Solving ecommerce delivery issues with an ecommerce courier solution

Did you know that the first ever online transaction was made by someone purchasing a Sting CD in 1994?

NetMarket, a US ecommerce platform, sold the CD, and the transaction is considered as the pioneer of electronic commerce (ecommerce). Since then, ecommerce has become an important tool for big and small businesses worldwide.

But as with everything, ecommerce comes with its own issues that retailers face daily. In this article, we will focus on ecommerce shipping problems. Ecommerce shipping might sound simple, but is a very complex system of processes. It is also the part of ecommerce that generates the most expenses and can primarily affect customer feedback and retention numbers.

Let’s examine some of the main issues in ecommerce deliveries and how using professional ecommerce courier software can help resolve these problems.

Common ecommerce delivery issues

Regarding e-commerce delivery, it may seem relatively simple – the goods or services ordered from the e-store must be shipped to the customer. It is not as easy as it sounds, as e-commerce delivery consists of three stages: order receiving, processing, and fulfilment.

Each stage is vital in shaping the customer experience and depends on each other. Now, let’s look at the main issues that often arise in ecommerce delivery.

1. High cost of ecommerce delivery

Compared to traditional commerce, maintaining a digital store costs relatively low. Costs start to add up after a purchase, and the order needs to be moved. It is also often forgotten that money spent on warehousing and vehicle maintenance is considered a delivery cost in ecommerce. So, if you are not using dropshipping, delivery costs will grow even more.

Competing with other ecommerce businesses on the market often means winning customers over with better customer service – offering them same-day or free delivery. This inevitably makes the whole shipping process more complicated and expensive for the company. And all this, before last-mile delivery, is considered the most costly part of the shipping process.

Last-mile delivery is the final part of an order’s journey from warehouse to customer. Studies show that it takes up to 53% of total shipping costs and is the most crucial stage of the shipping process, as it is where the most delays happen. Customer satisfaction with the entire order process is also most affected by the success of the last-mile delivery.

So, in conclusion, it can be seen that achieving a fast and customer satisfaction-oriented shipping process is difficult and expensive. It is no exception that companies must consider making less profit to stay competitive.

2. Slow ecommerce delivery

Delivery speed has become one of the most essential aspects of ecommerce. Studies show that 45% of customers expect their order to be delivered in at least two days and will stop ordering from the retailer after three late orders. Same-day or next-day deliveries have become a norm that many businesses have a hard time achieving due to the high expenses it generates.

Keeping that in mind, retention of existing customers is important from the point of view of optimising the company’s costs, as according to studies, acquiring a new customer is up to 25% more expensive.

So, since prompt delivery is one of the most important parameters by which customers choose retailers, retaining the customer base and optimising costs is imperative.

3. Failing to achieve excellent customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction directly affects your business revenue. In other words, ecommerce businesses that fail to offer satisfying shopping experiences to their customers are likely to have low retention rates that negatively affect business profits.

Considering that the chance of selling to an existing customer is up to 70% and a new customer only up to 20%, can you afford to offer a bad customer experience?

The often-overlooked problem related to customer retention is that when we think about providing a satisfying shopping experience for customers, we often focus on the front end of customer experience. While we don’t want to downplay the importance of a visually beautiful e-store, convenient shopping experience and personalised offers, it’s only a small part of shaping the entire customer experience. As a reminder, last-mile delivery is the part of e-commerce delivery that generally has the most problems and ultimately determines customer satisfaction.

There are aspects of last-mile delivery that companies often underestimate but which indirectly have a significant impact. One of these is your company culture and your employees’ happiness while doing their everyday work. Research shows that satisfied employees are 12% more productive at work, leading to increased efficiency and directly affecting customer satisfaction with the service. Listen to your employees’ feedback and provide quality working conditions to boost employee morale and customer satisfaction rates.

Optimising your customer experience also requires making the last-mile delivery as see-through and comfortable for the customers as possible. Offer clear shipping options and reassuring return policies, collect feedback about return reasons, keep customer service channels open and responsive, and offer easy options to reroute items and change delivery times. You will make your customers feel valued and make work much easier for your employees.

4. Missing information and lost packages

Attention to detail is vital in logistics. Missing relevant information can severely affect customer satisfaction rates and raise last-mile delivery costs. Let’s look at a few of the most common problems in ecommerce.

