Imagine thousands of products, each with a unique shipping carrier, cost, and delivery window, being shipped to endless buyers. It’s not an easy task, and the way you manage order fulfillment can make or break your e-commerce business.
To help you out, here are e-commerce fulfillment best practices that will ensure that your customers are happy all the time and you have an easy time:
Work With A Fulfillment Partner When The Business starts Growing
Inventory management gets more challenging as your business expands and handles more shipments. As you know, effective inventory planning and management are essential to operating a profitable firm.
This is why many growing businesses outsource their inventory management to e-commerce fulfillment service providers. For more information on how these providers can enhance your operations, visit amsfulfillment.com.
While companies know they should work with a fulfillment service provider, some move in too early when they don’t have enough orders, which is wrong. An excellent way to go about this is to wait until you have at least ten orders a day and the potential for your business to expand.
When hiring the fulfillment partner, you must ensure that the partner provides you with inventory metrics, such as the items in stock, those ready to ship, and the number of units left for sale. These data points make it easy for you to monitor your inventory.
The company you hire should also have proof of inventory management systems, which include high accuracy, quick dock-to-stock times, and crucial warehouse management techniques such as FIFO, FEFO, and LIFO.
Offer your Customers Delivery Options
You should note that a customer’s purchase decision considers delivery speed. The sooner the customer will receive their products, the more they are likely to order from you.
Before completing the checkout process, you should give your customers a choice of shipping speeds and customization options, which should be transparent and easy to understand.
While most consumers are willing to pay more for the fastest shipping alternatives, most will settle for slower delivery for non-urgent items and support retailers who provide this service rather than those who do not. So, you should be strategic in how you go about it.
You should give your customers a choice of delivery methods, such as eco-delivery, which combines several items into a single delivery. To get the best prices and SLAs in contracts, haggle with carriers.
By using micro-fulfillment facilities or making sure your inventory is placed closer to your consumer base, you can minimize last-mile costs, which will come in handy in saving your customers money.
Work on Scaling your Fulfillment
According to the Statista Digital Market Outlook, internet sales in the United States are expected to reach over 1.1 trillion dollars by 2029. The report shows that E-commerce companies won’t be able to compete if they can’t grow fulfillment.
It says further that retailers will require more warehouses, suppliers, employees, robotics, and automation based on real-time data visibility throughout the whole supply chain ecosystem.
According to the report, it’s vital that you strategically position yourself for success. If you are doing your fulfillment, you should construct new warehouses or turn existing structures—like abandoned malls—into new distribution hubs.
If working with a third party, you must ensure that the third-party partner is also working on growing their resources so that you aren’t left behind.
It’s also wise to move essential systems to the cloud, integrate apps and data, and design automated workflows. If robots make sense for the company and enhance the experience for both your employees and customers, incorporate them into your business.
Maintain the Highest Levels of Communication
Many businesses struggle to communicate with their suppliers as well as their clients. This is wrong, as effective communication guarantees the avoidance of expensive errors.
To be on the safe side, make sure your fulfillment partner is upfront and responsive. Too frequently, firms receive responses from their third-party logistics providers, but the details aren’t clear, which often leads to problems.
Finding a fulfillment partner with committed account managers, transparent order billing, and scalable services is invaluable in the long run. The best way to ensure accuracy is to keep your fulfillment partner and yourself connected through open and transparent communication.
You should also interact with your clients and exceed their expectations. It is your responsibility to serve your clients. Goods must be fulfilled internally or by a third-party logistics provider (3PL), under budget and on schedule.
For a great experience, maintain contact with clients during the entire ordering, packaging, shipping, and delivery process.
This entails providing consumers with frequent updates on their order’s location and estimated delivery time. The updates should include tracking numbers, simple exchanges or returns, and top-notch customer support to enhance customers’ overall experience.
Be Strategic with Omnichannel
Although omnichannel retailing is a strategic move that can be highly beneficial, many merchants do not prioritize their channels strategically. This is wrong.
Websites are becoming less popular as more and more users turn to mobile applications. And for you to be successful, you should have channel inclusiveness and optimization.
Remember that delivering on omnichannel in eCommerce fulfillment is about accuracy, speed, packing, and giving the client the correct information at the right moment.
You should set your main channels in order of importance, optimize them, and run the customer journey through them to ensure no holes or disconnects.
You also should examine fulfillment center operations to ensure that technology, people, and procedures all work together to provide a smooth omnichannel experience.
To guarantee that clients are always informed about the status of their orders and what’s coming up, automate communication flows from the beginning to the end.
Parting Shot
These are some of the best practices that you should implement if you want to be successful in e-commerce fulfillment. Whether fulfilling your goals or using a third party, always set yourself up for success.
This calls for you to maintain the highest levels of communication with your customers and make their journey as smooth as possible.
