In today’s online shopping climate, it’s essential to remember that customers want to know the status of their orders and when they can expect to receive them.
If you’re thinking about leveraging supply chain data and logistics data to create a better customer experience, here are a few actionable tips to consider as you gather and analyze your data to improve your supply chain and logistics operations, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately grow your business:
Accurate fulfillment is essential to keeping customers happy.
Start by tracking your inventory levels to ensure you have enough stock to fulfill customer orders, optimize your supply chain, and prevent stockouts. If you have a brick-and-mortar presence, you can offer blended fulfillment options and bring inventory closer to customers by setting up a blended local checkout option like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) or transform physical locations into shipping hubs by setting up simple local delivery programs.
You’ll also want to run your customer data through analytics to figure out where they are placing their orders from and place inventory near essential cities to avoid fulfilling from one facility. By doing this, you’ll generate fewer carbon emissions and reduce costs for your business and customers.
You can also consider outsourcing inventory management and fulfillment or automating order-related processes to minimize purchase fraud and returns while accelerating fulfillment.
Keep Track of Supplier’s Performance, Too
Remember, too, that it’s essential to keep track of your suppliers’ performance, including delivery times, product quality, and pricing–to identify any issues early on and make necessary adjustments to ensure a smooth supply chain. Likewise, keep track of any transportation costs, including shipping, fuel, and customs fees, to identify opportunities to reduce costs and improve your supply chain efficiency.
Next, think about how you can develop nuanced, strategic customer communications to keep customers engaged.
You can start by providing customers with detailed product information–product descriptions, specifications, images, and the like–so they can make informed purchasing decisions, and you can reduce the likelihood of returns.
You’ll also want to be sure to provide customers with order tracking information and regular order delivery updates. And consider leveraging pre-order and “notify when available” functionality. By transforming out-of-stock messaging into a pre-order opportunity, you can continue to generate monthly recurring revenue around core products that often go out of stock. You can also accurately gauge demand for significantly delayed goods or build customer anticipation around a new release. Look at restock notification apps that collect customer emails and phone numbers and can help make contact lists of qualified prospects.
Customer expectations have risen significantly over the past few years, so managing them both by being more transparent and offering more fulfillment options as a competitive differentiator is essential. Remember to collect customer feedback to gain insight into their needs and preferences. You can use this information to improve your supply chain and logistics processes and better meet your customers’ expectations.
BrillDog Supply Chain Management System will collect data across the supply chain that you can use to keep your customers happier and well-informed. By gathering and analyzing this data, you can improve your supply chain and logistics operations, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately grow your business. Contact BrillDog at [email protected] to get started today.
