Delivery Software: How to improve the efficiency of delivery service and what to do?

According to research made by a number of analytical agencies, since 2015 the US market for courier and fast food delivery has shown a stable growth of 4-5% per year. At the same time, many medium and large logistics companies have their own delivery services – it is difficult to estimate their share, because this segment shows statistical data in internal corporate reports.

In conditions when everyone is ready to deliver a purchase, the quality of the delivery service greatly affects customer’s loyalty. We are ready to offer our recipe of establishing a stable operation of the delivery service so that new customers become regular customers with high loyalty.

Train employees to provide quality service

If you think that anyone can be a courier, then you’re certainly not right. You shouldn’t expect the skills and abilities required to be the courier to be available to everyone. Choose employees who are ready to work diligently and responsibly and uphold your company’s values.

Your couriers need quality training to carry out their duties and maintain a service that meets the standards your customers are accustomed to. For example, in the delivery service of a chain of flower shops, the courier is required to deliver a bouquet and present it in accordance with the wishes of the client. 

What qualities and skills are required for a courier in this case? Experts say that with a bouquet of flowers the client should get positive emotions, therefore, being artistic and sociable is important for a courier of a flower delivery service. The courier should be able to win over the recipient, be ready to read greetings from the client or change into a popular movie character.

All couriers must pass selection, basic delivery training, know how to hand flowers and solve non-standard situations when the recipient’s behavior differs from usual, for example, creatively solve the situation on the fly. Also, the courier must receive special conversation scripts, memorize them and, of course, be able to use the delivery service program to fulfill orders and work with the wishes of the client. 

Learn more about FdhCloud Delivery application for courier delivery service.

You can’t instruct your couriers once and just send them to your clients. In the delivery service each new courier must be taught the rules of working with the application for delivery and polite communication with customers. They have to learn how to react in unusual situations and when to transfer the conversation to the dispatcher. The briefing template should be developed with psychologists and delivery specialists. 

But training alone is not enough for the quality work of a courier. When a courier starts delivering orders, he should be able to contact the support department of the delivery service in unforeseen circumstances. Two or three professional dispatchers are enough to plan and support up to 2000 deliveries daily. Of course, such a high performance of dispatchers doesn’t come out of nowhere. 

Use smart technologies in your work

To quickly solve many issues and tasks that arise during delivery, you need modern specialized software for managing the delivery service. Such software allows you to manage all work processes at various stages: set tasks for couriers, issue orders, plan routes, keep track of expenses, track delivery and communicate with the client.

Front Desk Helpers offers delivery software, FdhCloudDelivery, to manage, schedule and analyze courier operations and track deliveries in real time for better results.

Find out how FdhCloudDelivery can help you improve your efficiency

Motivate couriers to work better

We all have faced demotivation in our lives. This is the worst thing to happen to an employee who has worked well for several years. Due to the lack of career prospects, employees lose interest in work. They cease to diligently fulfill their duties and do not cope with the tasks assigned. As a result, customers may be dissatisfied with the quality of service. 

Show couriers that they can receive a reward (or monetary reward) for high performance like other employees, and you’ll see their motivation grow miraculously. Unfortunately, not everyone succeeds in constantly increasing the motivation of employees, since every business has its own internal characteristics.

To keep employees highly motivated, you need to interact with them tirelessly. Hold joint corporate events in order to create a close-knit team not on the basis of material reward, but a friendly team, where everyone feels like a part of a large corporate “family” and shares the values ​​of the company.

Some companies use even more interesting approaches in terms of stimulating and motivating employees. For example, when all couriers are divided into squads, let’s name them first, second and third. The best couriers are assigned to the first squad. They only work in the city center and it allows them to fulfill more orders and earn more than others.

If someone from the first squad breaks the discipline, they are transferred to the second squad, which delivers orders in less prestigious areas on the outskirts of the city. And the third squad delivers to distant places outside of the city, they have to spend more time on traveling and get less tips. 

Also, you can implement marks of excellence for fast delivery. For example, they can earn “lightning” in gratitude from the client. “Lightnings” can be assigned by customers voting on a special page of the website for the best delivery. The more lightnings the courier has, the higher the chance of getting into the first squad. 

To improve the efficiency of the delivery service as a whole, you can use a number of tricks for the couriers from the third squad to work more efficiently. Couriers from the third squad deliver orders outside the city for a fixed payment.

To prevent the third group from returning empty-handed after delivery, employees from the “second group” can collect up to ten orders each and hand them over to couriers from the third group at the delivery hubs for delivery to remote areas of the city. 

