Tips to Avoid Losing ECommerce Customers with the Right Approach to Delivery Exceptions

By STS News Desk On Jan 12, 2023

AxleHire has identified tips ecommerce brands can take to avoid losing customers with the right approach to delivery exceptions.

AxleHire, providing e-commerce companies with expedited, urban, same- and next-day deliveries, has identified tips ecommerce brands can take to avoid losing customers with the right approach to delivery exceptions.

Package returns usually occur because some piece of information is incorrect, which results in an undeliverable package, at least temporarily.

The right package does not always make it to the correct location at the right time. Accenture reports that this happens about 5% of the time. If you’re shipping 10,000 packages a month, that’s 500 packages that don’t make it on time. Every re-attempt increases cost, but the loss of goodwill with a brand’s customer and reputational damage to the brand is much more significant than the increased delivery cost. One delivery issue can cause an ECommerce brand to lose a customer for life.

The ability to satisfactorily handle all exceptions begins before they occur. It starts with understanding the shipper’s needs, such as if the shipper wants single or multiple re-delivery attempts, if the carrier or driver can reach out to the customer for assistance, or if the shipper wants to manage that communication.

Carrier system interfaces should be transparent and robust enough to keep the shipper in the loop at every step of the delivery process, from package intake to delivery, and allow the shipper to intervene in exception handling.

The key for the carrier is flexibility to handle whatever situations arise. Drivers need to be flexible too, slowing down, taking an extra minute or two to get past an issue and make sure the package gets to the customer. It’s essential that carrier systems allow the shipper to communicate special instructions and that drivers follow through to prevent customer service calls.

For carriers, dealing with exceptions starts with a willingness to take a little (and sometimes a lot) of extra time and effort to resolve issues. Handling delivery exceptions and package returns is the problem of the carrier, not the shipper. As an extension of the brand, every exception is the last-mile delivery provider’s problem.

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