5 Tips to Scale Your Last-mile Delivery Operations

Are you looking for last-mile delivery options you can use to scale your business? Then, this article is for you. Last-mile delivery is a critical process in the supply chain. This is how products reach the customers. Using these ideas will help you achieve several things:

• Increase customer satisfaction.

• Reduce the cost of operations and wastage.

• Generate more revenue.

• Grow your business by scaling the last mile.

If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, this article will give you tips on how to do that. Read along to find out!

Importance of improving last-mile delivery.

Last-mile delivery is the future of B2C as the delivery status during the Covid-19 pandemic has manifested. This has brought about many opportunities. Therefore, the main reason why last-mile delivery is prime in scaling your business is meeting customer expectations.

Changing customers’ product delivery expectations.

Thanks to the availability of smartphones and the internet, most customers shop from home from eCommerce stores. Delivering the product to the doorstep is critical. This is the part where you can stay ahead of your competitors.

Customers want a memorable delivery experience and companies that achieve this build a bigger customer base. Therefore, businesses need to put more effort into last-mile delivery. Changes need to be made in the business as fast as possible or making an impact in the market won't be possible.

What do customers want from last-mile delivery?

Customers want to have a say in how you deliver their items. This includes deciding where you have to drop it, waiting time, and overall delivery cost. This means that customers want a fast delivery, they no longer want to wait for their delivery to arrive. Most customers want same-day delivery. Next-day delivery is the current norm and customers want a faster delivery during checkout.

Customers want more options on the delivery location. During the covid pandemic inventions were created such as in-store delivery, click and collect and curbside delivery. Customers want to know whether you deliver to a locker, on the doorstep, or in the trunk of their car.

However, customers do not see delivery as an integral part of the service, hence the reason why 44% of customers do not mind waiting for their product if you offer free delivery. For this reason, 95% of customers consider the free one-day delivery. As a result, the cost of last-mile and order tracking can seem too much unless you look for methods of making it effective at scale.

5 Tips to scale your last-mile delivery operations:

If you want to keep up with the competition it is important to optimize last-mile delivery. Each tip in this article is geared towards growing your delivery by including them in your overall business strategy.

1. Control your delivery process.

This means the use of software for planning and streamlining the delivery process. The software manages operational capacity at scale. The software automates almost every operation including:

• Route and schedule planning.

• Monitoring team performance.

• Managing orders.

• Tracking inventories and supplies.

• Data storage.

• Optimizing crucial last mile processes.

• Data analytics for boosting performance.

A delivery management software for instance enables you to manage every last-mile delivery aspect from a single platform. This software has route planning or dispatching capabilities and can connect to other apps through APIs.

2. Optimize your delivery routes.

Driving from one location to another during delivery is the most expensive activity and causes a lot of waste. The solution to this is route optimization. This helps in scaling down wastage and scaling up the output of your fleet. Therefore, you have to find the best route from one point to another. This is not necessarily the shortest route but the most effective one. You can waste lots of fuel when the route is not efficient. Route optimization considers several factors like traffic patterns, speed limits, driver rest times and driving time limitations.

For example, Norma is a delivery route planning software that creates a route plan within seconds before delivering the ordered items. This helps you deliver the products effectively rather than creating a route plan manually which needs a lot of time. Norma Go helps e-commerce businesses to create the most effective route using Artificial Intelligence. Using automated route planning helps you save on resources regardless of the shape and size of the fleet. In a nutshell, you do not have to depend on fixed zones but you can modify the routes as required and reducing operating costs as a result. Read also, 6 Ways to Reduce Your Last-Mile Delivery Costs

3. Provide same-day delivery service.

Customers want you to deliver their products almost as soon as they order them. Speedy delivery scales your operations quickly and generates profit. Same-day delivery offers you more customers. However same-day delivery will be difficult to achieve without software. The last-mile operation can be made quicker by using Artificial Intelligence. A delivery management software enables you to deliver faster at a lower cost. It also helps you eliminate unnecessary processes, reduce delivery cycles, and increase delivery speed. Ensure that you invest in delivery operations software before embarking on same-day delivery.

4. Outsource to local carriers.

Many businesses use courier companies like Mylerz, FedEx, Aramex, or UPS to send bought items to their customers. A majority of new businesses choose to outsource their delivery operations to a smaller 3PL.

Local companies opt for local carriers rather than big brands since they have better knowledge of the local area. This means they are quicker and more reliable.

5. Update the consumers with the status of their delivery.

Many consumers do not want to use a delivery service if they are paying for it. The only way you can make them use it is by offering them what they want and making them never regret that decision. So, to win their trust you need to involve them. Update consumers on the status of their delivery and also enable them to track it. You can create tracking links using visibility and delivery management software like

Altair DC to help customers track their orders in real-time. About 75% of customers said that notifications were very important when making online purchases and tracking delivery. Moreover, you can enable consumers to book delivery appointments as per their availability for convenience and the route optimization software like Norma will be responsible for making sure deliveries are made successfully within the time slots.

Conclusion:

Last-mile delivery is a very vital phase in eCommerce. To compete you need to have a last-mile delivery strategy in place. However, it is not crucial to offer free shipping or same-day delivery. At the moment customer expectations on how you deliver their goods are very high. The only method to meet these expectations is adopting the latest delivery strategy to scale your operations.