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Merchants need to be proactive to ensure on-time deliveries
While consumers are still in the late throes of fall heading into the heart of the holiday shopping season, there's worry among businesses and shippers that the early chill and late orders may put a damper on commercial activity.
Putting more controls into place
Bloomberg reported that UPS is one of a few organizations that are trying to put strategies in place that will allow the shipper to cope with not only higher volumes of orders, but also the weather. Last year, the shipment service provider underperformed according to customers' expectations when deliveries meant to arrive on or before Christmas didn't get there. The frigid temperatures and snow were partly to blame for the mishap, but UPS also openly admits it was overwhelmed by a large number of late orders through e-commerce channels.
Accordingly, the shipper explained it will put in place a more stringent process for handling and tracking orders, dubbed "control tower." It's a form of predictive analytics that revolves around the shipper comparing anticipated shipping volume to the actual number of orders among some of the larger retailers. If there's too great a discrepancy, then UPS will communicate with these merchants explaining they need to adjust their shipping options for customers. With a predicted 11 percent jump in shipments during December, there may be some difficult conversations between e-retailers and UPS.
However, the shipping organization's CEO David Abney is standing behind this pledge and somewhat hard-nosed approach, Reuters explained. Abney went so far as to say that UPS may refuse to handle late orders or charge a significant fee if the influx in shipments risks interrupting the company's package management system. This is likely to be a deterrent and will only occur under exceptional circumstances.
An added layer of assurance
Still, the 2 million undelivered express packages from last year's holiday season likely left a bad taste in the mouths of merchants and customers alike. Accordingly, brick-and-mortar retailers that have an online store or strictly e-commerce businesses need to be proactive to avoid shipping mishaps. In addition to potentially diversifying the shipping options that customers have when completing their orders, it's critical for merchants to take advantage of address verification software.
This tool can provide both address validation and verification, which will essentially autocorrect delivery addresses each customer inputs when they're shopping online. As a result, even when someone accidentally puts the wrong information in while completing their order, they'll still receive their package.
