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A delivery business is one of the most dynamic industries with fast-changing trends and steep competition. It keeps you on your toes 365 days a year. One mistake, a delay of a few minutes or a flawed process, and you could lose your customers to your competitors.
All of that adds to the challenges of surviving in such a competitive market. In order to thrive, you have to continuously improve your delivery efficiency, offerings, and processes while maintaining the industry standards.
Thankfully, there are specific tips you can follow, which we’ve covered in this article, to help you achieve the desired business growth and stay ahead of the curve.
9 Tips to Advance Your Delivery Business in 2022
1. Use a Delivery Route Planner
Planning for multiple deliveries in a day manually with more than one driver is complex, increasing the likelihood of delayed deliveries, detours, and faults. To avoid this, it’s best to turn to delivery route planner software. It not only offers you multiple route options, shortest by time or distance but also optimizes each of them.
You can track and manage your operations in real-time, resulting in faster deliveries and more efficient business decisions.
2. Prioritize & Schedule Orders Ahead of Time
Send the orders out for delivery based on their importance: which order needs to be delivered first and the ones that can stand the waiting queue. Dividing orders into high, medium and low priority categories make things simpler while eliminating the risks.
Besides, prepare a delivery schedule for all the orders weeks in advance, leaving some room for new, estimated orders. That way, you’ll never be short-staffed or burdened with excess driver costs.
3. Group Delivery Locations
Consider the proximity between all your pick-up and drop-off locations while planning routes for your daily deliveries. Grouping nearby destinations and checking that you have a valid mailing address saves you fuel cost and time, speeds up the delivery, and makes the routes efficient, enabling drivers to complete more orders.
4. Emphasize Customer Convenience
Customers are the driving force of any delivery business. Hence, it’s critical to put their convenience in focus at all times. Offer your customers the option to choose their preferred date and time of delivery. Be flexible with payment methods. Besides, do not make promises of speedy deliveries unless you’re sure of fulfilling them.
Consistent happy customers boost your organization goodwill, drawing in repeat business and new orders.
5. Be Visible Online
Since a majority of people turn to the internet to meet their diverse requirements, your delivery business must build a strong online presence. Consider investing your time & effort in a dedicated website. Be visible on social media platforms. Through these channels, you can attract new clientele and significantly broaden the scale of your operations.
6. Leverage the Power of Analytics
Define your KPIs and monitor them regularly to gauge where your business stands in terms of performance. From expenses and cost per delivery to driver performance and revenue, you can track every vital aspect and retrieve actionable insights through smart analytics tools of a route planning app. It helps make more informed decisions, leading to steady business advancements.
7. Retarget Inactive Customers
Are there inactive consumer accounts in your database? Then it’s wise to spend some time to understand the reason behind their inactivity. Connect with them and seek feedback. Put in efforts to draw them back to you with the right retargeting strategies. It could take discount offers or a few free deliveries. Even if they don’t switch back, the whole process will help enhance your customer experience, which, in turn, can drive business growth.
8. Offer Same-day Delivery
Research shows that customers don’t mind the additional charges if they receive lightning fast delivery. That’s why it makes sense for any local delivery business to offer same-day delivery. Identify which category of orders qualify for same-day delivery and fix a price range based on the geographical area. Doing so improves customer satisfaction, bringing in more business.
9. Brand Your Fleets
Customers can instantly recognize your delivery business when they see your fleet vehicles moving around the town with your logo. Therefore, it’s always fruitful to streamline your branding efforts. Also, it creates a recall value, opening up new business prospects and scaling opportunities.
Ending Note
To run a delivery business smoothly, you need to evaluate your processes and optimize delivery continuously. The key, therefore, is to improve and be consistent in the efficiency of your operations. What we explored here are some of the handy tips to help achieve that. Implement these to bring in new business and see your operations scale over time.
You may also like: The Complete Guide to Delivery Route Planning
Image source: Depositphotos.com
