Bad Customer Delivery Experience

1. Poor Customer Retention.
2. Increased Costs, Reduced Operational Efficiency.
3. Negative Reputation, Loss Sales

Indeed, even one bad customer delivery experience can lead to all three of these disastrous results. For more detailed discussion on these business costs that result from a delivery exception, see my article, One Bad Customer Delivery Experience Leads To 3 Disastrous Results: Both Now And In The Future.

“The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them—preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.”

Richard Branson

6 Steps To Improve Your Customers’ Delivery Experience.

Every business aims to please its customers, and this holds true in the realm of ecommerce, particularly regarding customer delivery experiences. Without a doubt, Amazon has and continues to set the standard for exceptional delivery service. However, just following Amazon best practices may not work for your business. Indeed, it is crucial for every shipper to create a unique, tailored customer delivery experience for their business. Additionally, striking a balance between cost management and surpassing customer expectations is essential. Below is a six step approach for any business to follow for maximizing a 100% positive delivery experience for all their customers.

1. Tailor Your Shipping Options To Your Brand.

How to Make Your Shipping Options More Competitive: A 5-Step Market Segment Approach for Businesses

Unquestionably, all businesses provide a unique mix of product and services, and therefore, they should also tailor their shipping options to their brand. So, questions to ask yourself include: are you selling luxury goods or selling heavily discounted items? Other questions include are your products bulky or small items that can fit in a mailbox? Namely there are a wide range of shipping options, but you only need to offer shipping options that match your brand and the product you ship. For example if you are selling furniture, you do not need to offer a next day air service. In another example, if your customers are environmentally conscious, you can offer a carbon neutral shipping option.

Indeed, do remember Amazon sets the standard with “free” 1 or 2-day shipping with Amazon Prime, but tailor your shipping options to your brand and your customers. For more details on how to analyze your delivery market see my article, Offer Shipping Options That Will Make Your Business More Competitive: A 5-Step Market Segment Approach.

2. At Checkout, Provide Simple Shipping Options As A Prelude To A Positive Delivery Experience.

Advice On The Right Ecommerce Delivery Speed Options That Will Make Your Customers Rave

A customer’s delivery experience is tied to their overall shopping experience. So at checkout, do not bewilder your customers with a bunch of confusing delivery options. This will not delight your customer, and may even result in a lost sale. Also, provide an estimated delivery date, a promised date, for each shipping option. Additionally, it is best to have a default shipping option, and then where appropriate, offer other shipping options. Indeed the question to ask yourself – will you lose sales if you do not offer a particular shipping option? Examples of ways to offer more shipping options include: next day delivery at additional cost, slower delivery with free shipping, “white gloves” delivery versus curb delivery, and so on. 

For more information on different types of shipping options that you can offer, see my article, Advice On The Right Ecommerce Delivery Speed Options That Will Make Your Customers Rave.

3. Add A Post-Purchase Delivery Experience Strategy To Your Overall Customer Experience Solution.

If you are shipping packages to customers and do not have a post-purchase experience strategy, you need to get one. Emphatically, you own your customers’ delivery experience as well, not your delivery carrier.

To illustrate, you need to think of the delivery service as your sales clerk. Indeed, if you think about what a sales clerk does in a traditional retail store, there is only one thing that has changed with ecommerce. Namely with an ecommerce purchase, you have elongated the time between purchase and customer’s receipt of their purchase. So you need to come up with a delivery experience strategy. To explain, there are two parts to a post-purchase strategy described below.

“there is only one thing that has changed with ecommerce … you have elongated the time between purchase and customer’s receipt of their purchase. “

a. First, You Need a Customer Communications Strategy That Assures Constant and Transparent Communications.

Indeed, the customer wants to know: has my order been processed? Where is my package? What is the ETA? Moreover, customers do not want to get a text that says “the shipping label was created.” Ideally, your business should provide branded messages about product delivery status. This enhances communications and can even provide opportunities for cross-selling.

A Spectacular Call Center Experience – Technology Applied The Right Way

b. Second, You Need A Plan To Assure That Your Supply Chain Is Competent.

