Your customer is waiting in anticipation as the delivery team arrives at their home. They start unloading the heavy pieces from the truck and start carrying it up into the house… only to realize that the 30 inch sofa doesn’t fit through the 30 inch door to finish the delivery. What a headache…now what?
As a heavy goods seller, it’s important to inform your customers of your company’s terms regarding the customer’s responsibility to ensure accurate measurements of their home before scheduling a delivery. But even then, mistakes can happen! And boom, you’re left with a worried customer and your product standing outside their home. To prepare for such cases, in this blog we will walk through: 1) How you can avoid a no-fit delivery and 2) Post-delivery process of a no-fit.
How to Avoid a No-Fit
Before proceeding with the actual delivery, there are simple things your customers can do to avoid this painstaking process. Here are a few steps you can communicate to your customers to ensure a smooth delivery.
- Measure the doors in your home to ensure that the furniture will fit. Not just the entrance door to your home, but any door that the furniture will pass through. You do not want to have to remove the legs of your brand new couch just to fit it into your living room!
- Similarly, always measure the dimensions of your room, and area, of choice to confirm that the furniture will fit in your desired location.
- If the delivery is to be carried upstairs, tell the delivery team how many flights so they can be prepared. Even if you have an elevator, you should let the team know many flights up the room of choice in case the items do not fit in the elevator, or the elevator is not working.
For more information on how to have a great delivery experience, check out this blog for simple tips and tricks to prepare a seamless receiving process.
Post-Delivery of No-Fit
But in the case that a no-fit still occurs due to some mishaps, here are some options you can still offer to your customers to finish the delivery process:
Option #1: Dr. Sofa
Dr. Sofa is a professional disassembly company that offers furniture solutions for no-fit occasions. In the case that the consumer would like to pay additional costs for this service, a team of certified technicians will dispatch to the customer’s location, disassemble the product, move the frame parts to the desired location, and assemble it back together.
Option #2: Order Reassignment
If the above option doesn’t seem favorable, the customer can reorder a different sized product, cancel the order, and have the delivery team bring back the shipment and assign it to a different customer. If you’re shipping through a carrier like Deliveright, our drivers will report proofs uploaded on Grasshopper with photo documentations and measurements that justify a no-fit occasion. Shippers will be informed of every process to confirm why the delivery wasn’t successful with real-time updates. Based on your company’s terms regarding the customer’s responsibility to measure beforehand, the redelivery costs would apply on the consumer’s end for canceling the order.
Option #3: Customer Keep the Item
If the customer would prefer not to pay any additional costs or services, they can choose to keep the furniture in a different area of the house. For instance, if a love seat won’t fit into a bedroom but has passed through the living room, they can choose to keep the product in the living room rather than paying extra fees to re-order or disassemble it. In general, this is a common option that most customers choose over other alternatives.
And that’s it! In a perfect delivery world, following the first step would eliminate any chances of a failed delivery. But it’s still great to have a solid post-delivery plan to ensure your customers can enjoy their purchases with your company, and build great relationships. Grow your business with a reliable delivery partner that can manage your heavy work, so you can sit back and focus on your sales.
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.
