Earlier, the quality of your products would be predominant in deciding your customers’ experience. It’s no longer the case now. Retail giants like Amazon and eBay have changed the perception and expectations of customers largely and have set a benchmark for other e-stores. They deliver the orders on the same day or within two days as they promise to a customer during checkout.
This is the reason why customers now don’t only consider quality but also the time of delivery to take a purchase action. On-time deliveries, thus, are indispensable in current times because the more you miss delivery deadlines, the more likely you are to lose your customers.
If you are an online store owner, you must understand what on-time product delivery means and why it is important.
What is On-Time Delivery?
As the name suggests, on-time deliveries mean that you deliver something your customers ordered on time. From the perspective of business logistics, experts also call it a metric that you can use to gauge the ability of a business to fulfill the orders within the period of the promised delivery date.
How On-Time Deliveries are Important
1. Customers Feel Valued
Delivery on time and quality of products go hand in hand. It is crucial to retain both to keep your customers engaged. If you miss out on providing either, your customers may start drifting and lose trust in you. There is also a fact that digital transformation has made inroads into our lives so much that you can’t hide virtually anything.
Now is not the time when customers can convey complaints regarding failure of on-time deliveries to you only. They can now highlight your loopholes digitally across various platforms which may jeopardize your brand image heavily.
For instance, they can post negative reviews about your company on rating sites or on your app. They can also tag you on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel calling you out for your fault. So, the matter now is no more between you and your customer but open to a large global digital audience. That is why on-time deliveries have become even more important than before to save your online brand reputation.
2. Improved Customer Satisfaction
You may have to be more consistent to deliver products on time. The reason to maintain this consistency is that your customers may easily notice on-time delivery failures but may take more time to acknowledge on-time deliveries. Because it’s human nature to notice and point out bad things faster than acknowledging good things.
However, the bright side is that your effort will eventually reflect in your customer satisfaction levels that go high. Satisfied customers are likely to return to your store for future purchases and augment your sales figures and the company’s bottom line.
3. Enhanced Brand Outreach and Rapport
The moment you get lax, you may lose a customer or two. That’s the impact that the fast-paced digital world has put on businesses. Customers are spoilt for choice and can turn to your competitor in no time. Therefore, you’ll have to make extra efforts beyond just providing quality to retain your customer base and expand it. For that, on-time product delivery is a great way.
On-time deliveries complement your quality products to provide the best possible shopping experience to your customers. In fact, your customers may turn into your “salesmen” if you display consistency in on-time deliveries.
As your satisfied customers post positive reviews and spread word-of-mouth, the audience online and offline notice your brand. This will get you a speedy outreach and better visibility – and of course build your brand rapport stronger.
4. Higher Logistics’ Efficiency
On-time deliveries also help increase the efficiency of your supply chain. If you deliver products on time, it helps reduce backlogs and streamline the supply chain. You can also avoid surplus or deficit of in-demand products through proper strategies to ensure on-time deliveries.
How to Measure On-Time Deliveries
There is a term “On-Time Delivery” rate. It depends on the number of product units you deliver out of the products your customer orders on or before a promised delivery date. Consider an example. Your customer orders 100 units of a product and you deliver 90 on the promised delivery date. You further assure the customer that you’ll deliver the remaining 10 units in a short span of time. The customer acknowledges the deficit and agrees to it.
This is a case where you have delivered 90% of your order on time. In terms of logistics, this scenario will count as 90% on-time delivery. Ideally, if your OTD is 100%, your logistics are at their best.
How to Ensure On-Time Deliveries
There are different ways you can follow to make sure your on-time delivery rate is high, as below:
1. Keep track of your inventory at regular intervals to proactively manage it for any surplus or deficit.
2. Ensure to communicate properly with your suppliers and vendors on a regular basis to get complete visibility and retain transparency.
3. Make it a point to focus on products in high demand as you may need to keep their stock more readily available.
4. If you display an estimated delivery date to your customer, keeping some margin of a day or two – especially when the order is big, is advisable. Even if you are sure that you’ll be able to deliver the order on a given date, try to have some room for any unprecedented delays due to natural or human causes. This will help avoid any complaints or grievances further in case you lag by a day or so because you have the leeway.
5. How about giving customers the freedom to decide the delivery date for themselves? Well, it sounds great but how to provide that? By integrating a feature-rich delivery date manager into your store.
How Can AppJetty Help with On-Time Deliveries
As we discussed in the last point, you can allow your customers to select a preferred delivery date. If you are looking to provide that freedom via your online store, our Magento 2 Delivery Date Manager can be the right fit for you.
It allows you to let your customers choose the delivery dates and time slots. Besides, you can do a lot more like setting order processing time, letting customers add comments, tracking orders, etc. Further, you can even configure non-working days and time slots and display extra delivery charges for some specific dates.
When customers choose the date for themselves, your logistics efficiency goes up as you know when to deliver what instead of deciding it yourself. This helps you achieve a higher percentage of on-time deliveries.
Ending Note
On-time deliveries can make or break your business reputation fast. It is high time you set your delivery strategy right and win your customers’ trust. We can help you with that and can provide you with our next-gen Delivery Date Scheduler for Magento 2.
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