Is your supply chain stuck in the last century where they are on a two to six week shipping schedule? See my article, Unlock Your Outbound Logistics – How To Make Your Customers Rave for four recommended goals to assure your customers have a positive delivery experience. 

4. Integrate Delivery Experience Data Into Your Overall Order Fulfillment Solution.

Even if you have a good customer service organization, they are useless if they do not have up-to-date visibility to your customers’ order status. Obviously, they must have actionable information. Most importantly, they need to use this information proactively to prevent delivery exceptions. Additionally, customers want convenience and results, not excuses or “not my department”.

All ecommerce companies need a data integration plan. Specifically, how do they get shipment status data from the parcel carrier to their customer service agents? Also, how do they get data from their 3rd party order fulfillment system? Lastly, how do they get data from the shipping department? Now beware, there are a lot of different terms for this type of shipment order visibility, like “unified view”, “source of truth”, and “control tower”. Whatever you call it, you need it! For more details on data integration, see Want To Integrate Data For Better Business Visibility? Here’s How To Do It.

“there are a lot of different terms for … shipment order visibility, like “unified view”, “source of truth”, and “control tower”. Whatever you call it, you need it!”

5. Delight Your Customers – Manage Your Customers’ Delivery Experience.

So you have a customer delivery experience plan and have access to the data you need – what’s next? The next step, and the most important step, is you need to manage each and every one of your customers’ deliveries.

First, the key is to keep it simple. Ideally, there should be one person who is empowered and accountable for your customers’ delivery experience. Second, there should be one system or one view of the data that enables you to manage your customers’ delivery experience. Both of these prerequisites may have challenges, but your customers do not want excuses.

The Delighted, Connected Customer: Sure Ways To Make Call Centers Omnichannel And Data Rich

Also, your customers do not want to hear excuses. So, it is not good if your customer service agents blame a bad delivery experience on the parcel carrier, the warehouse, or the shipping department. Indeed, the worst situation is when your customer service rep knows less about the order than the customer.

If you are a large business, you may consider a dedicated Delivery Experience Management (DEM) system.  Specifically, these systems may work for some companies as they are built exclusively for managing customers’ delivery experiences. For a DEM system use case, click here. On the other hand, you may be able to use an existing in-house system for customer service visibility. Examples of such systems that could be used include existing systems for customer service, order fulfillment, shipping, or transportation management. Another option is an in-house solution such as a custom data warehouse with business intelligence reporting.

For more ideas on improving your customers’ experience, see my article, The Delighted, Connected Customer: Sure Ways To Make Call Centers Omnichannel And Data Rich.

6. Personalize The Delivery Experience.

Besides just good communications and supply chain competence, you can further delight your customers by adding personal touches. For small businesses and even large companies, personalized service can distinguish your company from the competition. As an example, this could include such things as flexible delivery options, sustainable packaging,  or handwritten notes.

More References.

For more information and perspectives on improving your customers’ delivery experience, see these references:

• Nate Skiver’s article 10 Tips to Improve the Delivery Experience
• Qualtrics’ Delivery Experience
• Circuit’s What Makes a Great Delivery Experience
• TheFutureofeCommerce’s How to Create the Best Delivery Experience
• Adam Bryant’s article Five things eCommerce Sellers Should Do To Provide a quality delivery experience
• Bringg’s Customer Experience in Delivery and Fulfillment
• My article, The Best On-Time Delivery KPIs To Make Your Customers Delighted

The Best On-Time Delivery KPIs To Make Your Customers Delighted

Need help with an innovative solution to make your supply chain analytics actionable? I’m Randy McClure, and I’ve spent many years solving data analytics and visibility problems. As a supply chain tech advisor, I’ve implemented hundreds of successful projects across all transportation modes, working with the data of thousands of shippers, carriers, and 3rd party logistics (3PL) providers. I specialize in launching new analytics-based strategies, proof-of-concepts and operational pilot projects using emerging technologies and methodologies. If you’re ready to supercharge your analytics or if you are a solution provider, let’s talk. To reach me, click here to access my contact form or you can find me on LinkedIn.

For more from SC Tech Insights, see the latest articles on supply chains and shipping.