For many retailers, the move from physical to online sales has been swift and dramatic in recent months. According to the ONS, department stores’ online sales more than doubled in June this year (though overall sales fell more than 5% compared with February). This doesn’t mean that sales are back to normal – far from it. In fact, the UK’s total non-food sales are down 15% compared with pre-lockdown levels, yet there are positive signs that the high street is bouncing back.
This in mind, while the threat of a resurgence in the virus and localised lockdowns remain, the norm will very much be online retail for many shoppers. This means that retailers will be quickly reviewing many elements of their online customer experience, from checkout to delivery. The last of these is where the most dramatic changes will be seen. When customers aren’t picking up goods themselves, how those goods are delivered becomes a differentiator for your brand. This means that when home delivery is dominant, how you manage it needs close and careful attention.
The power of choice
As a brand, how, for example, do you normally send packages from your warehouse to your customers? Do you use the same parcel carrier every time? A lot of retailers do, and a lot of retailers are beginning to regret it. Routing all parcels through the same carrier, without question or query, isn’t a sustainable model, both in the wake of COVID-19, Brexit threats and also if you have a desire to capitalise on carrier market growth.
If you have all your eggs in one carrier’s basket, and that carrier faces any disruption (due to tech failure or extreme weather, for example), you’re scrambled. COVID-19 is showing how disruptive events can occur far more unexpectedly than many had planned for. Furthermore, having more than one option can also help you in pricing negotiations. If you’re negotiating rates with one carrier, ultimately, they know you need them more than they need you. Going for a multi-carrier strategy will give you a strong position in commercial conversations.
Customers will always be key
Your customers need choice as well. It’s a major risk if your delivery offering doesn’t support carrier flexibility at the checkout. And, to help your marketing team keep their promises, delivery offering has to be well-aligned to warehouse capability. Internal issues with picking and packing can cause retailers to miss carrier departure times. This can lead to stock build up, disruption of process and reduction of warehouse floor capacity – not to mention unhappy customers (and unhappy customer service teams).
All this being said, it’s not always easy to see how managing multiple carriers can work. Teams can often think to themselves ‘managing the relationship with one carrier is hard enough, how can we manage multiple?’ Carrier integration maintenance can seem endless – with frequent changes in rates, operational cut offs and collection. Similarly, managing manifesting errors and delivery exceptions are already big tasks, so what would it be like with more carrier complexity added?
SaaS – who dares, wins
The answer for retailers lies in technology. They need the flexibility offered by using multiple carriers to deliver their parcels, but they can’t possibly manually oversee a delivery offering which might have three, four or more carriers operating at any one time. A short-term spend on software which can do this management for them is going to be key. It may seem like a bit of a leap of faith, especially when some retailers may have been used to being extremely hands on with just one carrier, but the benefits are significant.
‘Multi-carrier management solutions’ can do a bit of shopping around on your behalf. To ensure cost efficiency, the system can match the parcel weight, dimension, and destination with the best carrier available. You’re not only getting the best price, but you’re also lessening the risks associated with growth as a brand. One carrier can’t deliver to the world. If a retailer has sights set on nationwide or international expansion, more carriers will enable growth in different territories.
All in all, multi-carrier management software will allow brands to better meet their delivery promise to customers. Having new and diverse options in their warehouses means that retailers can provide a fantastic customer experience, safe in the knowledge that they are no longer dependent on the fate of one particular carrier. Even in these changeable times (perhaps because of them), delivery experience increasingly equals a brand experience.
So, having multiple delivery options at your fingertips as a retailer isn’t a nice to have – it’s a prerequisite to keeping staff, customers, and your shareholders happy.
Sorted
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