Holiday seasons are coming with a huge amount of goods, customers, and thus massive shipping demand. While the eCommerce stores usually get troubles with the delivery process, the holiday season will put them in challenging situations as a lot of issues are arising in the busiest season of the year.
To help you handle the sky-high shipping demand for the holiday, we are going to tell you some practical approaches to apply to your eCommerce shipping activities.
Ways To Fight Rapid Shipping Demand For The Holiday.
Plan A Transparent Shipping Process
To ensure every shipment can be delivered in a consistent way with high shipping demand, the eCommerce business runners should take time to map out the shipping process. You may need to point out every step in that process, how many steps, what steps are and how long it takes. The popular shipping process would be:
- After order fulfillment, generate order data into Spreadsheets to re-check
- Examine and detect fraudulent orders
- Connect with logistics third-party companies to send shipment information
- Finish the packing slips, labels, packaging, etc.
- Send the shipments and keep tracking.
Having a clear procedure will help you to monitor, manage and control the shipping process easier, if there is any problem arising, you can locate which stage it is in, and take suitable actions to deal with.
Ensure Everything Goes As Scheduled
To ensure everything goes as scheduled in the high shipping demand contexts, the shipping process should go under strict control. Keeping track of all the delivery steps, keeping in touch with the logistics service and customers will help you manage and control your shipment delivery.
How to keep track of all the delivery steps? The real-time notifications about shipping status can notify you about the process, and thus you may realize the abnormal points and tackle them immediately.
Keeping in touch with the logistics service and customers may help you make suitable adjustments when they are needed, ensure the shipment will arrive on time, and minimize unexpected cases.
Establish Approaches To Deal With Delivery Delays
Delayed delivery is inevitable in the busy holiday seasons. Besides trying to avoid it, you should plan for the solutions. What do you do to deal with the delivery delays?
You should detect which step your shipment is in, find out the reasons why the process becomes slower, and tackle them. Then, you may find ways to contact the shipping service and speed up the remaining steps. You should let the customers know about the risks of delayed delivery via email notifications. In detail, you can utilize Atom8 on Shopify and Bigcommerce platforms to set up an email notification automation workflow; then, those emails will be sent if the shipments have not changed to “shipped” status after some days.
Also, you may need to compensate the customers for delayed shipping in some cases.
Pay Attention To Customer Care
Customer care is truly necessary during the shipping process. You may allow customers to keep track, receive information about the shipping status. Also, you should create chances for them to contact your stores for any further support such as a wrong address, wrong phone numbers, or other adjustments.
For the delivery delays due to the increase of shipping demand, you may need to compensate by offering a free shipping fee, vouchers for the next purchase, special gifts, etc. Moreover, don’t forget to apologize for the late shipment and say “thank you” for shipping completion.
Conclusion
The rising shipping demand for the holiday will cause many challenges for your eCommerce stores. Preparing for them with our guides may help you minimize mistakes and have solutions for any unexpected situation.
