Thriving in the eCommerce world is no easy feat! With customers demanding rapid results and eCommerce companies constantly innovating to meet these expectations, your eCommerce business must be razor-sharp in refining and growing its service offerings. So to keep your customers coming back for more, there are essential traits your eCommerce operations should strive to embody.
In this article, I’ll highlight for you 5 crucial eCommerce operational traits. Specifically, these 5 traits include having lightning-fast fulfillment processes, a proactive customer service approach, reliable delivery services, tailored customer delivery options, and data-driven operational processes. Indeed, harnessing these vital characteristics is the key to unlocking success for your eCommerce operations.
1. Fast Fulfillment eCommerce Operations.
From a customer’s perspective, the delivery speed clock starts ticking when they click the purchase button. So to keep transportation costs low, do everything possible to shorten your order pick cycle. Further, by having an efficient and speedy system in place, businesses can reduce the time between order placement and shipment. As a result, this leads to higher customer satisfaction rates and a more reliable reputation in the market. Also, a fast fulfillment system will also help in managing inventory efficiently and reducing overall costs. Finally, I recommend you upgrade your systems to get the order information right every time, consider warehouse robotics and look at the feasibility of outsourcing your order fulfillment operations.
2. Proactive And Effective Customer Omnichannel Call Center.
A proactive and effective customer omnichannel call center is essential for providing top-notch customer support. So this means that customers should have multiple channels to reach out for help, such as email, phone, live chat, or social media. Further, by proactively addressing customer issues through these channels, businesses can identify and resolve problems before they escalate into significant concerns.
Additionally, an omnichannel contact center ensures that customer interactions are consistent across all touch points. This is the way to improve overall customer satisfaction. See my article, Reasons Call Centers Need To Be Omnichannel for more information, for more information.
3. Reliable, On-Time Delivery.
Ensuring reliable on-time delivery is crucial for eCommerce operations. This is because customers value fast shipping when purchasing online. As a result, businesses can retain customers by consistently meeting or exceeding delivery expectations. Hence, to achieve this level of reliability, eCommerce operations should invest in robust logistics systems and develop relationships with trustworthy shipping partners. In addition, accurate tracking information should be provided to customers so they can monitor their orders from the warehouse to their doorstep. As a result, this further aids in building trust with the customers.
It is critical that you do not offer a delivery service option if you cannot deliver on-time. For example, if you offer a free 2-day service and do not deliver 90%+ on-time, you will not retain customers. See my article, eCommerce Supply Chain Advice For Reduced Click-To-Delivery Time And Costs for tips on achieving high on-time delivery.
4. Tailored Customer Delivery Options.
Offering tailored customer delivery options can set your eCommerce business apart from the competition. Also, customization provides customers with a more personalized experience. For example, this may include same-day delivery for urgent orders or flexibility in delivery times to accommodate busy schedules. Indeed, by adapting to individual customer preferences, companies can enhance overall satisfaction levels while increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases.
Don’t make this mistake – many companies think that they can get away with just offering one or two delivery options. This is because they think that it is too hard to offer a full range of delivery options and make a profit. So these are challenges, but the fewer delivery options you offer increasingly will limit the size of your customer base. Now-a-days, customers expect a full range of delivery options, and your competitors are delivering.
A perfect analogy to offering multiple delivery options is a retailer who sells men’s shirts. The retailer is not just going to sell one color of shirt that is one size-fits-all. If they did, they would severely limit their customer base and would go out of business fairly quickly. Indeed, this is no different with eCommerce delivery today. Undeniably, your customers want delivery options. For more tips on tailoring your eCommerce delivery options, see my article, Advice On The Right eCommerce Delivery Speed Options That Will Make Your Customers Rave.
5. Data-Driven Planning And Real-Time Analytics For eCommerce Operations.
Embracing a data-driven approach is essential to optimizing eCommerce operations. Absolutely, you need to leverage your data both for planning and real-time. This is because you need data, information, to avoid stockouts and delivery delays. What you do not need are shipping exceptions caused because your products are on back order, or worse, you cannot even locate your product in your distribution center.
By utilizing real-time analytics, managers can proactively address processing exceptions, thus minimize any adverse effect on their customers. Additionally for planning purposes, businesses can leverage insights from collected data to identify trends, measure performance, and make informed strategic decisions. Further, data-driven planning helps identify areas of improvement. For example, this can include such things as website optimization, inventory management, customer acquisition strategies, and much more. See my articles, A Data Analytics Perspective To Better Empower Supply Chain Managers and Unlock Your Outbound Logistics.
For more tips and references on eCommerce operations, see ESwap’s eCommerce Management Explained, Extensiv’s Ecommerce Management Guide, and Upscribe’s eCommerce Management Best Practices.
For more articles from Supply Chain Tech Insights, see our supply chains topics section.
Greetings! As an independent supply chain tech expert with 30+ years of hands-on experience, I take great pleasure in providing actionable insights to logistics leaders. My background includes implementing 100s of innovative solutions using emerging technologies and a data-centric development approach. I have also provided business intelligence (BI) solutions for 1,000s of shippers. For more about me, click here.