Things to Look for When Choosing a Fulfillment Company
It is essential to conduct your investigation and ensure that you’re picking not an fulfillment provider, but the one that is the right one. Here are eight factors you must look for when choosing an order fulfillment company for your online business.
1. Shipping Speeds
Amazon Prime’s two-day delivery times are now the norm that means that modern-day consumers expect faster delivery speeds than they have ever had before.
How can you meet these ever-changing expectations? By working in conjunction with an order fulfillment firm that can meet their promises – literally. If you don’t do this, you’ll lose out on revenue from the 53% of consumers who say they’ve never made their online purchases due to delays in delivery. Top fulfillment firms should have effective and efficient fulfillment systems that allow them to deliver your goods to customers in a short time. This becomes possible when they have numerous, strategically-located fulfillment warehouses and simplified order fulfillment software (which we’ll get to in a minute! ).
2. Location of Fulfillment Warehouses
Customers expect speedy shipping and naturally, an important component of this is the proximity of the fulfillment center to the customer. It makes great sense: the closer an order fulfillment center is to the end customer it is the lesser distance your product has to travel to reach them this means that you will have shorter shipping timelines (and less cost of shipping).
Therefore, when selecting a fulfillment provider be sure to find out where their fulfillment warehouses are located. For instance, a fulfillment firm with only a handful of fulfillment centers will likely not be able of delivering in the time the customers demand therefore working with them can affect the user experience. It is crucial to ensure that your fulfillment partner has facilities in the areas in the areas where your customers are.
Additionally, if you’re selling internationally, you must be sure that the fulfillment systems of the company you’re considering working with provides a global shipping prior to agreeing to cooperate with them.
If you aren’t able to ship your goods in the areas where your customers reside the most, your company will not stay in business very long!
3. Features of Order Fulfillment Software
If you’re an eCommerce company owner, you’ve got a lot going on. You’re already using various digital tools apps, platforms, and applications in your day-to-day business operations. The first thing you’ll want to do is to install additional software that’s slow, disorganized, and almost impossible to figure out. For this reason, it’s crucial to not just do your research about the fulfillment company that you’re looking to work with itself, but the order fulfillment software they’re employing.
Different fulfillment companies utilize different order fulfillment software that have different options and features. It’s important to understand the goals and needs of your business truly are, and choose an organization that uses technology that allows you to meet your needs. It is also important to ensure that the order fulfillment software is simple to set up and use during the day, and that it can seamlessly integrate with any other platforms or software for business you’re currently using.
4. Transparency and Visibility
Many businesses offer similar products, and deciding which ones are worth buying is a daunting task for consumers. When they discover a brand they feel they can trust, they’re likely to remain loyal to them over the long term. How do you create this trust? Transparency.
56% of the respondents to an online survey said that they would be loyal to a business for the rest of their lives, if it offered absolute transparency. In addition, 81 percent of them said they’d be willing to test any of the brands’ products if they were comfortable with the degree of transparency.
The fulfillment procedure you use is a crucial element of transparency – 88% of customers say that the ability to track their shipments in real-time is crucial as well as 69% believe they’re less likely to buy from retailers in the future if they purchase are not delivered within two days of the date that was promised. A promise is a promise and if you’re unable to meet it (literally) don’t make it.