As retailers gear up for a busy couple of months ahead of the Christmas period, Fastway’s CEO talks to Retailbiz about ways to ensure your Xmas deliveries run smoothly.
With the massive growth in sales during Christmas comes a huge backlog in deliveries if outgoing parcels aren’t managed well. But with enough forward-planning there are ways to fast-track your Christmas deliveries and minimise customer dissatisfaction, says Peter Lipinski, CEO of Fastway.
Promoting sales in the months and weeks before the Christmas period is the most crucial secret to preventing a delivery, and customer complaint backlog, Mr Lipinski told Retailbiz.
“I think it’s lodging some of your sales a bit earlier, having clear communication about peak times. Especially with Christmas, it’s important people understand that if they’re sending from Sydney to Perth might not be overnight unless they pay express. Outling those requirements is key as well as ensuring the information provided to the logistics company is accurate.”
Making sure that customers and retailers input accurate and detailed information for the delivery is also essential to ensure the courier delivery process runs smoothly, he says.
“I think when people order online it’s really important the address is complete as well as providing contact details, phone and email allows us to message them with the status of deliveries and offer different delivery alternatives.”
But the courier company also has a role to play in ensuring that technology and other methods are in place to meet the increased demand of 30 per cent, according to Mr Lipinski. Ahead of Christmas, Fastway is utilising Parcel Connect which enables consumers to collect their parcels at a time and location suitable for them using one of 800+ Parcel Connect locations across Australia. Another technology – Blue Courier- also ensures that Fastway has increased capacity to manage the increased demand, he says.
“When the volume of parcels grows around 3-40 per cent obviously that’s really significant over the Christmas period and it’s not sustainable to just manage full time workforce to the same level. But having access to crowdsourcing and ability for people to earn money and courier franchisees to have those tools to deliver parcels.”
It’s this sort of technology that provides full customer oversight and transparency over the delivery process that is particularly essential during the Xmas period.
“I think its key, people are spending more and more time on mobile devices and information nowadays is almost more important than the actual delivery because people want to know when and how,” he said.