Online shopping is the new trend! And it surges to another level, especially during holidays and peak season. During this time, customers expect quick order processing and prompt delivery. This calls for perfect shipping and fulfillment to manage high order sales. This implies that well into the new year, retailers will have to cope with issues like stockouts, returns, and other difficulties brought on by high shipping volumes. So, the question is how do you get beyond the obstacles and offer excellent customer service? The answer lies in this blog. For practical advice on handling large delivery quantities and streamlining your shipping and fulfillment processes, continue reading.
Shipping Difficulties You Need to Overcome
Before diving into the tips and tricks, let us get to know the shipping challenges first in handling large volumes.
Growing Shipping Costs
Peak season calls for increment in everything! Increased shipping expenses are one of them. Your costs could spiral out of hand and either eat into your business profits or be passed on to your customers if you don't investigate alternative shipping solutions. Though you can pass these on to your customers, it becomes more challenging to compare them based on price.
No Stock Left
Customers should be your priority! Another commonly faced challenge in managing high shipping volumes is stockouts. During peak times due to high demand, you may run out of stocks resulting in missed sales, dissatisfied customers, and a mangled reputation. This ineffective stockout management can lead to unreliable demand projections, inadequate inventory management, and supplier problems.
Digital Dispersion
The term "digital sprawl" describes the accumulation of incoherent IT systems, data sources, and software tools. It can lead to including data silos, redundancies, discrepancies, dangers to security, and resources squandered. The visibility and agility of your shipping and fulfillment processes can also be hampered by digital sprawl, especially during the holiday shopping season.
Customer Service Issues
Another challenge encountered is customer service concerns. Poor customer satisfaction might result from ineffective communication about shipping status, delays, or problems, which can discourage customers from making additional purchases from your online store. During peak holiday sales, you may come across such situations that affect customer satisfaction. To overcome such situations, you need to offer the best possible customer service to retain your customers and attract new ones.
Keeping a check on the above-mentioned challenges will make you well-equipped to navigate the hectic waves of peak season. We will examine this more closely next. Let us walk you through 7 shipping tips to ensure successful shipping and fulfillment for online sellers.
Must Know Tips for Managing High Shipping Volumes
Do Not Rely on One Carrier
Using various carriers instead of depending solely on one has ample advantages. Minimizing delays and bottlenecks is one of the biggest advantages. Several carriers can take over when one is overloaded to keep your packages traveling without hiccups. Additionally, you can adjust expenses by choosing the most economical option for your shipment and fulfillment process.
Ensure Precision in Your Demand Estimation
When you predict the future demand of your products then it is known as demand forecasting. This analysis is executed based on past data, industry trends, consumer behavior, and other variables. It can assist you trim down expenses, avoid overstocking or understocking, and optimize inventory levels. Prediction of demand can be made using diverse resources and methods including regression analysis, moving averages, exponential smoothing, and artificial intelligence.
Let Your Customers Choose
Poor delivery and payment alternatives cause customers to abandon their shopping carts. They wish for flexibility and options, especially during the holiday shopping season. As ecommerce sellers, you need to provide an array of shipping and fulfillment alternatives to your customers. This will ease tension and let your customers place orders and make payments according to their schedules.
Automate Wherever Possible
Mobile sales are predicted to reach a record $128.1 billion, up 12.8% year over year and accounting for 53.2% of all online sales. This calls for automation in business processes wherever possible. Processes like billing, order entry, inventory control, and customer support can be time-consuming, and labor-intensive if performed manually. These activities can unnecessarily create bottlenecks during peak sales time and are prone to manual mistakes. Automation can help with it. When you automate business processes, you streamline your procedures and free up employees for work where they are most required, automation can help guarantee that customers receive their goods on time.
Utilize Shipping Protection for Peak Season
Shipping and fulfillment in peak season calls for increased loss, damage, or theft of your parcels. But if you don't have insurance, you will have to bear all such losses. The solution is to ship your items with insurance so you'll be covered for any mishaps. Having insurance on your packages helps to cut down on the time it takes to receive replacements since you are aware that you can afford the additional expenses of replacing lost or damaged things.
