Handling Growth in a Time of Increased Orders
They say too much growth is a good problem. Still, it can also be stressful in an environment where customer communication and order accuracy fall by the wayside while order fulfillment efforts accelerate. And it’s a primary reason why organizations seek shipping solutions.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, eCommerce sales have skyrocketed, adding nearly $220 billion additional dollars to the sector in 2020 and 2021 and plunging many businesses into a world of frantic order fulfillment. At the same time, global supply chain bottlenecks throttled international shipping while prices soared. High rate hikes reflect supply chain inflation, and currently, companies must bear the brunt of these skyrocketing costs.
Meanwhile, companies also struggle to reflect on different rates, shipping times, and which options represent the best value. What are the best deals with various carriers? What will they be tomorrow and into the future? With items of different weights and dimensions, shipping data can be opaque, leaving many executives questioning how they can gauge how they’re doing and make improvements. Add growing wholesale orders to the mix, and enterprises can find their processes are overwhelming.
With so many options, handling shipping growth is difficult. Businesses often adjust by adapting to more orders with hands-on approaches, processing those orders manually. They may print documents individually after a time-consuming process of jumping between platforms and quotes. They reflexively look to add headcount to solve the increase in volume, but this approach cannot address the current labor crisis or the core shipping fundamentals. However, the process fails to offer clarity on shipping and leads to:
- Low order accuracy
- Stress and warehouse turnover
- Chargebacks
- Missed opportunities
Overall, companies growing their shipping capacity face obstacles in getting ahead with their current systems.
Customer Expectations are Rising
Effective shipping is a core component of future-proofing retail, manufacturing, and eCommerce businesses. It’s a customer service necessity, too, in an environment where customers are increasingly expecting free, lightning-fast delivery.
One Amazon seller platform surveyed American shoppers during the pandemic and found that 70% would be upset if an order did not arrive when promised. The same survey found more than 90% expected those orders within the week, and some even expected same-day delivery. Those changes have added complexity to shipping for eCommerce and retail companies—they think about using stores to increase distribution centers and get closer to customers. That’s not a solution for everyone, and it’s very complex.
Yet companies can’t escape that customer expectations reflect a forever-changed buying climate. Over the past two years, many customers have made shipping a centerpiece of their buying decisions. They look at arrival dates and scrutinize shipping fees before ordering, so it’s an area in which companies can gain a competitive advantage by shipping quick, accurate orders.
What’s the customer experience with shipping by legacy systems or patchwork manual ordering?
Customers know that when their tracking data doesn’t arrive in their email inboxes for hours or days after ordering, their package isn’t yet on its way. Sometimes, they may not get transparent tracking at all, leaving arrival dates a mystery. That makes planning and reordering a concern. International shipments are also slower to arrive, as many businesses may be writing out declarations for every package by hand.
Further slowing an already laborious process, when one legacy system cannot communicate with others, human power takes over. Responses to customers get slowed down when all parts of the system are not connected or talking to one another and workers have to fill the gaps. That limits customer communication even more. Without integrated cloud-based solutions, order processing is in danger of grinding to a halt.
All of these drawbacks hinder growth. To meet customer expectations, a company needs to anticipate future growth and make its shipping system responsive to changes in demand so orders can be processed faster to meet the new shipping norms customers demand.
Grow Smarter with One System to Rule them All
The current shipping environment should mean instant information and valuable insight into how to ship—without spending more time on shipping processes. But too many companies aren’t taking advantage of it. For example, Pacejet searches rates from multiple carriers for every single order, ensuring the best rate and speed every time.
Pacejet helps organizations control their shipping rates and options while meeting heightened customer expectations. It provides a more robust, responsive, and scalable solution that:
- Is cloud-based
- Integrates seamlessly with your ERP, reducing errors and keeping you in sync
- Provides scanners for faster processing with greater accuracy
- Works with parcel, freight, and international shipping
- Handles 3PL services
- Allows you to make data-driven decisions instead of guessing about shipping or wading through your options slowly and manually. That’s not a solution that scales. Instead, your shipping costs and carrier performance should be easy to find and assess.
Pacejet streamlines and connects shipping for every type of package in every location, helping companies make good decisions about how to quickly and reliably get more information to customers for better customer satisfaction and more insight into how to protect their bottom line.
With a cloud-based sipping solution, a single system keeps shipping orders in one place, automatically finding the best prices and shipping times and keeping the customer up-to-date on tracking so that their package arrives at the correct location right on time. Grow better. Download our buyers’ guide for the right questions to ask when you’re ready to streamline your shipping to scale and meet customer expectations better.
