There is a big problem in retail that nobody talks about. It has a relatively benign name, but it is costing retailers billions of dollars and millions of loyal customers every year.
Delivery exceptions are the culprit! 89% of the time, shipments get to customers when and how they expect. However, 11% of shipments follow a very unhappy path and encounter a delivery exception, such as a delay, damaged package, or incorrect address.
Minimize Customer Impact Caused by Last Mile Variables
Millions of shipments traverse the world every day, going through multiple hand-offs with humans who make mistakes. Exceptions are going to happen.
While 98% of customers stake brand loyalty on the delivery experience, every exception does not have be written off as a total loss. In fact, according to our consumer research, customers are understanding that issues happen, and just want to know that their brand is on their side if a delivery goes awry. When 93% of customers want a notification when an exception occurs, and 97% expect that the brand will give them self-service options to help correct the issue, it is critical for brands to see and analyze when delivery issues occur, and act on them before they impact customers.
What if you could initiate a recovery process for every exception as soon as it happens with the goal of minimizing customer disruption? It would look something like this:
Basic Track and Trace capabilities are not enough
Traditionally, retailers have not proactively addressed exceptions simply because they lacked visibility. There were a couple reasons for this:
- Inconsistent data in outdated formats, such as EDI, across carriers made diagnosing exceptions difficult
- Support teams lacked context to handle exceptions quickly because shipment and customer data were in separate, disconnected systems.
- Tools for support and logistics teams were not designed to handle exceptions or to enable collaboration across a complex ecosystem of vendors and carriers.
Brands who are practicing and living the customer-first mentality of Delivery Experience Management (DEM) are already realizing the benefits. By proactively handling actionable exceptions, Grove Collaborative saved time and money — they reduced WISMO calls by 50%, and saved $65 per damage claim and $23 per incorrect address. Most importantly, their customers were happier: NPS scores increased by 3 points for customers who experienced DEM in action, and 9.4% overall.
Breaking Down Last Mile Delivery Silos Gives Brands Faster Exception Time to Resolution
Exception Recovery takes these capabilities to another level, and connects brands to their carriers through the platform, allowing them to collaborate on issues, and resolve exceptions up to 4X faster. It is tailor-made to help retail and brand shippers proactively identify and resolve delivery issues before they impact customer experiences and drive up costs.
Exception Recovery breaks down into three main parts:
- Finding shipment data: Using a Google-like search and saved views, automatically identify actionable exceptions while the shipments are in-transit
- Collaboration: Create cases, assign owners, and share information to accelerate exception recovery
- Analysis: Use shared dashboards to track, manage and continuously improve operations
At Convey’s core sits our data engine, where we continuously combine updated status information retrieved from carriers with shipper order/customer data.
Exception Recovery in Action
Exception Recovery leverages the data engine to highlight shipment exceptions as they happen and route them to the correct parties. From there, both shippers and carriers can create their own workflows to solve cases. In just a few clicks of a button, all parties can see notes, status updates, escalations, and more as they dive into the recovery process.
Once a case is created, Convey notifies the carrier, who then has access to communicate directly with the shipper and see all the order information and share files in the Convey application. Each party can view live updates in Convey, or via email notifications. Early adopters of Exception Recovery have already seen an 80% reduction (on average) in the time it takes to resolve exceptions.
Manage and Analyze Exception Handling
Few brands have insights into how efficiently exceptions are handled, and it is difficult for brands to understand the root of the cause without accurate and complete data. There can be many culprits and variables that can Customer Support Efficiency: specific exceptions may take longer to resolve, certain carriers may be more difficult to reach, some customer support representatives may take longer than others… the list goes on.
However, brands using Exception Recovery have been able to double the number of exceptions they manage per person in just a few weeks because they have all of the relevant information in one place — they do not have to use multiple platforms to resolve one issue. All the resolution activity is tracked via shared dashboards so that both carriers and shippers can break down activity by agent, carrier (or shipper), and reason code (exception type) to better address the root causes of issues in the last mile.
You Can’t Afford to Keep Ignoring Exceptions
As retailers scale and eCommerce grows, so will delivery exceptions. Warehouse and transportation labor shortages, new delivery methods like crowd-sourcing, and distributed fulfillment are increasing complexity and thus the potential for delivery exceptions. The costs of handling exceptions poorly is growing as well, since it is only getting easier for customers to shop with a different retailer.
However, it is possible for brands to view these negative events as opportunities to differentiate their brand and amaze customers. By identifying exceptions sooner and then resolving them faster, brands can minimize negative outcomes associated with delivery exceptions and improve overall operations. Exception Recovery, at a minimum, saves your company money. When done well, it can differentiate your brand from the competition and help businesses create sustainable, healthy top-line growth.
Learn more about Exception Recovery here.