Clear Return Policy
Conversion rates can shoot up, trust can be multiplied, and consumer resistance can be minimized with a liberal and open return policy. However, it's imperative to showcase your return policy on all of your marketing materials, including product pages, confirmation emails, checkout pages, and packing slips. Customers may quickly see your return policy by visiting a different landing page dedicated to exchanges and returns. It provides clarity and enhances brand confidence, both of which are advantageous for marketing pricey products.
Prioritize Your Customers
Give your customer support team this tool so that all the discounts & offers can easily reach your prime customers, especially during the high shopping season. Your customer support team should be properly trained, and valued because they often serve as the frontier or initial point of contact for satisfied or dissatisfied customers. A satisfied customer is more likely to use your products or services again and pick you over a market rival. Don't be afraid to urge your customer support representatives to ask pleased clients to provide feedback and evaluations on your web store. In addition to providing you with a feeling of belonging and loyal trust.
Quick Tips to Handle Order Fulfillment Needs
Focus on Inventory Management
Real-time tracking of inventory helps to maintain and provide correct stock level information to customers. Issues in your inventory can harm your business's ability to pick, pack, ship, and fulfill orders in an effective manner. Such discrepancies can be avoided via a robust inventory management system. This will automate your inventory tracking, minimize errors, and ultimately simplify inventory management.
Simplified Order Selection
Are you aware that order picking may account up to 55% of total operating expenses? This implies that you need a streamlined order-picking process that elevates the accuracy and speed at which goods are delivered from the warehouse to your customers.
Connect with Good 3PL Operators
Another tip is to join hands with a third-party logistics (3PL) provider. They will be responsible for handling your supply chain management so you don't have to worry about it. Without these providers, your clients may receive defective goods, erroneous orders, and delayed delivery. This will be detrimental to your business’s bottom line. Hence, the best way is to partner with an experienced 3PL and stimulate your order fulfillment.
Streamline Last-mile Delivery
The end and the most pricey part of the fulfillment chain is last-mile delivery. Last-mile logistics, often viewed as an unavoidable challenge, are now treated as an important instrument to improve consumer experience. Last-mile delivery includes challenges like a lack of personnel, complicated logistics, and increased delivery costs due to quicker dispatches. Ecommerce sellers need to understand how to overcome these obstacles to satisfy customer expectations and achieve successful shipping and fulfillment since more and more customers wish for same-day delivery.
Find Out Inefficient Processes
Another tip to get your optimization efforts going is to identify order fulfillment activities that are duplicated and wasteful. Lost sales, excessive operational costs, and a sharp drop in customer satisfaction can be caused by obsolete technology, sluggish replenishment, imprecise inventory, and the application of incorrect picking techniques. So, you should identify and correct inefficiencies that are posing challenges in your fulfillment process.
Best Platform to Resolve Shipping and Fulfillment Issues
The above-mentioned tips can help you achieve a robust shipping and fulfillment process. However, what if we tell you that all your shipping and fulfillment concerns can be avoided via a simple application? Interesting right? Here we present Amazon MCF by WebBee. An application that sorts your shipping and fulfillment process all in one go! In addition to this, Amazon MCF by WebBee goes beyond basic functionalities to provide features like virtual product bundling, product listing, hold orders, etc. With all these benefits in one place, Amazon MCF by WebBee can become your best option to cater to your shipping and fulfillment needs.
Win Over Your Shipping and Fulfillment!
Handling peak season shipping and fulfillment can go beyond challenging, but can be prize worthy. Making use of the tips highlighted in this blog can help optimize your shipping and fulfillment experience. Apart from that, you should not miss out on automation. Ecommerce automation is a trend that will soon become a necessity, so you need to automate wherever possible. Choose the application that offers seamless support for shipping and fulfillment. Amazon MCF by WebBee can become your one-stop platform to deliver bulk shipping and order fulfillment solutions. With Amazon MCF by WebBee, you can utilize Amazon fulfillment network while ensuring seamless order and inventory synchronization. All of this centralizes your shipping and fulfillment process and encourages reliable and prompt deliveries to your customers. So, stop waiting any longer! Optimize your fulfillment and shipping strategy this holiday shopping season.
