4 Easy Ways You Can Overcome Last-Mile Delivery Challenges

It goes without saying that providing a good last-mile experience helps clients engage and stay loyal, as well as stimulates repeat purchases. According to statistics, pleased clients spend more on delivery fees for faster delivery and buy more frequently. Making a flawless last-mile delivery, on the other hand, is easier said than done.

The last-mile is the most costly link in the supply chain, and it has expenses that vary. This means that the cost of delivering last-mile services rises in tandem with the increase in delivery volume and demand for faster deliveries. As a result, it can have a dramatic impact on your profit margins.

Last-mile expenditures could account for 41% of total supply chain expenditure, according to Capgemini, which is more than double any other area of expenditures, such as warehousing or packing.

Furthermore, many logistics companies lose money on last-mile deliveries because they subsidize delivery to gain market dominance. According to a Statista poll, the major problem they have in providing last-mile delivery is cutting down on logistics costs.

However, if you want to stay in the race, you must continue to provide a faster delivery service. 55% of your clients may transfer to a competitor for considerably faster delivery.

You also cannot afford a single delivery that is late. According to a Voxware survey, 62 percent of respondents are less likely to place an order if their goods would not arrive on time. That’s not a good sign.

So, how can you overcome the problems of last-mile delivery? How can you fulfill your consumers faster while lowering your last-mile delivery costs?

Read on to find out.

Table of Contents

• Automate Your Warehouse Operations
• Optimize Your Delivery Routes
• Recruit a Scalable, Flexible and Collaborative Delivery Team
• Keep Your Customers Informed

Automate Your Warehouse Operations

You can cut expenses, fulfillment errors, and order-to-dispatch time-frames by automating your warehouse processes. According to statistics, by lowering fulfillment costs and increasing throughput, you can increase your profit margin by at least 8%, depending on the automation type chosen.

For example, human labour accounts for the majority of warehouse costs, and the majority of worker time is spent wandering about picking up goods. As your firm grows, the volume and traffic in your warehouse increase, making the pick-and-pack procedure more difficult. As a result, you must reduce the amount of visits your staff make in your warehouse to boost production and efficiency.

An automated technology solution, such as a route planner, will make it easier for your personnel to locate orders in your warehouse, no matter where they are. This type of software includes a sophisticated algorithm that uses mapping data to generate effective routes for your employees to follow.

Simply define the number and categories of products in each section of your warehouse, bin, or cabinet, and the route planner software will direct your robotic loader or human operator to the nearest inventory pick point.

Multiple pick-and-pack tactics, including single-order and multi-order batch picking, order consolidation, and more, are supported by a powerful route optimizer.

Optimize Your Delivery Routes

Delays in deliveries, disgruntled clients, and a loss of income and profits are all consequences of doing your deliveries using poor routes. This is why, in order to make seamless and cost-effective final-mile deliveries, route optimization is essential.

Because your drivers will not be trapped in traffic or encounter other bottlenecks on the road, well-planned routes will allow them to make more stops and deliveries.

Optimizing routes with pen and paper is never a good idea because there are too many shifting parts to consider when planning routes that can’t be factored in manually. For deliveries, neither Apple Maps nor Google Maps can be of assistance.

As a result, you should employ a last-mile delivery software that can automate your truck routing and scheduling procedure while requiring minimal effort from you.

Simply select your orders, or upload a list of customer addresses, choose your parameters, and the route planner will provide well-optimized, accurate routes with turn-by-turn directions.

And the best part is, it only takes seconds to complete this operation as oppose to the hours it would take to do it manually.

Route planners even have a geocoding option that corrects incorrect addresses automatically. As a result, you’ll never have to worry about your customers’ addresses being incorrect again, and unsuccessful deliveries will be a thing of the past.

A last-mile delivery app can also help you assign a balanced task to your drivers, ensuring that everyone is well-equipped with deliveries, no one is overworked or under-worked, and no empty vehicles are driving around.

Multi-stop route planners also increase the safety of drivers. For example, you’d be alerted anytime a driver becomes stranded on the road due to a traffic accident or car breakdown. You can then dispatch roadside help right away. This will also assist you in determining which routes need to be re-optimized to ensure that no deliveries are harmed.

That’s not all, though. An intelligent delivery route planner comes with a slew of other capabilities, like customer delivery notifications, proof of delivery features, route scheduling, and more!

Recruit a Scalable, Flexible and Collaborative Delivery Team

While the sharing economy has changed the delivery scene, many merchants are finding that the growing field of alternative delivery providers isn’t serving their demands in a long-term way. They have poor unit economics, are restricted in size, and have little adaptability.

This is why you need a last-mile delivery workforce that is flexible, scalable, and has a nationwide reach. It shouldn’t also require you to spend millions on infrastructure or personnel.

A collaborative delivery strategy is an option. When compared to other delivery options, this strategy will enable you to leverage your existing resources, such as customers, workers, and people in the local community within close proximity to the warehouse, as flexible and more inexpensive workforce choices.

Not only will this increase conversions and customer satisfaction, but it will also improve last-mile delivery speed.

Keep Your Customers Informed

Another significant issue with last-mile delivery is delivery failure. According to reports, 63 percent of all failed deliveries are due to the customer’s inability to accept the product.

Every unsuccessful delivery adds to the overall logistics operation’s expenditures. This includes time for re-delivery, transportation, fuel, and storage/warehouse time. Furthermore, if the delivery fails permanently, more costs are incurred in the provider’s return process and customer assistance.

According to the research, 4.7 percent of deliveries fail, costing $16.58 every missed delivery in the United States, for a total annual cost of over $200,000 in the United States. That’s a lot of dough!

So what can you do?

You can phone your clients to give them an estimated delivery time period once their packages are out for delivery. You can also phone consumers to remind them; however, such repeated calls may irritate some customers.

Adopting delivery scheduling software that helps simplify the notification process would be a preferable solution. The best delivery route planners include a customer alerting and notification option that allows you to notify your clients when their products are approaching.

Consider EasyRoutes

EasyRoutes is one of the best route planners. It is integrated directly with Shopify‘s backend so as soon as you open the app, your customer orders are right there at your fingertips. Just select the orders you want to delivery, specify how many routes you want, and EasyRoutes will handle the rest. Generate optimized delivery routes in seconds that you can share with a driver or deliver yourself! EasyRoutes is a 2x Shopify Staff Pick.