Last-Minute Last-Mile Hacks For This Holiday Season

The holiday peak season is a time to look forward to not just for consumers but also retailers and carriers alike. Arguably, the busiest time of the year that businesses prepare for throughout the year. Yet, any prep seems inadequate with each year throwing new surprises and challenges making businesses go back to the drawing board and reassess their infrastructure, framework, tools and most importantly technology. 

It is simply impossible to predict exactly how the peak season will turn out despite years and years of seeing so many seasons. However, that does not deter any business from preparing for it and getting as ready as they can possibly be to tackle new peaks of unpredictability in terms of volume and density. 

The flavor of each season keeps changing that contributes to the puzzle. However, the constant factor that never changes is unpredictability. Burdened not just by the weight of customer expectations, stifling pressure from new competitors is another factor that businesses cannot ignore. To be able to withstand the surge, businesses need some specialized tools that can set them apart from their peers. 

As we approach the brink of a steep peak where it will be nothing short of a rollercoaster ride with new challenges, learnings and arguably some trying circumstances, this is the time to spin some tricks and leverage some quick fixes. This last 10% effort could potentially impact 90% of your outcome and these tactics are tried and tested by about 200+ large businesses in practically every inhabited continent where the peak is on. 

No surprises or new groundbreaking findings have come for this season. The trends have been boringly predictable and here are a few:

• According to NRF, eCommerce retail sales are set to grow ~10% as compared to last year.
• A majority of carriers levy a peak season surcharge ranging from $0.75 to $84.50(for special handling for heavy shipments).
• 71% customers consider sustainability as a major decision-driver. 
• 20% additional sales revenue can be attributed to personalization. 

Here’s what they imply: 

• There seems to be no slowing down in terms of volume. 
• Deliveries for the peak season are going to be expensive as a function of demand
• Customers seem to care more for the planet and favor brands that fall in line into climate-crisis-control mode. 
• With AI, personalization is only getting more sophisticated. Or so, it is expected to be! 

Given that the competition is tight, demand is high and expectations are soaring, the ultimate retention mantra is to create an ultra-experience for customers. That is the only way to ensure brand loyalty given an spoiling amount of choices that enables instant tradeoff of loyalty between brands. 

The recipe to unlocking the ultra-experience in the shortest time frame possible consists of 4 steps: 

The peak is no time to overthink a carrier strategy. The simplest step of signing up for a carrier marketplace that is intelligent enough to give cost-effective and SLA-based recommendations such as FarEye Grow can help you get ahead of the game in a significant way. 

This not just increases your capacities but also multiplies your ability to gobble as much market share of the peak demand as possible. It gives you instant access to a wide network of carriers with a range of technology capabilities that can quickly fetch orders from your system and deliver on time. Rinse repeat until all of them are delivered. The marketplace simplifies invoicing, settlements and is a clear win-win for both parties. 

Irrespective of how many routing tools the market has to offer, there is still ample scope for work in the routing department. 

While sophisticated routing traditionally has been a large IT project spanning months, there are modern-day routing APIs which pretty much serve the same purpose. The only difference is that it takes much shorter time and is easy on the ops team to generate optimized routes with a simple plug-and-play technique. 

This saves countless hours of waiting for assignment of orders for drivers at the warehouse. It maximizes hours on the field, stops per hour and as a result, an increased number of deliveries, giving everyone a chance to get the best out of the peak season sale. 

Sustainability is not a trend or a fad. It is beyond an elite idea that a vast majority of buyers place a premium on. 

It is not a choice any longer to look the other way and carry on with business as usual. Climate change is real. And your customers genuinely care about it. 

It is time to up the game but how? 

For starters, you could cut your dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels by going electric. It isn’t as the capital expenditure is significantly high. Or that’s what we think! 

As an extension to Hack 1, there is an entire ecosystem of EV-only carrier service providers to choose from which makes sustainable deliveries, an attainable reality for more businesses than one would expect. 

Reporting and benchmarking is the equivalent of mindfulness for humans. With the right set of tools, set up a Sustainability Dashboard and that is a trophy you could proudly show to your customers to not just win hearts but also dollars! 

Things are getting real and AI is now an integral part of our lives and our future. Make friends with it and make it serve you. 

Leverage its strengths to learn and retain valuable information about your customers, their preferences and put it to good use in running personalized initiatives. 

Personalize every interaction, every touchpoint with AI-driven personalization which is proving to be near-human yet offering many benefits such as personalization at scale. 

From customized notifications to personalized product recommendations, the possibilities are immense. The depth of understanding of your customers that AI can provide in the shortest time frame is extremely important and valuable. 

Takeaway: Make friends with AI and it will serve you like no other friend. 

Before getting into the hacks and the quick fixes, it is very important to clearly establish that there is no replacement for long-term solutions driven by strategic goals. It is important to set up a robust delivery logistics landscape which includes the right mix of carriers, fleet size, orchestration power, and transparent systems that can interoperate easily with other systems - both internal and external. 

Delivery logistics is a primary line of business which is the nerve center of any business irrespective of vertical - from food & grocery to apparel to appliances. With omni-channel manifesting in unprecedented new combinations and the impact of conditioning driven by e-commerce innovation, customer expectations have never been taller and heavier. 

To meet these lofty expectations, businesses need to up their game and deliver ultra-experiences to their customers consistently to earn loyalty. This is not possible with just quick fix solutions. This stems from a deep understanding of their expectations and crafting sustainable, repeatable and scalable long-term solutions to ensure the creation of winning experiences. 

On the other hand, the carrier side is facing its own set of challenges that include high labor costs, inflation in logistics, driver shortages and regulatory pressures from governments to become more sustainable. It is challenging to a point where even if the bottom line is compromised, meeting expected service levels is still daunting. 

This is achievable only through innovation and collaboration between shipper and carrier ecosystems. The challenge or unlocking the ultra-experience can be tackled only when collaborative solutions are crafted and implemented.