Unavailable recipient

In the case of contactless delivery, the courier can leave the package at a previously agreed location. However, deliveries often require the recipient’s signature or even payment for the package upon delivery, assuming that both the courier and the recipient of the order are in the same place at the same time. Confusion in this area is expected, so it is wise to proactively take measures to avoid problems.

Delivery tracking and sending text notifications on the delivery day will remind customers that an order is coming. If need be, contact the courier in time to make changes to the delivery.

Confusing delivery instructions

Couriers’ working days are busy, and being late to one destination means a time shift in completing tasks throughout the day. It is vital to make sure that the instructions given to the courier are clear and precise. Many smaller companies still use paper-based waybills and manually prepared itineraries. This often results in problems finding the correct address.

Providing your couriers with precise, automatically generated, and double-checked routes and digital documents will minimise the risk of not arriving at the destination in time and mixing up deliveries. Digital documents can be conveniently stored on a smart device, and delivery apps often include the possibility to contact the customer directly whenever there is a problem locating the destination.

Lost packages

A lost package is one of the worst-case scenarios in ecommerce. According to the New York Times, an estimated 15% of all online shopping deliveries in urban areas never reach their destination. Simply put, about 1 of 10 packages get lost every day.

It might not always be the retailers’ fault, but as an ecommerce business, there is a lot you can do to prevent packages from getting lost. Although choosing the proper packaging and being extra careful with labelling is essential, tracking orders and keeping an open communication line are not overlooked.

Tracking orders every step of the way is essential in preventing them from getting lost on the way. Not only does this reassure your customer, but it also allows you to keep an eye on what’s happening when the package is out of your hands. It’s a bird’s-eye view of the shipping process that allows both you and your customers to be aware of any delays and, if need be, get insight into a lost package.

5. Choosing the right ecommerce shipping software

Suppose you are not wholly new to ecommerce and issues related to shipping orders. In that case, you are probably aware of the hundreds of tools and apps designed to help optimise ecommerce delivery. Choosing the right tool for your business can be difficult. When the chosen software does not integrate with your ecommerce platform, it can do more harm than good. Remember that your ecommerce solution should save you time, not complicate everyday work.

Before choosing ecommerce delivery software, you must look closely at the functionalities offered. These should streamline your operations at all stages, and the overall solution should be integrated with your existing tools.

Depending on your business model, these are some of the features to consider when choosing ecommerce delivery software:

• real-time courier tracking – to keep you and your customers updated on the location of their delivery;
• automatic route optimisation – to help you quickly find the most efficient delivery routes for couriers;
• automatic dispatch management – to help maximise your staff and assign new deliveries to the closest idle driver automatically;
• order tracking and automatic notifications– to allow customers to track their order from start to finish and receive notifications about the delivery time or delays;
• digital documentation and signatures – to provide the office and customers with needed documents and photos digitally upon having performed the delivery;
• smooth integrations – to make integrating with your current business tools as easy as possible.

The rising need for ecommerce courier solutions

As revealed in the previous chapter, managing an ecommerce business involves several problems. Courier services play a crucial role in the success of ecommerce, as they act as a bridge between online retailers and customers. However, meeting the ever-growing demands of customers and keeping up with competition is challenging without the help of technology.

Investing in a professional ecommerce courier solution can help you enhance speed, efficiency, and overall customer experience:

Speed & efficiency.

We have said it before and will repeat it – customers expect quick deliveries. You inevitably lose customers if you cannot deliver within a few days. As ecommerce is still on the rise and order volume keeps growing, providing fast deliveries will be more difficult. It is a harsh playground, and you must take all the help that you can. Investing in an ecommerce delivery solution allows you to significantly increase the efficiency of various processes related to order delivery. It automates processes, making them faster and more secure at the same time.

Delivery transparency.

Transparency is a crucial factor when managing an ecommerce business. It builds trust between you and your customers. It allows you to monitor the whole delivery process and minimises delivery delays and lost packages. Ecommerce solutions allow live tracking of orders for both you and your customer.

Customer satisfaction & trust.

As online shopping increases, competition will also get more challenging. Providing optimal consumer experience is a must. An Ecommerce delivery solution makes tracking deliveries every step of the way possible. It allows customers to be up to date about their order process with the help of real-time notifications. Your customers will feel valued as the delivery feels more personal. As mentioned before, customer retention is important, and transparency will help you achieve better results.

