Peak season is approaching, and businesses are under pressure to find meaningful ways to differentiate themselves. The holidays create perfect opportunities for shoppers to find unique gifts, but consumers often come back to megaretailers that offer familiar, reliable inventory and fast delivery (especially helpful for last-minute gift-giving).
So, what can you do? More and more, the customer experience is where retailers find their best opportunity to set themselves apart. According to Forbes, 53% of consumers believe the experience a company offers is as important as its products or services, and 48% are willing to pay more for quality customer service.
With that in mind, we’re exploring how businesses of all sizes can leverage the delivery experience to improve customer satisfaction, build loyalty and boost business. Shoppers are making it clear that speed, convenience and communication are all factors in how they view the brands they shop with. With the right logistics approach, your business can make small delivery changes that have a major impact on the bottom line and their relationships with customers.
Why customer experience matters
In a competitive ecommerce landscape, businesses have time to tinker with business concepts that might not work. You could — and should — keep a keen eye on cutting expenses, right-sizing your staff, fine-tuning your marketing messages and more. But research shows customer experience is a business consideration you can’t afford to ignore for three main reasons:
- Customer Retention. Everyone relies heavily on repeat business. This is supported by recent data, which found that 35% of an ecommerce store’s revenue comes from just 5% of its customers. When customer acquisition can cost a brand six times more than customer retention, building an experience that customers want to return to is essential. Need more proof? Long-cited research by Bain & Co. and the Harvard Business Review shows some businesses increase profits by 25% to a whopping 95% with a mere 5% increase in customer retention.
- Competitive Differentiation. In a crowded marketplace, top-notch customer service can set you apart from competitors of any size. In fact, you have an advantage here over megaretailers: Being able to personalize the customer experience with more agility. Omnichannel communication agency Mitto says this is key and found that 60% of leaders tie customer experience to brand loyalty.
- Word-of-Mouth Marketing. Back in 2014, Neilsen research found that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from family and friends more than other forms of advertising. This hasn’t changed much over the years. Nielsen’s own update of the data found that the number remains sky-high at 88% in 2021. Knowing that happy customers are more likely to recommend a business to others, businesses can leverage word-of-mouth as a powerful and cost-effective marketing tool.
How the delivery experience ties into customer satisfaction
It’s clear that maintaining a positive customer experience is valuable, but you don’t have the vast resources of megaretailers to put toward customer satisfaction. With that in mind, strategic business owners must focus on aspects of the customer experience that yield the most impressive results. For most retailers, acing the delivery experience is high on that list.
Today’s online shoppers have made it clear that delivery speed, convenience and visibility are key factors in how they rate their relationship with a brand — and decide whether or not to keep doing business with them. Take these five surprising delivery stats:
- 68% of shoppers look for shorter delivery windows at checkout
- 56% of online customers abandon their carts because of unsatisfactory delivery options
- As many as 90% of consumers have paid extra for expedited delivery
- A quarter of shoppers (23%) are willing to pay a premium for same-day delivery
- Two-thirds of customers expect to know where their order is throughout the delivery process
Shopping habits like these show retailers of all sizes that shoppers will scrutinize the time and distance between their cart and their doorstep — and what happens in that window ties directly back to brand perception. Again, well-funded megaretailers can easily pay to meet these expectations. In fact, their investments have trained customers to expect these high standards in the first place. However, smaller retailers must find a cost-effective way to bolster the delivery experience to boost customer satisfaction without breaking the bottom line. That’s where on-demand delivery comes into play.
On-demand delivery: a one-stop customer experience solution
It’s easy to dismiss logistics when considering how customers experience your brand. After all, they’ll never see the inside of your warehouse or truly understand the path their order takes before it arrives at their door. What they do understand is:
- My order arrived on time, in full, and in great shape.
- I needed something fast, and this company helped me do it within my budget.
- I was notified every time my package hit a delivery milestone.
- The brand I worked with did what they said they would do, and I’ll choose them again.
All those experiences hinge on how your company handles delivery speed, convenience and visibility from the moment the customer clicks “Order Now.”
Large logistics carriers, like large retailers, tend to be less agile when it comes to adjusting operations. Large traditional logistics companies will add ultra-fast, high-tech delivery services for a fee.
That’s where on-demand comes in. On-demand delivery platforms like Roadie are on the ground every day, connecting brands with their customers in a fast, affordable and transparent way. By leveraging a huge network of independent drivers, using Roadie to enable ultra-fast delivery provides you several advantages that align perfectly with your business’s needs:
Speed & Flexibility
With the Roadie network of 200,000 independent drivers at your disposal, on-demand executes on the last mile better than any other type of delivery approach. By adding on-demand delivery to your logistical arsenal, you can start offering ultrafast same-day services to your delivery options at checkout. This puts the power in the customer’s hands to choose the speed and price point that fits their needs.
Cost-Effectiveness
Speaking of price point, forget the excessive fees for less-than-truckload, bulky, or off-schedule deliveries. With Roadie, retailers get the benefit of on-demand order fulfillment for a manageable price per delivery.
Worried about absorbing those costs? Never fear: Retailers who use Roadie have lots of creative options to offset delivery fees without losing sales. A new report by Roadie found that setting delivery fees for orders below a certain dollar amount, increasing prices to offset costs and developing loyalty programs with free delivery benefits are all on the table, and the results pay off. Eighty percent of business owners say they saw higher customer satisfaction levels after they began offering same-day delivery, 70% reported higher sales, and 66% said customer retention rates rose.
Improved Technology
Once shoppers have selected their ultra-fast delivery option, Roadie helps you keep customer satisfaction high with excellent visibility into order processing. From real-time digital order tracking to photographic chain of custody at pickup and delivery, Roadie lets retailers fulfill customers’ expectations for the entire delivery process. After all, what gets customers more excited than knowing they have a safely delivered package on their doorstep, ready for them to come home to?
Peak Season Scalability
Among the best advantages businesses have when working with Roadie is the ability to scale their use of crowdsourcing delivery up and down as demand warrants. Peak shopping season is a key use case for needing to ramp up the number of drivers you can call on to fill increasing holiday order volumes. Once the rush has passed, scale back as needed — or keep it up with ultrafast returns processing in those post-holiday weeks. Roadie works with you every step of the way!
Start leveraging on-demand delivery today
As peak season approaches, businesses need to find innovative ways to stand out from megaretailers, and focusing on the delivery experience is a powerful strategy. By embracing on-demand delivery, you can offer fast, flexible and cost-effective delivery options that exceed customer expectations and build brand loyalty that will last well beyond the holiday rush.
In an ecommerce environment where customer experience means as much as product quality, Roadie is ready to help you prepare to offer an ultrafast delivery experience that will delight shoppers at every step of the delivery process. There’s still plenty of time to put on-demand delivery benefits in place before the holidays. Get started with Roadie today.
