Many customers nowadays have grown to rely on efficient shipping, and if you want to keep your customers happy, you need to have a flawless shipping processes. Preparing shipment orders and deliveries takes time, regardless of the products you sell. What makes it even more difficult is meeting customer expectations by sending orders swiftly, properly, and at a reasonable price.
The good news is that there are several methods to improve your shipping process; it all depends on what works best for your company. Your target audience, budget, margins, product(s), courier service, and many other criteria will influence your best eCommerce shipping plan.
With that said, here are tips to improve your shipping processes.
Streamline your processes
Overcomplicating your day-to-day shipping process is a sure way to fail. If you continuously make things difficult for yourself, you will not be able to complete your orders on time or satisfy your client’s expectations. As a result, you must devote some time to streamlining your processes.
The first thing you should do in this situation is select an efficient and effective online load board. This will assist you in locating a quality courier service that fits your particular shipping standards, allowing you to stay on top of your packaging processes regularly.
Find shipping software to help you with the shipping process. This software automates the entire process where it interfaces with individual carriers, allowing you to reduce costs, human error, print labels, and more from a single piece of software. This will save you time, money, and stress in the long run.
On that note, consider outsourcing your product packaging to a custom packaging provider to expand your options, achieve high-quality outcomes, and save money on packing and delivery costs.
Improve communication with your warehouse operations
How you interact with your warehouse employees will either make or ruin your prospects of improving your delivery process. If you want to ship your orders on time, every time, you must maintain a clear, logical, and concise flow of communication with your warehouse staff.
This not only helps manage inventory and alerts you to import more if necessary, but it also guarantees that the surge of orders doesn’t catch you off guard. Moreover, the warehouse can provide additional staff members to be on hand to ensure all your shipments are shipped on time.
Consider custom clearance
If you don’t want your global shipping process slowed down by unanticipated difficulties and conditions, you must always consider customs clearance. This will allow you to avoid possible problems before they cause delays for your couriers, which will benefit your efforts to simplify your operations further.
Different trade lines, of course, are overseen by their respective customs officials. To overcome any difficulties in this scenario, then, you’re going to need to take your particular cross-country requirements into mind.
Choosing a courier service
Working alone is rarely an option when it comes to international shipping. You will need to collaborate with other shipping companies and courier services to ship efficiently. Therefore, our recommendation is to plan ahead of time for international shipments and seek local courier firms to help.
While choosing a shipping company in the United States may be simple, locating one in Europe, Africa, Asia, or other countries can be time-consuming, particularly if you must overcome a language barrier to establish a shipping arrangement. Do yourself a favor and lay the groundwork for several regions before you deliver overseas.
Always keep your customers informed.
Unfortunately, no matter how diligent you are in the packing process and shipping your products, you may fall short of meeting your customers’ expectations on any given day.
If you ever run into any issues in the shipping process, take the time to notify your consumers of any potential delays. Inform them of the estimated delivery date so that they are not disappointed.
Keeping your consumers informed will make it simpler for them to trust you in the future. Ultimately, whether you stick to their consumer demands or not, this will increase the likelihood of them returning to your store in the future.
Offering a dedicated order tracking service is the best way to keep your customers informed. This will enable your clients to actively track the present location of any products they have ordered.
Use protective packaging solutions.
It is essential to ensure you place your products in protective packaging like corner boards, bubble wrap, air pillows, etc. To ensure that during the packaging process, handling and delivery, the customer receives their order intact.
Ensuring your products are packaged in protective packaging also improves the customer experience and will make them want to keep buying from your business all the time,
Create local and international shipping connections
It’s all about who you know rather than what you know. Suppose you want to or already ship to locations other than where your company is headquartered. In that case, whether in the United Kingdom, Europe, or anywhere else on the globe, you should establish contacts in the countries where your products will be delivered.
While it may not appear immediately beneficial, your new connections might advise you which services to utilize and which to avoid at all costs. This way, you can be sure that you are doing everything possible to guarantee that your cargo reaches safe and sound, but most importantly, on time.
As a result, this will increase customer happiness, improve client retention, and improve your overall shipping process.
Implement electronic data interchange
If you continue to rely on paper documents to keep track of your shipping activities, don’t be shocked if you continue to receive shipping complaints. You won’t be able to optimize your packing operation until you adopt e-documentation, which is why you must incorporate EDI (electronic data interchange) into your shipping operations.
This is vital and allows you and your warehouse employees to verify critical distribution information while your products are in transportation. It also helps you keep your clients informed about any possible delays.
