In uncertain times, it’s truly unique and outstanding companies that survive. For a business like yours, it takes excellent fulfillment in order to stand above the rest. It’s easy to talk about good order processing and high accuracy rates, but have you ever considered how those things really translate into happier customers?
Good Fulfillment = Happy Customers, Here’s Why!
It wasn’t that long ago that a customer would happily wait weeks for their order to be fulfilled, but along came the Internet to turn everything on its ear. Today, the idea of good fulfillment comes down to a few very basic elements but missing even one can turn shoppers into lost opportunities.
Here’s what good fulfillment looks like:
- Good fulfillment is fast and accurate. Accurate and fast fulfillment starts at the warehouse. Proper inventory control and storage of your products makes it easy for workers to move them through the sorting process and into boxes for fast order fulfillment. If your warehouse and distribution partner isn’t currently putting effort into getting your shipments out the door faster, with a higher pick accuracy rate, it’s time to find a company that will.
- Good fulfillment is flexible and transparent. Agile is the key to the best fulfillment possible. Life is hectic, as is business, and sometimes you need to reroute an order to a customer or resupply in a pinch. Your fulfillment center should be able to turn on a dime while keeping you and the end customer updated on the status of an order that needed special treatment or rapid processing.
- Good fulfillment uses lots of data points to help companies do better business. Data is everything when it comes to good fulfillment. The number of steps a worker takes to pick one order is just as important a data point as to how accurate that pick is. Everything helps, every data point makes a difference.
If your fulfillment service isn’t focused on constant improvement using its vast amount of available data, it’s missing a lot of opportunities to optimize your order processing. The right data can help your fulfillment partner to determine the ideal level of inventory to keep around, for example, to ensure that your customers never have to wait for backorders and that your budget isn’t overextended.
There’s no doubt that good fulfillment means happier customers. From the moment shoppers click to pay for their shopping carts’ contents until that order reaches their doorstep, your process should be consistent, transparent and, frankly, as fast as possible. The competition is fierce these days, don’t hesitate to reach out to a fulfillment partner if your in-house team is overwhelmed.
