There was once a time when customers would seek you out, enter your retail location, choose their merchandise and take it home completely unscathed.
Since the explosion of eCommerce, more shoppers are choosing to save time (and often, money) by shopping through online platforms and having that package delivered to their front door.
For the customer, it’s extra convenient, they don’t have to do anything but click and wait, but for you it adds additional steps to the process. After all, every point between that click and the recipient opening the package will reflect directly on you, even if you didn’t have direct control over it.
That’s why it’s so important to have good shipping partnerships, from your warehousing and distribution to your order fulfillment and even your last mile transportation.
The Cost of Shipping is More Than Money
When you were first shopping for 3rd party logistics companies to help expand your eCommerce fulfillment services reach, one of your most important factors was probably the base price of your package.
And why not? It makes perfect sense. Less in means more out, right? Certainly, with many things in life, this formula holds true. But when it comes to your shipping services, it can be easy to mistake an apple for an orange.
A good shipping service provides you more than just a box and someone to pack it. In fact, paying a little more can make you a lot more money in the long run as your reputation for excellence grows. This is doubly true when you’re selling something that’s perishable or fragile, like cosmetics or electronics.
Why Good Shipping Services Matter
Using outdated stock rotation methods may leave you with pallets of unsellable, expired stock that you have to pay to dispose. Poor pick, pack and ship policies could result in a disastrously high percentage of DOAs, costing you money and damaging your credibility.
Even if your products are kept fresh as long as possible and remain undamaged, how far behind the pack are you getting when it comes to tools like shopping cart integration and customer web portals? Can you even expand into B2B relationships using EDI tools?
Good shipping services are a lot more than they may appear on the surface. Whether your customers are international or domestic, your product line consists of 15 items or 1,500 items, good shipping services always know where each and every SKU is stored, how much longer it has left before it expires, how much to keep in the warehouse and a thousand other tiny things about your business that you might not have even noticed.
A good shipper is like a good friend, they’re always doing things to make you look awesome, even without you having to ask.
