Customer expectations continue to climb as technology in all aspects of life improves. The demand for accurate delivery estimates, proactive notifications, and live tracking has transformed shipment visibility into a competitive advantage. Delivery notifications are no exception, though customers don't always know just how tricky that is for a logistics provider to actually know.
Despite the challenge of setting it up, it's worth the investment. Businesses that invest in real-time tracking technology can significantly improve customer satisfaction, reduce delivery failures, and optimize logistics operations.
Key benefits of real-time shipment tracking
1. Improved customer satisfaction and trust
Customers want assurance that their orders will arrive on time. On time means either adhering to the delivery window given to you, or giving your customer a delivery window with a reasonable time range. Offering a window of 9am to 5pm isn't helpful, getting it down to 30 minutes or less is ideal. This allows customers to organise their day, manage their deliveries and stock, and communicate to their own customers.
2. Reduced failed deliveries and redelivery costs
If you were to deliver outside of a customer's delivery window, you might get rejected from their dock, find no one's there to receive the delivery, or some other reason resulting in a failed delivery. Communication is key to avoid these unnecessary costs.
If a delivery does fail, it can result in a domino effect that continues on to the next stops. Having a plan in place for this will reduce the impact that one disruptive delivery has. Having a dynamic routing tool that can re-route based on customer availability, work in a re-attempt at delivery later in the route, or even just update the customer that the next attempted delivery will be on a different day gets the driver back on track as soon as possible. This will mimize any unexpected costs due to a missed delivery.
3. Reduce admin and "where is my order?" (WISMO) calls
The back and forth of organising with a customer, answering inquiries, investigating the status of their delivery all takes time out of your day. Reallocate this time to rightsizing your fleet, optimizing territories, creating new routes, or just getting through the backlog on your to-do list!
How Adiona delivers real-time tracking solutions
Adiona's AI and API-enabled route optimization and driver app combine to give you the foundations of real-time ETA notifications. Simply connect into your communications platform like email or text message to send updates on the status of a delivery directly to your customers. Ask us how to get started or jump into our trial and play around for yourself.