How Courier Management Software Drives E-Commerce Success

Introduction

Cracking the code of courier management is hard! It’s almost like playing chess with a clock ticking. Each move, like selecting the best courier service provider, order creation, courier tracking, and customer communication, needs to be performed carefully, and e-commerce deliveries should be done on time. 

When you have just a few number of orders, the process is still manageable. However, as order volume grows (say 1000 orders/day), the real challenge begins. You need to have a proper courier management strategy in place to improve your delivery service and customer satisfaction in e-commerce deliveries. Because efficient management of e-commerce deliveries becomes an absolute necessity when businesses scale. 

Sounds tricky? Well, it’s not. You need a strong grasp of the fundamentals of courier management. In this article, we will dig into the basics, like what courier management is, the common challenges associated with it, and how e-commerce businesses can improve this process. 

Let’s get straight into it. 

What Is Courier Management?

Courier Management is the process of overseeing and optimizing parcel delivery from warehouses to customers. To put it simply, when a customer places an order, it goes through multiple stages and then finally reaches the destination. 

Many components are included in this delivery process. These are carrier allocation, order monitoring, failed delivery management, taking care of customer satisfaction, and so on. 

A typical delivery process looks like this:

The order details are captured in the backend of the online store→ The package is dispatched → It is tracked in real time → Delivery exceptions are navigated → Agents contact customers → The parcel is delivered → POD is captured. 

You need to develop a solid courier management strategy to efficiently handle all these components of this journey. If any of them is overlooked, it might disrupt customer satisfaction and reduce the operational efficiency of your delivery service. 

In essence, the main goals behind adopting efficient courier management are to enhance delivery speed, reduce shipping costs, and improve customer satisfaction, which is crucial for the growth of e-commerce businesses. 

5 Courier Management Challenges Online Stores Need to Overcome

Delivery operations apparently look simple. In reality, it comes with a number of challenges that might hold e-commerce businesses back from achieving an efficient delivery process. Here, we’ve mentioned a few of them:

1. High operational costs

Shipping is one of the most expensive parts online store owners deal with. This is because it includes multiple complex components like last-mile delivery, vehicle maintenance, labor management, and lots more. Each involves significant costs. Now, suppose there are some additional customer expectations associated with it like customized packaging and requests for same day delivery and next-day delivery. In that case, they add an additional expense layer to the shipping costs. 

2. Scalability problems

E-commerce order volumes fluctuate significantly from time to time due to factors like seasonal sales, flash deals, holiday rushes, or unexpected viral trends. This variability makes it hard for eCommerce businesses to manage shipping operations. During peak seasons, you might face resource constraints, which will further cause delivery delays and delivery errors. It might even harm customer satisfaction. However, during slow periods, it can lead to underutilized resources and higher operational costs. 

3. Tracking issues

If you’re dealing with just a handful of orders and a single courier service provider, order tracking doesn’t seem like a challenge.  The real problem begins when you manually start managing thousands of orders across multiple courier companies. You will find yourself juggling various portals, each having its own format and process. Next, consolidating that information and sending it to shoppers adds another layer of complexity. 

As a result, it hinders you from getting real-time tracking information. Not only that, you will also not be able to send checkpoint-specific order tracking alerts to shoppers, which might erode their trust in your delivery service. 

4. Delayed & stuck shipments

Both internal and external factors can influence the fulfillment process. If not managed properly, they can delay the order fulfillment journey. For instance, internal problems such as incorrect shipping labels, overwhelmed warehouse operations during peak times, or discrepancies in inventory management can hinder a shipment from successfully reaching its destination. 

On the flip side, external factors like bad weather conditions, traffic congestion, and political strikes delay the fulfillment journey and create a mess in the process. 

5. Failed Deliveries

Failed e-commerce deliveries are inevitable in last mile delivery. This can happen for various reasons, like incorrect delivery addresses, customers not being available at the time of delivery, access restrictions, and more. These failed e-commerce deliveries not only affect the customers’ experience but also increase operational costs due to the need for redelivery and reverse logistics. 

How Courier Management Software Fuels Ecommerce Success?

As you saw in the previous section, various types of challenges can come up in the courier management journey. If you want to make it smoother and keep customers happy, you will need to mitigate these hurdles. 

But how will you manage these setbacks with limited effort and investment? The simplest way is to go for a robust courier management system. A courier service management platform streamlines the delivery process, ensures faster deliveries, and ultimately enhances customer satisfaction.

Here's how ClickPost Offers You Effortless Courier Management Solution?

ClickPost is a multi-carrier logistics intelligence platform that aims to be the complete OS platform in the future. It comes integrated with 500+ logistics providers worldwide, meaning, you can go live with any carrier within just 1 day and start your delivery operations. Plus, it’s also connected with various e-commerce platforms, WMS, OMS, and CRM systems. Over 450 eCommerce brands rely on ClickPost to make their delivery operations more efficient. 

ClickPost offers APIs to perform tasks like order creation, shipment monitoring, customer notifications, NDR (Non-delivery management) management, returns management, and more. It also allows you to customize messages in shoppers’ native language, so you can improve customer satisfaction. You can even customize the tracking page to improve your brand awareness. On this page, you can show personalized product recommendations to drive post-purchase sales. 

After order fulfillment, this courier management system automatically fetches NPS scores from customers and provides in-depth analytics on every task. 

Final Verdict!

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a budding online store owner or a successful entrepreneur running multiple e-commerce sites; you need to pay the utmost attention to courier management. Because it is the most hectic and complicated part of the entire ecosystem. However, with proper strategy and technology integration, online businesses can make it easier and streamlined. Furthermore, they can also gain a competitive edge in this fierce eCommerce industry. 

Hence, it’s a smart idea to go for courier management software. These tools ensure delivery success and massive cost savings by streamlining processes related to logistics. 

Though you will find tens of thousands of courier service management platforms with a simple Google search, not all of them will be suitable for your business. You’ll have to evaluate their features, look into your shipping budget, and then go for the one that suits you the best. At the same time, don’t forget to consider the cost efficiency while evaluating the platform and ensure that it synchronizes with your existing systems with ease. Good luck!