As businesses increasingly opt to offer their consumers delivery, they’ll need to also focus on delivery efficiency. Due to the massive market domination Amazon enjoys with product delivery, businesses can’t just offer to ship their wares to target customers; they have to offer an efficient and satisfying delivery experience.
Let’s break down how greater delivery efficiency can translate to more business productivity, and even long-term savings, across the board.
AI Route Optimization Minimizes Lost Time
Businesses interested in optimizing their delivery efficiency should look into AI and software technologies. That’s because AI can provide a number of significant advantages to your delivery efforts; the most important of these is route optimization.
The routes that your delivery drivers or personnel take to ship products to customers are critical. Optimized and efficient routes mean that:
- You can fit more deliveries into a single time window
- You can save money on drivers and equipment
- Your customers will be more satisfied with on-time deliveries
Similarly, poorly optimized routes lead to:
- Less satisfied customers
- Slower delivery times overall
- More backtracking and possibly a greater need for more equipment and delivery drivers
Most importantly, AI route optimization can minimize the time lost with certain delivery routes and schedules. This, in turn, boosts your business’s productivity and saves you money overall.
You can read more here about route planning software and how it’s arguably the most important technology for businesses that offer business-to-consumer delivery.
Customer Satisfaction Grows with Faster, More Accurate Deliveries
Your business will be more productive in a social sense by leveraging certain software technologies and smart delivery practices by improving customer satisfaction. The best way to ensure your customers don’t go to Amazon and use your business’s delivery service is to make sure each delivery is accurate and on time.
Customers these days demand accurate and prompt delivery of the products they order. They don’t want the products to be delivered when they aren’t at home, as this leaves the products vulnerable to thievery by neighbors or opportunists driving by.
They also want delivery to be ASAP. Same-day or two-day business delivery is the norm and your company should aim to provide this at a bare minimum.
Fortunately, meeting these goals means your customers will be more likely to order from you again and more likely to leave positive reviews regarding your delivery efforts. Delivery is also a great way to grow any eCommerce store during the pandemic.
Therefore, the time and money you invested into your delivery service in the first place will be well spent rather than wasted.
Businesses Save Money with Efficient Delivery
Consider the delivery process for a moment:
- A customer places an order through your online store
- That order is then processed by your storage facility or warehouse department
- The product they ordered is found in your storage facility and prepared to be shipped
- The product is shipped to your customer
There are four major steps where improved efficiency can save you money. Faster and more accurate customer ordering means you’ll take more orders and more profits in a single time window.
Furthermore, as an order is placed, efficient storage facility systems and practices will ensure that the order isn’t lost or miscommunicated; an error like this has the potential to slow down your entire delivery process.
Once the order is found and prepared for shipment, it can efficiently be transported to a truck or another vehicle to be shipped to your customer’s door.
Each of these efficient processes saves you money by:
- Reducing the time spent on a single product
- Minimizing the likelihood of a delivery driver having to backtrack to reach a customer
- Reducing the time your customer spent waiting for their product
Ultimately, delivery efficiency saves your business money by allowing you to service a greater number of customers more accurately and quickly than otherwise. Focus fully on optimizing your delivery efficiency and your delivery service will see great success.