Key Reasons for NDR (Non Delivery Report) in eCommerce & How to Solve them

1)What is NDR (Non-Delivery Report) in eCommerce, and How Does It Work?

NDR is a well-known acronym in the world of eCommerce and stands for Non-Delivery Reports. NDR is the status given to undelivered orders or orders where the delivery attempt failed. When an order reaches the last mile of delivery, the order is only considered complete when it has been handed over to the customer.

But there are numerous difficulties that can occur in this last leg of the journey. Actually handing over the order can prove to be a more herculean task in certain situations, the causes of which we’ll be discussing later in this article. And these situations typically result in failed deliveries.

Failed deliveries can end in RTO, which can add to your company’s losses and hamper your reputation. To add insult to injury, they can also severely dampen the delivery experience, leaving customers with a bad taste for your brand in their mouth.

That’s why NDR management in eCommerce is such an important function for businesses to consider in their shipping operations, and that’s why we’ll be discussing the ins and outs of NDR management in this article. 

2)Top 10 Most Common Reasons for NDR (Non-Delivery Report) in eCommerce

One of the first steps you need to take when it comes to handling NDRs is determining the potential causes. Customer behavior can be predicted by tracking NDRs based on their various causes.

You would essentially be looking at the possible reasons why an order would not be delivered. While there are occasions where acts of the courier partner or delivery agent may be the cause, more often than not it is the behaviour of customers that leads to a delivery failure.

Understanding the different circumstances under which a failed delivery occurs can help you determine which customers you can approach for a solution and how you can do it.

For example, in a situation where the customer has simply changed their mind about the order, there are almost no chances of delivering that order successfully. With that in mind, here are the most common reasons for e-commerce delivery failures to occur.

2.1)Incomplete or Incorrect Delivery Address

If a customer makes a purchase in a rushed or distracted manner, or if they are maybe unfamiliar with the language of the ecommerce platform, they may make a mistake when filling out the delivery address. This would impair the delivery agent’s ability to reach the delivery destination to hand over the order. 

2.2)Incomplete or Incorrect Customer Contact

A similar difficulty to the one mentioned above could also occur whereby the customer accidentally inputs the wrong phone number. So if and when the delivery agent calls the customer to ask for directions to the delivery location, they would be unable to reach the customer for the same. This would result in the order being marked as NDR. 

2.3)Unavailability of Customer

An order is only considered complete when the order has been handed over to the customer. So when the delivery agent arrives at the customer's location but the customer is not available to receive the product, the order cannot be completed. It then becomes an undelivered order. 

2.4)Delivery Refused By Customer

Customers may exercise their right to reject or refuse an order after purchase if they are unsatisfied with the delivery experience or the condition of the product at the time of delivery.

This is extremely inconvenient to ecommerce businesses but quite common, especially in the case of COD orders. Customers are more likely to refuse an order when the money has not yet been handed over. 

2.5)Customer was Unable to Pay

Another common occurrence with COD orders is that a customer may not be ready with the payment at the time of delivery. This leads to undeliveries as delivery agents cannot typically wait for a customer to acquire the money and make the payment. An alternate delivery time will have to be scheduled or customer may cancel the order. 

2.6)Customer Rescheduled Delivery

In case a customer is unavailable or unable to pay at a particular time or on the date scheduled for delivery, they may choose an alternate date and time for delivery. They would likely communicate this information to the delivery agent at the time of delivery, which the agent would then update as the reason for the NDR.

2.7)Location Out of Delivery Range

Courier partners typically assign delivery agents in accordance with the pre-assigned delivery ranges. In case a destination is found to be outside the delivery range or in a protected zone, the delivery would not be completed. 

2.8)Customer Changed Their Minds

One of the many conveniences of shopping online is that customers can change their minds about their purchases. They can even do so at the time of delivery, which can happen often as they may forget the purchase they made till the arrival or a call from the delivery agent. In such a situation, they may refuse the delivery and then proceed to cancel the order. 

2.9)Customer was Unreachable

In case any difficulties arise in finding the delivery destination for the delivery agent, the delivery agent will try to call the customer to confirm the delivery location. However, if the contact number of the customer is unreachable, the delivery agent would be unable to complete the delivery.  

2.10)Fake Delivery Attempt By Carrier Agent

One of the most problematic NDR types that you will encounter are fake deliveries. This refers to a situation where the delivery agent does not make any attempt to deliver the order to the customer’s address, but still marks the order as a failed delivery. These can hamper customer experience if not addressed quickly and concretely. 

