The supply chain of e-commerce businesses is a significant factor in determining their success. According to the Supply Chain Council, successful order fulfillment can be described as “the percentage of orders meeting delivery performance with complete and accurate documentation and no delivery damage.” Orders are increasingly becoming more arduous and challenging to manage given the increasing growth of the business from multi-channels and market challenges.
A disorganized order fulfillment system can lead to delay in order delivery to the customer. This eventually leads to poor customer experience. E-Commerce that has such delivery system leaves its customers in frustration and the business suffers in return. This indicate how important it is for order fulfillment to be successful.
To have a flourishing e-commerce business means to have a successful order fulfillment towards your customers. Here are tips on how you can manage your supply chain effectively and make your order fulfillment more successful.
Establish a Working Demand Management System
Creating a good demand management system is vital to accomplish a successful order. The purpose of a demand management system is to equip the business with the ability to handle unprecedented demand rise and gives a forecast of demand from customers. Multi-channels through which customers make purchases are monitored. Data are captured and analyzed to equip the business of real-time information regarding the flow of demand in the supply chain. Data captured using this system is accurate and helps forestall any challenge in the future. This also gives room to maximize profit and growth of the business.
Do Not Back Out On Promises to Customers
Not being able to live up to expectations can have a devastating effect on your business. Customers typically want to earn every value of their money. You can ensure that you have your customers’ trust and loyalty by ensuring that the stocks in your inventory levels match the specifications. Also, ensure that there are stocks that match the customers’ needs available at all time in the inventory. To effectively, ensure that your customers are satisfied, use Available to Promise (ATP) inventory. This method guarantees that a particular stock is always available.
During delivery, ensure that the shipping notification is working effectively. Regardless of the specified time for the arrival of the product customers naturally want to keep tabs on its movement. When customers are not notified they are likely to fidget, make incessant calls to the customer care and this amount to a loss of money and time. What with such experience they are likely not deal with such e-commerce platform again.
Understand the Challenges
Customers have an ever-changing taste and options to select regarding how they shop and receive orders. Retailers that have a complex e-commerce system are likely to offer their customers unsatisfied user experience. The whole e-commerce fulfillment should take minimal time and swift as possible to accomplish. Retailers should design their e-commerce system to enhance user experience and making shopping and order receiving hugely convenient.
Build Communication
Communication with customers is essential for the flourishing of an e-commerce business. During the delivery of an order to a customer, it is important to keep them abreast with its progress. When there is no communication customers are likely to get worried, which affects their confidence in the e-commerce service. Communication reassures them of a good supply chain and boosts their confidence.
Use A Working Distributed Order Management System
A distributed order management system gives an e-commerce business a competitive edge over its competitors. This management system utilizes a central approach to managing the real-time inventory of retailers. After a customer orders a product, the retailer should be able to locate the product. The inventory becomes organized to ensure that there are delivery or shipping delays.
Flexibility is introduced as customers can buy products and return them when and however means. E-commerce businesses that have the DOM are not going to leave their customers with a poor customer’s experience.
Make Customer Service Available
There will cases of late delivery of purchased products, missing products during delivery or damaged goods. The only recourse customers normally take when they experience any of these is the call the customer service. E-Commerce, where there is no customer service to respond swiftly to customers’ inquiries, may not last long. Having customer service representatives on ground addresses order fulfillment issues and enhances the relationship with customers.
Lost or Damaged Goods Replacement
At some point in an e-commerce business, goods in the inventory are bound to be lost or damaged. Replacing the damaged or lost products should be done regardless of its cost. Better still; each item in the inventory should have a purchase shipping insurance to cushion any loss. Damaged products returned by customers should be replaced without any charge. This should be done to avoid having a horde of irate and unsatisfied customers at hand.
Delivery Costs
Shipping costs by retailers are usually determined to utilize two criteria; by price and weight of the product. E-commerce retailers should ensure that customers are enlightened on how the shipping price is determined. In addition, e-commerce businesses should make an effort to keep shipping costs as reasonable as possible.
There you have it! Above are some top secretes to successful order fulfillment. A successful order fulfillment system is key to retaining customers and boosting e-commerce growth. Given the increase of channels through which customers make orders, it has posed challenges to e-commerce businesses. Building communication with customers, keeping your promise, creating an order management system all ensure that at the end of the day, e-commerce business has a successful order fulfillment system.
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