Leverage Innovation for Growth

Improvements in courier productivity and transport efficiency can also be achieved through lower cost per delivery, optimized delivery routes, and increased work intensity for couriers. This cannot be achieved without the use of a modern tool – delivery service software. One of such innovative programs is the program for the delivery service FdhCloudDelivery.

This is a high-performance and functional delivery service management system with broad capabilities, which will be useful for any delivery service – an online food store, restaurant or pizzeria, or any enterprise that works with delivery and wants to get new opportunities to improve the efficiency and free up resources for growth. 

With the FdhCloud Delivery application, it is much more efficient and easy to accept orders and carry out deliveries than with cut-down free delivery systems, since there is a wide list of additional functionality and capabilities to use the software with other business systems.

The delivery system was created to automate all stages of the delivery workflows as much as possible so that the dispatcher could quickly accept an application, place an order, plan a route and send it to a courier for execution.

At the same time, the delivery service manager has full control over the entire system and sees the whole picture in order to control and analyze the work of employees at any point of delivery and at any time. 

See how the FdhCloud Delivery system can help you improve the productivity of couriers.

Outsourcing for large logistics companies

Large logistics companies can create their own delivery service that will work with required tasks and show a certain efficiency. But this requires additional resources and time. Therefore, more and more often they are turning to outsourcing delivery services for their customers. Their own courier service provides them with a small share of deliveries, but requires special attention from managers and a lot of time.

Therefore, outsourcing of delivery services allows you to quickly get delivery for your customers or increase the number of deliveries to new locations, taking into account the characteristics of a city or region. For partners of logistics companies, outsourced delivery services can be coordinated according to their corporate standards and control the quality and their implementation.

Outsourcing is very useful when the number of orders is unpredictable at a certain time of day, or if there’s just too many orders. It is also a good solution for logistics companies that operate in several regions of the United States. In New York one large online store can combine its own delivery with third-party couriers.

For example, its own delivery service works according to the schedule in two shifts, and an outsourced delivery service – couriers on their own cars – carry out additional orders when their delivery can no longer cope with peak loads. Outsourced couriers are getting involved depending on the number of orders, and the number of employees can be increased up to 50% of the total number.

During peak periods, an additional 300 to 500 people can be sent on deliveries. Some logistics companies may have their own delivery in major cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Austin, Jacksonville, San Francisco or within the same state, but in other states, regions and cities, they can work with outsourced local delivery services.

Delivery service outsourcing can be divided not only by the geography of orders, but also by customer segments or other parameters that are important to you. For example, in a food delivery service, you can build a gradation of B2B customers – from a mass market to a premium segment.

Initially, a new courier delivers fast food, and over time, if he’s good at this job, he begins to receive more profitable deliveries to premium customers.

For small and medium-sized businesses, creating their own delivery service can be expensive: it can only become profitable if there are enough orders. At the same time, according to experts, building your own delivery service for a logistics company with several dozen orders per day will cost about $ 1-2 million.

These are the costs of office, warehouse, transport, pick up points and insurance. If the need for deliveries is low, the company can incur additional costs with hours of downtime and peak loads. Therefore, at the start, it is better to contact logistics companies that can provide the required number of couriers – they respond to orders like taxi drivers.

Connect with your customers and exceed their expectations

Clients always expect us to fulfill our obligations and get very upset if we, for some reason, do not fulfill them. Customers are the people who communicate the most with your couriers, and they will happily help identify your problems and improve the quality of your services.

To assess the quality of delivery, it is necessary to monitor delays across the entire base of orders on a daily basis, as well as conduct a selective telephone survey, or request feedback through push notifications on the website and in instant messengers.

Often, the main problem of logistics services is hidden in the incorrect way of accepting and delivering the purchase. When ordering food, the customer expects a meal in the near future, for example, within 20-30 minutes. The client does not take into account the workload of the restaurant’s kitchen, the number of free couriers, their location, the situation on the roads.

For him, it is only important that the order arrives hot and fresh, meaning, delicious. And he is already hungry when he places an order! Therefore, it’s only right to immediately tell the client how long he will have to wait for his food, and to stick to this timeframe as much as possible.

Some delivery services strictly regulate delivery times within, for example, 45 minutes in large cities, from which 3-5 minutes are spent on processing and confirmation of the order, 15-20 minutes for the restaurant to prepare food and 20 minutes – for delivery to the destination.

Couriers should also be trained in correct and polite communication in order to avoid dissatisfaction and loss of customers. For example, if there is a risk of being late, within 10 minutes the client should be contacted, notified about the delay, and asked if he is ready to wait.

So the client will not be nervous, making guesses where his order is. A hungry client can be quite nervous, so the courier must be trained in communication techniques to reassure the client and express his appreciation for his patience.

