3 Tips to Up Your Delivery Game
February 21, 2025
In an age where two-thirds of global shoppers expect online deliveries within 24 hours, it’s certainly not the right tactic for winning the delivery race. Let’s face it, services like Amazon’s same-day delivery processes have altogether changed the way online orders work. Nowadays, online shopping needs to operate almost as immediately as in-person purchases. Or, at least, as close as it can get. If you hang around to send orders that may then take a week or more to arrive, you’ll inevitably receive complaints and a lack of repeat purchases. The question is, how exactly can you achieve fast delivery rates that help your products to stand out at last?
Key Takeaways on Leveling Up Your Delivery Game
- Track key delivery metrics: Monitoring delivery times and daily rates helps identify inefficiencies and areas for improvement. Comparative data analysis can also reveal connections between slow deliveries and customer dissatisfaction.
- Use data to set KPIs: Establish measurable goals, such as improving next-day delivery rates, to ensure continuous enhancement of delivery performance.
- Prioritise next-day deliveries: While same-day delivery is challenging, next-day delivery is now an expectation. Partnering with fulfilment centres can make this goal more feasible.
- Outsource for efficiency: Third-party fulfilment centres can offer cost-effective and streamlined next-day delivery services, especially for businesses operating across multiple locations.
- Improve route planning: If managing deliveries in-house, optimising routes and investing in fleet expansion can significantly enhance delivery speed.
- Enhance customer communication: Real-time shipping updates, estimated delivery times, and text alerts reduce complaints and improve overall customer satisfaction.
- Minimise negative delivery experiences: Even if delivery times aren’t the fastest, transparent communication helps maintain customer trust and satisfaction.
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START NOWTrack Key Delivery Metrics
You can’t measure what you don’t track, so the first step here is to simply start paying attention to key delivery metrics. Interestingly in our data-led age, this is something too many businesses overlook in place of focusing on operational data instead. But, using fleet vehicle telematics will allow you to work out average delivery times and daily delivery rates. This information is key to gaining an accurate picture of how your deliveries are performing right now, and any notable areas for improvement. It’s especially worth using this data comparatively, which will allow you to draw connections between, say, slower deliveries and unhappy reviews, complaints, or lost customers. With these comparative data sets in mind, you can set delivery-based KPIs, such as a dedication towards next-day deliveries which might have been sorely lacking until now.
Prioritise Next Day Deliveries
While most companies can’t keep up with same-day deliveries, next-day deliveries are far from an impossible modern goal. They’re also now expected by over half of consumers, meaning it’s past time you got around to making them a reality. For most small companies, the easiest way to achieve the next-day delivery promise is to simply work with a fulfilment centre that can offer this benefit as standard across even overseas locations. Keeping next-day deliveries in-house is typically more expensive and less effective, but it can also be possible if you’re willing to invest in additional fleet vehicles and focus on more efficient route planning etc.
Consider the Customer End
It’s easy to focus solely on your end of the process when it comes to deliveries that are largely reliant on business operations. But, it’s also important to remember that the majority of delivery-based complaints come about due to a lack of client communication. For instance, if modern customers haven’t received their order in a week or more without any updates, then they’ll inevitably worry their parcel is lost. That’s why it’s also vital to consider customer-facing delivery focuses such as real-time shipping emails, informed delivery estimates, and even up-to-date text alerts regarding parcel progress. Even if you’re a while away from next-day delivery, clients with this level of ongoing communication are far less likely to remember a negative delivery experience after their products have arrived.
Speed up your delivery processes by putting these pointers into action today!
