“Would you buy from the same e-commerce portal if your experience of product delivery wasn’t up to the mark?” The answer is as clear as possible ‘NO!’ Customer service of e-commerce brands has suffered immensely because of unorganized and unprofessional delivery personnel. It is extremely important to understand that an exceptional delivery service experience in a time bound manner is critical in not just winning over clients but retaining them in longevity. Wooing your customers at the contact point is critical in shaping up the image of a brand and the success that comes with it.
With time though, companies in the online retail sector have realized that the person taking the delivery to the doorstep of the customer is the face of the company for general public. Now the e-commerce sector understands the importance of making customer’s delivery experience the best. Giants of the domestic market like Flipkart and Snapdeal have started focusing on the logistics aspect more and more. Their outsourced delivery partners are now being asked to operate under stricter norms with a better and more pleasant approach being demanded out of their deliverymen.
Multiple channels of customer service have enabled companies with numerous ways to enhance communications and relations. Emails, Social media, text messages, phones and many other platforms help a buyer keep in touch with the seller, track the shipment, revert with a query or a feedback and find a solution to a problem. By taking advantage of these different tools you can cover most of the aspects of customer service. However, even with all these additional means, the behavior at the touch point is the most critical element in your being able to ‘wow’ your customers and in turn build a bigger base and generate more business.
The main motive of a customer oriented delivery experience is to make the customer so satisfied by the delivery that he comes back as a repeat buyer or shares his experience with his peers, thus enabling the prospect of more business. Nowadays, online shoppers are fully aware of the power that their voice holds. A single tweet or a comment on Facebook about a disgusting and dissatisfying customer service experience has the ability to go viral. So it is but obvious that delivery experience and logistics is a companies’ critical department which has the ability to make or break the image.
In the current scenario, the successful delivery of goods is hampered by a lot of unforced or innate errors in the system. An outsourced delivery partner can easily slack in terms of work performance if attention isn’t paid by the contracting retail firm. The delivery men, directly employed by an E-commerce company or outsourced, have to be kept under a thorough watch to ensure that they are performing their jobs to the best interest of the company.
It is hard to keep a check on a field workforce for a manager sitting in the office. With the traditional paperwork and documentation techniques it was a big hurdle to reach day to day targets let alone add to them. The on-field employee also has the tendency to stray away from company guidelines and loose the essence of the organization, not being in the office atmosphere. Another big aspect is the mood of the personnel. Delivery men in ill moods or with bad mouths can be disastrous for a company. Not being under the radar, the field force is sometimes slow in completing the given tasks which leaves the sales departments lagging behind in their activities.
Loss of communication is another huge hindrance in a smoothly run logistics solution. A field personnel that isn’t in contact with the office or isn’t traceable might make a company miss out on timely deliveries. Therefore it is essential for an e-commerce organization to keep its workforce under tabs and all the deliveries well tracked.
With growing research and innovation, solutions have come up to ease this problem for e-commerce companies. These Enterprise mobility solutions enables the employee to go to the exact location of the customer without having to repeatedly call him and also capture feedback at point of experience so as to get the most honest thoughts of the customer. The system capture the customer’s address in exact latitude and longitude which helps you to deliver faster and there is no need to contact him for directions ever again. They provide end-to-end management of a company’s field service operations. This includes scheduling, dispatch, invoices, task & asset management, work orders and much more. Field service management softwares, which are cloud-based, made for mobile solutions, ease much of the stress on the whole team. They make the delivery and logistics a paperless and prompt affair. Onscreen tracking for the manager enables lesser calling and direct communication with the field worker, saving time and smoothing down the process. This will lead to more revenue generation, increased productivity of field personnel and accelerated cash flow.
Enterprise mobility solutions enable the product delivery to be fast and hassle-free. Adopting for these kinds of solutions is the need of the hour and has been recognized by the market leaders. In today’s competitive times it is very difficult to meet numbers in time while manually doing all these tasks and an easy - to - use, remotely accessible software works prolifically in streamlining logistic operations.
Thus in today’s extremely competitive e-retail market, where numerous new players are emerging every now and then, it is but essential for businesses to put their best efforts in consistently exceeding customer expectations in a fantastic way so as to separate yourself from the competition, getting repeat customers and thus generating more profits which would result in faster growth for the company.
Authored by Kushal Nahata, Co-Founder and CEO, FarEye
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