Look at a scenario, a customer places an order, relaxes, and sits back to anticipate that the order must be arriving by the given date, but it just passes, and there is no information about it. How will they react? This could be the worst of scenarios in eCommerce, as a promised delivery that meets the customer's expectation is considered a top priority. A poor or lagging customer delivery can affect the brand's future and might cause them to hamper in the future.
Delivery delays can happen due to the company’s inability to provide, customer mistakes, etc. It sometimes becomes difficult for companies to deliver their products to the designated addresses, and eCommerce retailers are often blamed for late deliveries.
Some of the potential causes for delivery delays include -
Logistics issues are serious trouble for small businesses and are considered one of the top reasons for late delivery. It is further fueled by huge demand for products and the inability to handle large numbers of orders. The lack of coordination, staffing, and mismanagement may deepen severe logistics issues for eCommerce entities. Issues like delivery cost hikes by delivery companies forced ecommerce giants like Flipkart to rethink their logistic partners. These reasons cause various shipping/delivery delays.
The most common error is when addresses are misspelled, misfiled, and written inadequately. A customer or the retailer can make this error. The merchant may not document the order properly in cases when they are processing a large number of tasks at the same time. The order may get delayed when inadequate information is provided to the courier company.
The eCommerce business works round-the-clock. Hence, the industry needs to have a reliable hosting company. There is a need to use a strong system with almost no technical issues. A miserable or lagging system will not be able to respond to requests, which results in delayed delivery.
Poor weather conditions may cause late delivery of products to customers as heavy snowfalls, hail storms, and other natural situations may affect the delivery timings.
Delayed delivery is a real threat to the flourishing online business as it can negatively impact the growth of the eCommerce business. Companies may experience a decline in sales. Understandably, human errors can happen sometimes, but such continuous mistakes can lead to losing customers’ into your business.
Hence, it is imperative to address such delays for the company. The accuracy of delivery time is directly related to customer satisfaction and retention. Customers who face delayed delivery are likely to re-order, which takes more time and poses a serious question on the company's delivery.
It is important to set the shortest delivery time to respond to any order to retail the customer's confidence and attention. When customers place an order, they expect their deliveries to reach their addresses at the promised timing. The timing should be encouraging for customers rather than discouraging them. Recently, Snapdeal has reduced its delivery time by 70%, and it was done by increasing warehouse and fulfillment center numbers.
In addition, you should also make sure that you have accurate and up-to-date shipping information on your website. This will help your customers to track their parcels easily and avoid any confusion.
You should also ensure that your shipping rates are reasonable and competitive. This will encourage your customers to buy from you and help you to avoid delivery delays.
Finally, you can also run promotions to boost your sales. This will help you generate more revenue and have enough stock to avoid delivery delays. Recently, Amazon has expanded its delivery network to Leh-Ladakh, Lakshadweep, and North-East India to prevent late deliveries. Ecommerce brands are also investing heavily to expand their delivery network in India.
The best way to avoid delivery delay is by developing a reliable system of fulfillment service for your online business. Choosing a service that helps you streamline your operations and offers an accurate and deliverable logistics service is the surest way to succeed in a cut-throat competitive online WebSphere.
Pavankumar Baboori is an experienced Sr. Content Analyst who improves the workflow by identifying and resolving the content development gap. He works closely with the marketing team to deploy strategies for improving brand awareness, website traffic, search engine ranking, and lead generation activities. He gauges up marketing channels for the real digital transformations.
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