3)How to Solve NDRs Problems in eCommerce Using ClickPost NDR Management?

Now that you have an awareness of how NDRs affect your business and the possible circumstances that create them, you can begin to think about managing them. This essentially requires you to have a clear-cut workflow to deal with NDRs.

As soon as an NDR comes in, you need to be able to respond quickly. You would know which NDR to attempt to resolve based on how it occurred. Then you need to actively reach out to customers to ensure it can be delivered, and let your courier partners in on the conversation after.

Only then is there even a slim chance that a failed delivery can be made successful. However, this is a slow tedious process that can result in disastrously unsuccessful delivery attempts.

ClickPost has perfected this workflow by creating an NDR management tool that automates the entire process. With ClickPosts NDR management software at your disposal, you gain access to the following major features to support your actions.

3.1)Track Your NDRs

Tracking your NDR is vital to addressing delivery exceptions. From the moment an order is notified as an NDR, it needs to be monitored alongside other NDRs so you can determine the progress that is being made to ensure successful delivery. 

3.2)Identify the Reasons for NDRs

With ClickPost’s NDR management software, you can make use of AI to quickly sort through your NDR and classify them in accordance with the reason for their occurrence. This then pushes them to the next response mechanism in the workflow. 

3.3)Employ Specific NDR Support Teams

Different types of NDR need to be handled in different ways. For example, an NDR caused by an address issue requires the customer to provide a landmark for finding the customer’s address.

Customer unavailability requires a new delivery date to be scheduled. Based on the response required by the cause of the NDR, support teams are more easily managed through ClickPost NDR management software. 

3.4)Proactively Reach Out to Customers

The NDR management software offered by ClickPost enables you to reach out to your customers instantaneously. Automatic responses are triggered once an NDR is classified. These responses enable customers to provide issue-specific responses to solve the delivery failure. 

3.5)Track Fake Deliveries

With ClickPost’s NDR Management software tool equipped, you can track fake deliveries separately across all carriers. This enables you to determine which carriers have the biggest problems related to fake deliveries and helps you understand how you can actively reduce fake deliveries. 

4)How Best NDR Management Software and Tools Make NDR Easy to Solve

At the end of the day, you can have a steady workflow for dealing with NDRs but without technological supports, this workflow may prove to be ineffective. This could simply be because of the sheer volume of NDRs that you're dealing with. A major challenge that eCommerce businesses face with NDRs is resolving them quickly.

Another issue that arises is the inaccuracy of information transferred between customers and carriers. All of these problems can be solved by using a mechanism like the ClickPost NDR management software.

With the help of API integrations, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, these issues can be easily solved. Using an NDR management software can give you a leg up on the competition in the ways listed below.

4.1)Receive Real-Time NDR Notifications

NDR management is all about speed. With ClickPost’s NDR management software, you can receive NDR updates as soon as carriers receive the updates. 

4.2)Monitor All NDRs From One Page

Having a single dashboard for monitoring and tracking all NDR ensures you respond to each one appropriately, so none get forgotten or lost. 

4.3)Use of AI to Identify Causes

Using an AI to identify the cause of different NDR and categorize them accordingly allows you to speed up the process of responding. 

4.3)Automated Issue-Specific Queries to Customers

Ensure customers are reached out to more quickly by automating the sending of queries to customers. To simplify the process, issue-specific queries should be sent so they can answer with ease. 

4.4)Update Carrier Agents Immediately

The sooner the carrier receives the customer's answer, the sooner the delivery agent can make a viable delivery attempt. Responses from customers should be automatically sent to carriers for this. 

4.5)Follow Up Each Delivery Attempt

In case the second delivery attempt also fails, it’s important to follow up with customers so they know that the order can still be delivered. This process should be automated to ensure minimal chances of cancellation. 

4.6)Monitor Fake Deliveries

Monitoring fake deliveries is one of the most important parts of handling delivery exceptions as it enables you to reduce fake delivery attempts with help of carriers. 

5)Final Conclusion

While it might be nice to dream of a world with no NDRs, it’s important to remember that it is, in fact, a dream world (or a foreign country like the US).

Online shoppers in India are still getting used to the convenience and delivery mechanisms used by the e-commerce sector. And as a result of that, there are many deliveries that end in failures.

Given that the opportunities to avoid failed deliveries altogether are minimal, the best approach moving forward is to implement NDR management protocols. You would also need to equip yourself with the right tools in the process.

Using an NDR management software tool like the one provided by ClickPost can make a huge difference in your RTO%. Solely through careful handling of NDRs, you can ensure that a majority of your NDRs end with positive results