Experience, experience, experience. It’s impossible not to stress enough the importance of the customer experience in today’s retail age. Every element of the customer journey has to be top notch and of course where delivery is the final point then it’s even more important.
And yet still it’s failing. In JDA and Centiro’s annual barometer of sentiment this week the results showed that of those customers that had a problem with an online order in the last 12 months late deliveries, non-deliveries and damaged items still remain key customers for too big a number of customers.
Within the customer experience better trackability and visibility and tighter windows remain key and these are all aims for Next, which has invested in a new route planning system to help improve its two-man home delivery experience for customers.
Also investing is delivery firm Whistl which has made a £2.5 million investment in new trailers, following a £9 million investment in new tractor units last year as it continues to look for efficiencies it can pass on to its customers.
For goods travelling in such trailers new technology from Honeywell aims to offer better tracking for those high-value and perishable goods that need better visibility of their whereabouts and condition. Similar to Hanhaa’s Parcelive service the system consists of sensor tags that detect movement, temperature and so on and transmit information about the state of the goods they are attached to back to base.
Over in the US things are hotting up in the same day delivery space after Deliv launched its same day delivery service Deliv Fresh there. The service is aimed at any grocery, meal services and other perishable goods ecommerce retailers in the US.
Things have literally been hotting up at ASOS too after the company suffered another warehouse fire. The fashion giant was devastated by a fire at its Barnsley warehouse in 2014. This time the company’s new Eurohub warehouse in Germany was hit.
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