Common Shipping Glitches and Ways to Fix Them

If customers place orders on your site, they also expect a hassle-free delivery experience. While several glitches can ruin this, delivery failure is one of the most common ones. This is where integrating a Magento 2 Delivery Date extension with your Magento store, or practicing some ways to avoid delivery glitches may come in handy.

Read on to know more about delivery failure and other glitches in detail. And ways you can fix them.

Problem: Delivery Failure

You can attribute a delivery failure to various reasons:

Receiver’s Unavailability at the Delivery Time

Several e-store owners often face this shipping problem. They ship orders without knowing whether the customer will be available to receive the delivery or not. What follows then is the delivery failure. Due to this, deliveries don’t only get late but also increase unnecessary expenditure of store owners. As they have to dispatch the same order twice adding to the overall shipping cost.

Pro Tips: 

Deliver products to customers when and where they want.

Let customers select delivery date and time which will:
– Reduce the chances of delivery delays to almost zero.

– Save you any unnecessary expenditure.

– Create a good impression on customers by providing them with flexibility of scheduling delivery as per their convenience.

Integrating an extension that lets your customers choose Magento 2 delivery time slot and date can fulfill your purpose.

Giving them a call before delivery can also be a good idea. You can keep the option ‘Call before Delivery’ for customers.

Mistake in Documentation

Even a single minor mistake in the shipping details can create obstacles in the shipping process like the shipment to the wrong address, etc. And rectifying such mistakes and that too after dispatch may be impossible. Or worse, you may even lose your valuable customer due to a documentation flub.

Pro Tip:

A shipping extension that validates the address your customers fill can be of great help.

You should let customers view their delivery details like order date, shipping date, price details, price breakup, all in one place before checkout. This will avoid any confusion about shipping or other details.

Shortage and Delay in Raw Material Supply

Let’s say, your customer wants to order a t-shirt with a red ink design. However, due to some reasons, it is unavailable for a long time. A situation like this one may be disheartening. Not just for you but also for your customers. The consequences?

Customers may lose interest in your brand and might never return to your e-store again.

Pro Tip: Choose your vendor carefully after researching the market well. If you are a small business owner, you can opt for the print-on-demand or drop-shipping option as well. It will save you from the inventory management expenditure. Thus, your consumers will hardly face the ‘Out of Stock’ situation anytime.

Delayed Deliveries

13% of shoppers won’t order from a retailer again who failed to deliver on-time.

Factors responsible for late deliveries may be:

Non-Specific Grace-Period

Grace period is the minimum count of days between the order date and delivery date for a product. If you don’t specify it, customers don’t get an idea of the number of days they would have to wait and presume a delivery date. The order they receive after the date they presumed is a ‘late delivery’ for them.

Pro Tip: Always specify a ‘grace period’ for customers, especially for those orders that aren’t one-day deliveries. This will save you unnecessary grievances, complaints or queries.

Non-Marking of Dates and Delivery Time Slots 

To be at the beck and call of customers helps a lot. But you too are a human! And need rest or break. When you don’t specify your non-working days, your customers won’t be able to know whether you are operating on a particular day or not.

So, when they order a product from your e-store, they consider that as a working day and then your late delivery countdown buzzes. Thereafter you know, customers have already framed a bad opinion about your service and are never going to return to your e-store.

Pro Tip: Mark your non-working days and non-operative time slots. It will make it easy for consumers to know the estimated delivery date and time.

Not Setting Cut-Off Time and Delivery Quota in the Backend

Consumers will place orders as and when they like, you may not be able to fulfill them at times.

Pro Tip:

Set cut-off time beyond which an order won’t qualify as the order on the same date. It will help you put a cap on the count of daily orders and manage them more efficiently.

Besides, set a delivery quota per consumer (the maximum count of orders one places on a single day) also. It will help you limit daily orders from a single customer.

Hence, you can serve a consumer better by preventing overflow of orders and facing difficulty completing them.

Delayed Dispatches

Keeping a track of numerous orders can be hard at times. If you have umpteen orders but no proper reminders, you may mess up completing orders.

Pro Tip: Install an extension to send you email notifications about the latest orders. Such an extension will help you stay on top of order management. Keeping a repository of orders will also become easy.

Thus, tracking orders and on-time deliveries will become easier for you.

Mother Nature

Natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. are inevitable. If any such nature force delays your delivery, the best you can do is inform your customers about the possible delay. This way, you will instill a sense of trust in them.

Lost/Misplaced Orders

Sometimes, an order may get misplaced or lost on its way to the customer. They may end up questioning you about that once it has surpassed the estimated delivery date.

A few possible reasons behind this goof-up may be:

Package Not Shipped in the First Place

Though quite unseemingly, a picker may haven’t picked up the right order(s) itself from the origin. So, unbeknownst to the shipper, a package may haven’t even been dispatched.

Unscanned Package 

Sometimes, a package may enter the supply chain in the shadows. This means the carrier may have forgotten to scan or confirm the order.

Damage Beyond Recognition

Some accidents like car/truck accidents, fire incidents, or fluid leak from other packages may damage a package beyond recognition.

Pro Tips: 

Proper Inventory Management

The more efficiently you manage your inventory, the lesser the probability of misplaced packages would be.

Research Your Options Well

Multiple shipping providers are there for you to choose from. However, you can’t just pick any random shipping provider. Research shipping providers, compare reviews, quotes and service quality before the final selection.

Proper Packaging

To ensure the maximum safety possible, do your designed rigid boxes packaging. Choose a water-resistant packaging for items susceptible to damage from water like documents, files, etc.

Similarly, wrap a foam sheet around delicate things like glass crockery items, and use a hard outer covering.

Live Track your Orders 

Use an extension that lets you live-track all your shipments. Also, send notifications from your end to keep them abreast of their parcel whereabouts. Let them track their shipments themselves as well by providing the ‘Live Tracking’ feature.

Shipment of the ‘Wrong’ Product

Sometimes, a consumer simply orders a product from your store. But don’t get to mention any specific order requirements. Afterwards, when the product finally gets delivered to them, they notice flaws and request the product return or replacement.

This scenario is more common in custom products.

Pro Tip:

Use Labels and Comments

Create a ‘Comment’ box under a label of your choice. This comment box is for consumers to fill out any special requirements about the order. This way, you can deliver the exact order in the way they want. These comments will personalize the delivery process and deliver the ‘right’ product.

To Sum Up

Several common shipping glitches may bring you in your customers’ bad books. Analyzing them and upgrading your shipping practices by using a Magento 2 Delivery Date and time scheduler can really make a difference in your operations