Cost-effectiveness & competitive advantage.

The need to optimise business operations and reduce shipping costs is something that ecommerce businesses face every day. Ecommerce delivery solutions allow you to automatically find the most effective delivery routes and assign tasks to the closest drivers. At the same time, logistics can focus on more important tasks and keep an eye on everything on one screen.

Flexibility.

Flexible delivery options are also a key part of the competitive advantage that ecommerce stores should focus on. Your customers live busy lives – a big reason why people enjoy online shopping in the first place – and they expect to have the possibility to make changes to their deliveries. Without the help from ecommerce solutions, making last-minute changes can be a hassle.

Environmental sustainability.

Sustainability is a hot topic for ecommerce businesses, ranging from business models to packing and delivering products. The rapid growth of ecommerce in recent years has had a significant environmental impact and led companies to find sustainable solutions within the industry. Along with packaging and the waste it produces, delivery also plays a vital role in shaping your ecological footprint. If replacing your entire fleet with greener vehicles is a costly and challenging process, start by implementing more optimal journeys using an ecommerce management solution. Ecommerce courier software also allows drivers to be in contact with the consumer. If they are not home, offer to drop the package to a nearby parcel machine to avoid unnecessary trips.

Why GSMtasks is the best ecommerce courier software

As discussed before, choosing the right ecommerce courier solution can be challenging. We pointed out some key features to consider and hope you keep in mind that the software should adapt to your business, not vice versa. An excellent solution will be easy to implement and make your business processes more manageable.

GSMtasks is a professional solution that offers excellent ecommerce courier functionalities. It has been designed to be suitable for different company sizes. It is easily integrated with the most used business tools in ecommerce, for example, Woocommerce, Magento, Shopify, Quickbooks, Prestashop and many others. So why should you choose GSMtasks?

GSMtasks’s key features make it one of the best options on the market for ecommerce businesses:

1. Efficient time management is achieved with the help of

• automated routing – daily orders can be added manually, imported in bulk from a file or gathered automatically from your integrated e-shop, after which GSMtasks finds the correct drivers and creates the most optimal routes in seconds;
• schedule recurring tasks – if you have daily, weekly or monthly recurring deliveries, GSMtasks will schedule them automatically and save you precious working hours;
• mobile app for drivers – your couriers have a list of their tasks with related information and driving routes always on hand with the help of GSMtasks’s mobile app, which also allows to store order-related documents, including photos of the delivery and collect digital signatures from customers;
• live tracking – you are never flying blind with the live tracking option, as it allows you to follow each order and its process conveniently on your screen;
• fleet analytics – tracking valuable metrics is a must when your goal is to run a profitable company. With GSMtasks, you can collect the data you need within seconds.

2. Clear data visualisation and an intuitive user experience are achieved with

• complete overview – you can look over your couriers’ locations and route plans together with in-progress and scheduled tasks in real-time on an easy-to-read map;
• drag & drop management – making changes has never been easier, as GSMtasks allows you to manage all tasks with an easy drag and drop function both in management and calendar view;
• custom meta-fields – custom meta-fields will enable you to add whatever relatable information to the order that your couriers might need and make GSMtasks usable for very different types of ecommerce businesses;
• customer notifications – your customers feel valued when receiving automated or manually set-up notifications about their order process via SMS or e-mail.

3. Paperless customer service and more sustainable ecommerce with the help of

• digital documentation – forget about paper documents because GSMtasks allows you and your customers to provide all the needed documents and photos digitally;
• signature capture – no need to carry a pen with you because all required documents can be signed digitally;
• fast proof of delivery – signed delivery documents can be sent to the customer and back-office immediately upon completion.

4. Implementing GSMtasks to your ecommerce business is easy thanks to smooth integrations

• integration with your current tools – your current tools (incl. CRM and Warehouse) can be integrated with GSMtasks easily using API;
• e-mail parsing – optimise your fleet and mobile workforce by pulling your data with other online delivery platforms (Eat24, Grubhub);
• easy integration with GPS systems – GSMtasks can be easily integrated with central navigation systems like Waze, Google Maps, Sygic, and so on to allow your drivers to quickly navigate to their destination.

