Avoid These 6 Delivery Mistakes With a Route Planner

It’s all about efficiency when it comes to running a delivery business. To make a profit, you must avoid making as many delivery mistakes as possible.

Delivery services frequently make blunders such as drivers becoming lost, dispatchers not being able to track their drivers, and consumers not being able to track their orders. Such errors could tarnish your reputation and jeopardize your company’s future.

You can avoid these and other problems by using a route planner:

Table of Contents

• Delivery Mistake #1: Using Incorrect Addresses
• Delivery Mistake #2: Keeping Customers in the Dark
• Delivery Mistake #3: Using Routes That Aren’t Optimized
• Delivery Mistake #4: Using On-Premises Software
• Delivery Mistake #5: Using Paper Slips as Proof of Delivery
• Delivery Mistake #6: Not Using EasyRoutes

Delivery Mistake #1: Using Incorrect Addresses

Your driver will have a hard time getting to the customer on time if they are starting out with an bad address.

Bad addresses happen for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it’s the fault of the customer. They may make an error when entering their order information and there really isn’t much you can do to prevent this.

Sometimes it’s the fault of the business manually entering in a customer’s addresses. Doing things by hand is a time-consuming and difficult operation.

After an hour of mind-numbing number-crunching, it’s easy to write in “2882” instead of “2828.” A small blunder like this could cause a driver to be late and several clients to be dissatisfied. Being late to one-stop will often make your driver late to their following stops as well. It’s a compounding problem.

Fortunately, you can automate the data transmission process with EasyRoutes Local Delivery Routes Planner. It is seamlessly integrated with Shopify and your orders. There’s no way you’ll make a data entry mistakes this way.

A good multi-stop route planner solution will have an address verification function. This will alert you to any addresses that appear to be inaccurate, giving you the opportunity to fix them before your optimized route is built.

Delivery Mistake #2: Keeping Customers in the Dark

Customers didn’t expect much a decade or two ago. They were satisfied with an order as long as it arrived within a day or two of the scheduled delivery date.

However, customers have been increasingly demanding in recent years. They anticipate the arrival of their orders with bated breath. They want to know the order status and where it is at all times during the delivery process.

Give your customers exactly what they’re looking for. Keep them informed.

The best route planners have a customer alerting and notification option, which sends a notification to your customer when your driver is on his way and when their stuff arrives. They’ll be grateful for the notification.

Delivery Mistake #3: Using Routes That Aren’t Optimized

It is difficult to plan a route. It’s not only about finding out which roads your drivers must drive down to get to your consumers. Other issues to consider are traffic, weather, construction, customer-selected delivery times, etc.

Because there is so much to consider, the routes you devise on your own are unlikely to be 100 percent efficient. However, there’s no reason to go it alone.

A route optimizer ensures that every route your drivers take is the most efficient possible. To visit all of your customers, you won’t require as much gas. You’ll be able to reduce costs while increasing your profit margin.

Delivery Mistake #4: Using On-Premises Software

It’s not ideal to have to install a map route planner installed on a computer back at the office. You won’t be able to access your data if there’s ever a significant problem, such as a fire, flood, or power outage. You’ll also need to invest in more expensive equipment if you ever need to scale up.

A better alternative for your company is cloud-based route planning software like EasyRoutes that you can access from anywhere. You can always access your data, from wherever, no matter what happens to your office. And scaling up is also simpler and more economical, as it can be done at the push of a button. It is not necessary to purchase new equipment.

Delivery Mistake #5: Using Paper Slips as Proof of Delivery

Using pen and paper to collect delivery confirmations can be difficult. For one thing, it’s quite easy to misplace paper slips.

What will you do if a customer disputes a delivery, your driver confirms the delivery, and then you realize you’ve misplaced the confirmation slip? You can either trust your driver and alienate the customer, or you can trust the customer and alienate your driver in that case. There isn’t a viable alternative.

Using a route planner with digital proof of delivery features, like photo capture, makes it virtually impossible to misplace confirmations now. You’ll always know what happened when there’s a disagreement.

Delivery Mistake #6: Not Using EasyRoutes

EasyRoutes is a delivery route planner app for local deliveries that makes it simple to create a route. You may then take your routes and share them with drivers, or you can deliver them yourself using our mobile-friendly driver mode.

Shopify and your store’s orders are effortlessly integrated with EasyRoutes. You won’t have to waste time exporting and importing spreadsheets anymore. Simply select the orders you want to deliver, and EasyRoutes will calculate the most cost-effective delivery route.

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You’re ready to go once you’ve finished creating your routes. Your stops have already been optimized to provide you with the most efficient path!

Do you need to make any adjustments? It’s no problem! EasyRoutes comes with a comprehensive set of editing tools, allowing you to personalize the route to your heart’s delight. You can add and edit stops, drag and drop stops to reorganize them, and even break your orders into several routes.

You can either distribute the routes personally or share links to the routes with your drivers once you’ve done any adjustments and are satisfied with them.