Managing a peak is harder than you think.

Fleet Management, courier and order delivery process may not be the biggest challenge for your business in logistics or delivery, but if not considered, it will become the most costly challenge for your organization. When orders are ready to be dispatched, you need to ensure your couriers deliver customer orders on time and at the lowest cost.

This section in Managing Online Store Couriers becomes even more challenging. In online stores, you must control the delivery status in real-time, be aware of the real-time location of couriers, support customers who track their orders, manage daily issues (such as unexpected traffic, courier accidents, etc.), receive accurate and precise reports on the order delivery process, and ultimately conduct periodic analysis for continuous process improvement.

Each of the above-mentioned items, if not managed and executed correctly and efficiently, can become one of the most troublesome activities in the order delivery section, incurring significant financial and time costs for your team.

In this article, we aim to examine the various challenges of managing online store courier deliveries and the solutions for each.

Daily Challenges of a Manager in the Logistics and Order Delivery Team:

• Which courier should deliver each order?
• Where are the couriers now? Did they deliver the orders on time?
• How many customers called today to track their orders?
• How well did the couriers perform to determine fair wages or bonuses for them?

Which courier should deliver each order?

Almost every store with more than 3 or 4 couriers for order delivery faces this challenge. You need to determine which courier should deliver which orders to ensure timely delivery to your customers, maintain each courier's capacity, and avoid overloading or underloading them. Most importantly, the delivery operation should be conducted at the lowest possible cost.

The solution, however, is quite clear. Smart Route Planning. Route planning, often known as smart routing, fleet routing, or courier route planning, helps managers plan the best route for the fleet by considering various factors such as the promised delivery time to the customer, the number of available couriers, each courier's capacity, and other factors. Sometimes managers use a formulated Excel file for this task, and sometimes they use smart software that automates the entire process. This way, it specifies which courier should deliver each order and tells you the order in which each courier should deliver their specific orders to complete their tasks as quickly as possible.

Proper order delivery planning can reduce delivery costs by at least 15%.

Where are the couriers now? Did they deliver the orders on time?

The second step after planning order delivery and courier routing is complete and precise monitoring of courier performance and fleet tracking. A professional logistics manager must be aware of whether the order delivery plan is being executed correctly. If any orders are delayed, the manager is informed in time to prevent delays in the remaining orders. Or does the customer have to express their dissatisfaction before the manager becomes aware of the issue?

What often happens in many stores is that the courier and fleet start the order delivery activity, and the logistics manager has no further information about them until the courier returns.

The solution that many managers use for this part is tools like WhatsApp for continuous communication with the courier or receiving Live Location updates to get information about the order delivery status.

Some also use tools like installing trackers and GPS to monitor driver behavior and track the fleet.

One of the most suitable methods is using smart tools for managing couriers and online store order deliveries. These tools allow you to monitor all orders on the map, see the delivery status of each customer, track couriers on the map, and be informed of potential delays before the courier themselves. In the image below, you can see an example of these tools related to the Logiico order delivery management software.

How many customers called today to track their orders?

Just talk to the customer service team of an online store to realize that one of their main activities is answering questions from customers asking: Where is my order? When will it be delivered?

Nowadays, these types of calls bring nothing but costs for an online store. A staff member who could perform more important and essential activities often spends most of their time answering similar questions.

Sending SMS notifications for order delivery time slots with a message that your order is being prepared and has been handed over to the courier will somewhat meet the customer's expectations and reduce the number of calls.

However, the best solution is for the customer to be able to track the courier, see the real-time location on the map (instead of calling you), and have an approximate time of the courier's arrival. This solution is often known as sending order tracking SMS to the customer, which can be a suitable tool for increasing customer satisfaction with the store's service and communication. In short, professional communication about the order delivery status to the customer is one of the most important actions every online store should take.

How well did the couriers perform to determine fair wages or bonuses for them?

Obtaining accurate and comprehensive reports! This is a time-consuming and challenging process for your logistics unit. You need a correct and precise report to evaluate the performance of couriers and the fleet to determine appropriate wages and salaries for them and, most importantly, to have sufficient awareness of the overall logistics and order delivery conditions to make the right decision at the right time. This awareness will only be achieved through a precise reporting system.

If an accurate reporting system is not implemented, the time-consuming nature of the reporting process will be its first consequence, and this time-consuming process sometimes causes your team to overlook certain issues.

To advance this matter more effectively, you definitely need to prepare your management dashboard and implement a complete reporting system for your team.

In the image below, you can see an example of this type of dashboard where the report of deliveries and the status of drivers are visible.

As mentioned, managing couriers and order deliveries may not be your biggest challenge in the logistics section of an online store, but rest assured, if you don't pay attention, it will be the most costly challenge for your organization. In logistics discussions, this stage is called Last-Mile Delivery and according to research, it is one of the most costly parts of the logistics section.

In the first step, identifying existing challenges in this section and in the next step, implementing an intelligent and optimized solution are actions that can, in the highly competitive market of online stores, alongside reducing costs for you, also create a significant advantage for customers: timely delivery of orders to customers with professional notifications.

Logiico's order delivery management software is one of the tools that helps address these challenges and provides you with an intelligent and up-to-date system. You have the opportunity to test Logiico for free for 7 days and learn more about its benefits.

7-Day Free Trial: https://logiico.net/