As a retailer, you want your products to be well received by your customers. Especially for heavy goods like furniture, there’s a lot that can go wrong during the delivery process that could jeopardize the overall consumer experience with your brand. Improper handling can lead to damage, loss in profit, delayed shipping time, bad reviews, and the list goes on. To ensure that you can provide the best end-to-end purchasing experience for your shoppers, here are 5 things you can do to provide a safe and clean home delivery.
1. Partner with a reliable, top-rated delivery service.
The first step is to find a good logistics company that can meet your needs consistently. Many companies turn to cheap shipping methods- thinking that this will keep the costs down, but it actually does the opposite. This only brings harm to your business reputation and unhappy customers. By looking up company reviews online, and speaking with their representatives to see how they can meet your needs, you’ll be getting the value that you pay for by partnering with the right provider. From the long term standpoint, having a reliable delivery partner ensures that your customers are satisfied, improve your brand’s ratings, grow revenue, and actually save costs by reducing accidents like damages and returns down the road.
2. Integrate White Glove service into your delivery offerings.
If your business sells bulky items like sofas and bed frames, the best delivery method for handling these kinds of delicate products is a white glove service. With white glove shipping, you’re investing into improving your customer service. Instead of letting standard carriers like FedEx and UPS handle your products, white glove delivery is performed by professionals who will make sure that no item is left unattended at the customer’s doorstep. From special packaging, repair, fast delivery, and assembling the product at a customer’s home, the white glove experience takes a step further to ensure that your customers are pleased with their purchase.
3. Expansive coverage network + Warehousing
A good delivery is all about quick, precise timing. And the only way to reduce shipping time is to have an expansive coverage network of your distribution centers and warehouses. This may be a limiting factor if you’re a small business and you only have a few local locations. But if you partner with companies like Deliveright, a leading digital delivery network for heavy goods, you can ship to customers fast and easily powered by their nationwide coverage and custom warehousing solutions. If you don’t have enough space for inventory, you can store your products in our warehouse and have them shipped whenever you need, without worrying about the picking and loading process. With various terminals located across the country, this enables shippers to offer rapid deployment and delivery for their customers, wherever they are located. A peace of mind for you, and a pleasant shopping experience for your customers.
4. Collect your customers’ home entry information
A no-fit situation is exactly what you want to avoid by the time the delivery team arrives at the customer’s location. Now you have to figure out the reverse logistics, costs, rescheduling, and quite possibly refund the customer. The good news is that this accident can be avoided with a few simple steps. Before proceeding with the actual delivery, inform the customer of your company’s terms regarding their responsibility to ensure accurate measurements of their home. Make sure that the measurements of the item will fit through their entry, room of choice, and also if there’s any stairs that the delivery team has to climb up. By confirming this information between the customer and the delivery team, we can avoid accidental surprises and enjoy a smooth delivery,
5. Build a secure communication network
Heavy shipping is not so easy as dropping off your amazon package at the door. The customer must be home by the estimated delivery time, and confirm proof of delivery upon arrival. That’s why it’s so important to have a solid communication network for your logistics. Rather than emailing back and forth between the customer and delivery team, it’s much easier for all parties to receive instant notifications through a single platform. Deliveright for example, runs their entire delivery operation on Grasshopper– its proprietary software for logistics management. Whenever an order is shipped, in transit, delivered, and signed by the customer, the shipper has complete access to the tracking history per order- including photo documentations, ePOD (electronic proof of delivery), delivery tracking, and etc. Gone are the days of manually flipping through paper documents to check through every delivery information. Go paperless, optimize your supply chain, reduce lead time, and make your customers happy.
About Deliveright
Deliveright is the leading Digital Delivery Network for Heavy Goods. Powered by its patented Grasshopper platform, Deliveright provides a complete technology and logistics solution for delivery companies and online retailers. Deliveright’s mission is to help customers grow their businesses by applying its machine learning technology to supply chain, logistics and transportation challenges.
If you don’t yet have an account to ship with Deliveright, you can sign up through our platform to book your orders directly. To learn more about our services, please contact us here.
