As an entrepreneur successful Christmas season shipping is a high priority. Fulfilling orders on time and managing the peak in demand is one of the biggest challenges during the Christmas season. If orders don’t arrive on time to customers, you are put in a difficult position where you may have to offer refunds or incentives to maintain positive customer relationships, costing you more.
Such failures in fulfillment of orders are caused by the significant increase in demand, coupled with the overwhelmed delivery networks across the world which results in the inability to meet customer expectations. Adding to this there is a lot of uncertainty during the Christmas rush – if something unexpected is going to go wrong, it will more likely occur at the most crucial time of the year, Christmas.
Preparation and planning is paramount in effectively managing your Christmas season shipping and increased order volumes. You need to ensure you can manage the spike in orders and that your shipping provider can handle the volume you give them and deliver on time. It may be wise to have a couple of shipping providers in place over the period to ensure you can deliver your orders on time to your customers.
Be ready for a significant increase in demand for your goods over this period, plan and prepare; making sure you have enough stock to fulfill orders, packaging to pack and ship your orders, labels and tape. You may even need to consider additional help packing orders if your volumes spike suddenly. If required adjust your trading hours over this period to keep up with demand. The key is to plan and prepare!
Double Check every order prior dispatch! If you don’t already do this and I suggest you do this with every order especially over the Christmas season. If a customer receives an incorrect order, there may not be time to rectify the error before Christmas thus leaving you with a frustrated customer.
During the Christmas season customers are demanding faster, more convenient deliveries, as well as a level of certainty for their shipping. See what options your shipping providers have such as postal lockers with flexible pick up times, central delivery locations (convenience stores) where customers can pick up their order at a more convenient time. Also check to see if your shipping provider is offering weekend deliveries over the period.
Ensure you check the last delivery dates or cut offs with your chosen shipping providers, so you can provide your customers with a cut off order date to receive delivery prior to Christmas. In exceptional conditions like the Christmas season, make sure to have all orders processed at the earliest time possible so as to avoid the Christmas rush. Make sure your delivery cut off dates are made as clear as possible to customers to ensure you manage the customer expectation and experience. You may need to provide a Christmas season shipping schedule.
The volume of parcels to be delivered by shipping providers at this time of year is massive and places a huge amount of pressure on their operations, in most cases exceeding their available resources on a daily basis. This may mean your product doesn’t ship on time from their DC locations so keep this in mind over the season. Shipping provider’s customer service will also be under a lot of pressure so be prepared and factor in extra time to rectify any issues that may arise.
A good way to be proactive is to communicate with your customers and keep them up to date with any delays in dispatch or shipping. Some shipping providers will send email alerts to your customers about the delivery status and of course customers can track their own orders. Providing information to customers is critical and will help reduce the anxiety they will feel if the goods don’t arrive within the time frame you have provided.
When the successful peak Christmas trading season comes to an end, product returns season will just be starting. Providing a smooth returns process that impresses customers is vital: even though there is the potential of a loss in revenue in the short term, it can mean that next time customers want to shop online with a store they feel confident and secure shopping with, your store will be at the top of the list and you can end up with a long term, loyal customer.
Preparing for the unexpected with your Christmas season shipping will definitely pay dividends for businesses hoping to meet and or exceed customer expectations at this crazy time of the year.