Consider the factor of the courier’s location, pick-up point and delivery point

Couriers must receive orders that are consistent with their location, delivery point and pick-up point for delivery to take less time. In large cities (over 700,000 inhabitants) due to traffic congestion, it is more efficient to use couriers on bikes or scooters to deliver goods and parcels. In extreme cases a foot courier can carry out delivery using the subway and knowledge of the city.

When speed is especially important, for example when delivering a meal from fast-food or restaurant, it is best to limit the delivery coverage based on how many food pick up points you have in stock. If it is a chain restaurant or pizzeria, then you have room for maneuver and this is beneficial to you.

Within one delivery area, couriers will be able to fulfill the maximum number of orders. If they are dispersed throughout the city, then orders in remote areas will significantly reduce the effectiveness of couriers.

Nowadays, many food markets and restaurants have focused on the areas where their stores, restaurants or food pick-up points are located in order to minimize the delivery time and thereby provide their customers with great service.

A number of food enterprises do not deliver to some areas of large cities to maintain the quality of their services, and many pizzerias or fast food chains deliver within several metro stations or a certain list of streets in order to bring the food warm and fresh.

See how the FdhCloud Delivery system can help you optimize your deliveries to improve service quality.

Key Ways to Increase Customer Loyalty

Here are key ways to support your company’s growth and increase your customer loyalty by making additional service commitments:

Timely communications

In today’s world, your ability to communicate well and convert incidents in quality and timely communication with customers can go a long way for a business. When it comes to customer satisfaction there is no over-communication – your clients feel more confident when they know what’s going on. That being said, the amount of communication is not as important as its timeliness.

Define your services 

The definition of a service is vital to the quality and proper management. You have to make sure that both you and your client understand what the service includes and what to expect. You also have to make sure that client understands exactly what your service does not include, compliance, potential limitations, cost, how to get help when needed, and more.

Automate processes whenever possible

Since IT, Internet and innovative technologies today provide effective solutions for various tasks, it is important to seize the opportunity to automate any processes that can be digitized and often lead to incidents in the workflow. You can control many processes without them crashing or making errors. This increases the stability of your business and leads to sustainable company growth. 

In general, automation of service is low risk and quick return. More and more companies are finding ways to reduce costs and simplify customer service processes by reducing the human labor and introducing new technologies into their workflows.

Find out how the FdhCloud Delivery system can help you automate delivery processes to improve the efficiency of your delivery service.

Manage human resources

Any business is faced with a limited number of resources, and each company wants to use the available resources as efficiently as possible. To assess the current resource needs and predict future needs, businesses have to effectively manage their resources, primarily human resources.

With effective management of company personnel and other resources, you can plan your business development, sales growth and make sure that all resources are used with maximum efficiency.

Maintain a corporate culture

Any business concept or development strategy is viable only through the adoption of a corporate “philosophy” – a set of ideas, principles and goals. Your corporate culture that consists of principles, beliefs, and mission of the company, and is professed by employees in their daily activities — are the strongest tools for influencing your entire business and your customers.

Corporate culture is part of corporate standards, which are part of such a complex concept as brand. A brand is an incredibly powerful intangible resource that works wonders in the modern world. How your employees act, what decisions they make, what goals they set for themselves is very important for how a complex human team and your company will work.

There is no other factor more important to the success of a service organization than its corporate culture. Employees professing a common philosophy and pursuing common goals act as a coherent, strongly coordinated system when it comes to overcoming difficulties and high competition in the market.

You shouldn’t assume that your culture is strictly internal – it manifests itself in your service, your methodology, and your relationships and interactions with customers. And clients know this. This is one of the reasons people are placing orders with you.

The better you understand your value and what your company does, the more it will matter to your customers. More often than not clients know very well when management and employees are not a single team and use double standards, hiding them behind a beautiful showcase. 

The main features of the FdhCloud Delivery delivery management system for the delivery service:

• fast acceptance of delivery requests;

• easy order management of the delivery service;

• communication tools for couriers, dispatchers and customers;

• automation of application acceptance and delivery confirmation processes;

• planning and optimization of delivery routes;

• real-time tracking of couriers, transport and parcels;

• control over the activities of couriers;

• electronic document management;

• regulated access to the delivery system according to the admission;

• information on the amount of the courier’s proceeds;

• separate accounting of operations for each delivery courier;

• maintaining a customer base;

• creation of separate tickets for tasks and operations for each employee;

• end-to-end workflow management;

• separate accounting and management of delivery workflows;

• control of orders in the warehouse and orders being executed;

• delivery confirmation;

• integration with business programs via API;

• additional call center services or a call center operator.

Find out how FdhCloud Delivery system helps to build a complex delivery management system and control delivery processes at every stage in real time.