GSMtasks’s value for money is the best on the market:

GSMtasks is the best value-for-price ecommerce courier solution on the market. It offers three different monthly pricing plans (essential, professional and enterprise) that are user-based.

As you might have roamed through the endless selection of courier management software, you might have seen that most solutions offer a limited number of orders per month and paying for extra orders might become quite costly. All GSMtasks’s pricing plans have unlimited tasks included, so you never have to worry about costs adding up after a busy month.

The range of functionalities GSMtasks’s pricing plans offer is unmatched by any other ecommerce courier delivery solution. For just 19€ ($22) per month/per user, you can optimise an unlimited number of routes, include white label notifications, use the offline mobile app and count on your personal account manager to help you find the best ways to maximise GSMtasks’s functionalities in your business.

GSMtasks is valued by users:

GSMtasks received Capterra’s Best Value and Best Ease of Use badges and Software Advice’s Most Recommended badge in 2021. Thanks to the great feedback gathered from our users, we are happy to say that GSMtasks is a valued software that helps businesses thrive worldwide.

GSMtasks offers a free 14-day trial:
Not sure if GSMtasks’s ecommerce courier delivery solution is right for you? No worries, you can trial the software for free for 14 days and see for yourself. During the trial period, our ac-count managers will review your company’s needs and goals with you to find the best ways to use GSMtasks to improve your company’s performance!

Successful ecommerce businesses who have used GSMtasks, ecommerce courier software

GSMtasks has helped many ecommerce businesses thrive with the help of ecommerce courier delivery software. Let’s look at some use cases.

Lola’s cupcakes – Lola’s is one of the most famous bakeries in London. Their cupcakes became so popular that opening an online store and delivering these tasty treats to customers’ doorsteps needed to be done. Unfortunately, they struggled to manage an extensive mobile fleet and had problems with delivery tracking. They needed a solution that was easy to implement, allowed making last-minute changes to deliveries and was easy to use by both mobile and office staff. With the help of GSMtasks, Lola’s was able to optimise their delivery routes, manage a fleet of 50 drivers in a straightforward solution, notify their customers about their orders throughout the delivery process, and cut their delivery costs.

Bra Sommermöbler – Bra Sommermöbler is a Swedish ecommerce store that successfully automated its delivery process using GSMtasks’s API. The integration between their online store and GSMtasks was completed in no time. Now, all orders made online are automatically converted into tasks in GSMtasks. Couriers receive tasks via their mobile app with optimised routes, and Bra Sommermöbler delivers faster than ever.

Flat Tire – For smaller teams starting out, building a fully functional tracking and logistics solution on top of their customer-facing app can be prohibitively costly, rendering the idea unfeasible. That is why Flat Tire, a start-up based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, offering mobile bike repairs, turned to GSMtasks. Flat Tire was able to set up this integration within a few hours and with minimal development cost. They now have complete control over the management of each task assigned to their bike mechanics; they know where and when they will be where they need to be.

Please take a look at all our case studies here!

Final thoughts on ecommerce courier solutions

In 2040, 95% of purchases will be made online, so if you are a retailer offering online shopping to your customers, now is the time to face ecommerce challenges and find solutions for them. The problems ecommerce businesses face that were addressed in this article were just some of many. Still, all these can be overcome with the help of a good ecommerce courier delivery solution like GSMtasks.

Technology needs to be implemented into your business to stay on top of the competition. Give GSMtasks a try, and let us help you find more ingenious ways to optimise your ecommerce business, retain a loyal customer base, keep employees motivated at work and boost business profits.

The ecommerce courier delivery industries are the most significant contributors to harmful environmental impacts such as air pollution, climate change, ozone layer depletion, and other effects. Being a part of the industry, you can drive the change by adapting to eco-friendly ways of delivering products and contributing to improving the environment.

Using GSMtasks, you can transform towards eco-friendly delivery processing by following the shortest and optimised paths, requiring less fuel and reducing overall carbon emission.

Want to become more eco-friendly? Try GSMtasks! We have a FREE 14-day trial (no credit card required). Sign up and give it a try!

GSMtasks offers a 14-day free trial for all new users. The signup process for a free trial includes sharing information about your business so that the GSMtasks team can cater the perfect trial for your needs. During the trial period, you and your team will be supported in learning about the software and implementing its functions to maximise your company’s productivity.