5 Intelligent Last Mile Capabilities to Enhance Digital Customer Experience

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5 Intelligent Last Mile Capabilities to Enhance Digital Customer Experience

The global online retail figures are climbing high at a record pace. Statista projects global online retail sales to surpass USD 7 TN by 2025, nearly 1/4th of total global retail sales.

While the number of online shoppers is increasing, so are their nuances and expectations regarding delivery and the entire experience. Just a few years back, delivering delightful customer experiences was a disjoint activity as far as the logistics were concerned.

But, the emergence of integrated logistics management platforms overcame the operational silos and empowered businesses to ensure impactful, transparent, and delightful customer experiences.

What are the key capabilities to focus upon, and how do they help businesses deliver powerful customer experiences? Read on to find out. 

Dynamic ETAs and Trigger Alerts for Improved Transparency

Stats reveal that businesses can unlock up to a 40% reduction in “where is my order” calls via automated alerts and live status updates.

Trigger alerts for key milestone events, such as pickups, hub movements, and dynamic sharing of expected order arrival times, overcome the need for constant queries by customers regarding order movements.

Intelligent last mile solutions enable businesses to send automated status alerts via multiple channels, such as WhatsApp, SMS, and emails.

These alerts can be customized based on a brand’s unique delivery strategies as well for superior customer support and better alignment with business-unique goals. 

Intelligent Customer Communication at Multiple Stages

Proactive communication is crucial for a delightful customer experience (CX) as it drives customer engagement and information and instills trust and transparency.

Driving customer communication interventions in the early stages of logistics movements, like requesting them to share their exact location on a map or offerings prompts for bot-based interactions regarding order delivery, etc., can work wonders.

Offering smart capabilities for special instructions, such as “leave at the door”, “do not ring the bell,” etc., improves the level of customer service.

Further, businesses can share live tracking links while the rider is out for delivery or before a couple of hours, using which the customer can check the live rider movements and get real-time ETA information.

Rider and Customer Communication for Effortless Deliveries 

It is highly probable for the customer to submit wrong or incomplete address information or for the rider to arrive at the location and be unable to complete the delivery for the customer is absent.

Such gaps or edge cases not only disrupt the operational efficiency of the business but also harm the customer experience (CX). Businesses can overcome this challenge by offering secure communication mediums between the rider and the customer.

Calls via masked numbers, chats via the rider app, and chatbot alerts for customer intimation enable the riders to directly contact the customers and take the best course of action, such as leaving the order with the neighbor or getting the exact address information over the phone call. 

Flexible Delivery Options for Improved Customer Satisfaction

Intelligent last mile solutions come with advanced capabilities, such as delivery scheduling and re-scheduling, that empowers businesses to offer highly flexible deliveries.

The customers can choose a preferred delivery slot and re-schedule it in case of some emergency situation.

This comes especially handy in planned deliveries or document deliveries where the availability of the right person is crucial.

Finally, offering the customer the ability to schedule the delivery as per their convenience and availability improves the level of customer satisfaction.

Ensure Authenticity and Genuineness via Smart Proof of Delivery (PoD)

Direct customer feedback via chats or proof of delivery/non-delivery via photos, videos, etc., allows businesses to deliver highly authentic and genuine customer experiences.

They can collect real-time evidence for cases such as parcel damage, wrong parcel, etc., and trap fake deliveries as well. Another intelligent method to trap delivery discrepancies is geofencing the rider’s location with the customer’s location.

his way, the rider is able to mark “arrived at location” only if they are within a certain radius of the customer’s location. If a rider marks a delivery as “completed” without being inside the location pin’s radius, delivery managers can immediately request the customer to verify the attempt.

Offering such advanced capabilities requires operational management via intelligent last mile solutions, which come with relevant in-built automation workflows.

Such solutions help businesses to overcome data and operational silos, automate shipment status reporting to multiple parties, offer intelligent modules for customer communication, real-time tracking, and more.

Leveraging these smart capabilities, businesses can unlock a 14% decrease in last mile delivery costs, a 28% reduction in customer complaints, and a 26% increase in delivery NPS, which pave the way for a delightful customer experience (CX). 

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