The real cost of a bad delivery experience
By Komal Puri | October 13, 2022
According to a study by Esteban Kolsky, 72% of users would share a positive or good experience with around six people, whereas 13% of users would share a bad experience or poor delivery service with at least 15 people or more.
Negative delivery experiences have a much bigger impact than positive ones. When a percentage of your customers are not receiving quick and effective delivery, your overall customer experience, revenue, and brand value get affected. Even after offering several positive experiences, it is difficult to increase positive publicity without reducing the negative delivery experience.
51% of your users wouldn't prefer doing business with you again after a negative delivery experience. It is approximately 5-25 times more expensive to generate new leads than to retain old customers.
Impact of a Bad Delivery Experience
Every year, businesses lose USD $75 billion to poor customer experience, delivery, and service.
Why? Because when a customer has a poor delivery experience, they leave. However, the problem continues. This user might give bad reviews and prefer your competitor over you. This affects your branding through word-of-mouth marketing. Eventually, an increasing number of negative delivery experiences plague your company's reputation and brand image.
Here’s how poor delivery services cost you a lot of resources, money, and efforts.
Reduced Loyalty
The whole point of selling is to make them use the product and help provide a solution. With poor delivery services, your marketing and sales efforts are gone to waste. The entire cycle from sales and marketing to delivery endures the consequences of bad deliveries.
For example, if the product has reached 30 days later than the expected delivery, you might lose a loyal customer. Then, the sales and marketing teams need to put in extra efforts and resources to generate new leads. It takes more time to nurture and manage these leads or conversions.
Enhanced Costs
Every time the delivery is late or a damaged product is delivered, it might be returned. If you have a website policy of no-refunds or no-returns, your team may have to send in a new package to compensate the customers who complain. The costs incurred from sending new products, return logistics, and managing damaged products add up to your overheads and resource wastage.
Negative Reviews
Ninety-three percent of users check reviews online before purchasing a product or services, and 80% of them don't purchase from a company that has bad reviews. When you fail to provide effective shipping and logistics to your customers, they give negative feedback not only through word-of-mouth but also through online. This impacts your potential leads. New users get apprehensive about your delivery services, which encourage them to not purchase from you at all.
The bottom line for every business is to satisfy the needs of buyers, which involves several factors, such as customer experience, appropriate support system, quick delivery, and advanced services.
While a robust, effective, and valuable product would sell itself, efficient logistics retain your customers. A modern supply chain and logistics platform can help you mitigate various risks and overhead costs, utilize data analytics to improve decision making and optimize operational efficiency.
Advanced supply chain and logistics platforms can automate scheduling and job allocation. They can help delivery stakeholders plan better routes by using dynamic routing capabilities. Businesses can leverage electronic proof of deliveries (ePoDs) to reduce manual errors, manipulations and better archive delivery data.
Good logistics software is a key lever in making a future-ready supply chain.
Komal Puri is a seasoned professional in the logistics and supply chain industry. As the Senior Director of Marketing and a subject matter expert at FarEye, she has been instrumental in shaping the industry narrative for the past decade. Her expertise and insights have earned her numerous awards and recognition. Komal’s writings reflect her deep understanding of the industry, offering valuable insights and thought leadership.
