What Order Fulfillment Reveals About Customer Delivery Experience
Competition is stricter than ever for businesses in the era of eCommerce. If you’re an entrepreneur looking to make your big break, you have to take the extra mile to distinguish yourself from your competition.
While there are many aspects of your business that this depends on, there are two that affect it the most: delivery experience and overall order fulfillment. In this article, we will talk about their significance in the success of any eCommerce brand today.
First things first: what is order fulfillment?
Order fulfillment, at its simplest definition, is the set of processes that your customers go through from the moment they place an order with you, up until they receive their item. This can be different for each type of business, but the most common steps of an order fulfillment cycle are as follows:
- Order processing is when your company receives an order placed in-person or through your website.
- This next step can differ, depending on what form of order fulfillment you take. If you’re doing it in-house, this step would be the preparation of the item for delivery. If you are using outsourced order fulfillment, which means you’re enlisting the help of a third-party logistics service provider, this is the part when the service provider will pick up the item for delivery.
- Next, the item undergoes packaging, facilitated by either your own team or a logistics delivery merchant.
- After this is the shipping of the item, usually fulfilled by a third-party delivery service provider.
- The last phase is one you should try to avoid as much as possible: when buyers request and process returns for any damaged products or missing items.
Why is order fulfillment important?
What makes order fulfillment an essential aspect of business is that it serves as a defining factor on whether you will earn return customers or not. It makes or breaks a customer’s delivery experience, if you will. While the process of convincing someone to make a purchase for the first time has its own challenges, an even more difficult stage is to ensure that a buyer uses your services or orders your products again.
An efficient order fulfillment process is the key to this problem. Customer trust is built on the outcome of the very first delivery experience—so if your order fulfillment matches their expectations, you’re more likely to grow and sustain your market by having more return customers.
A well-outlined order fulfillment process also lends itself well to new customers, as this level of transparency can build a sense of trust and reassurance. That being said, having an efficient order fulfillment procedure would also positively impact your business’s reputation, boosting your sales and new customer interest.
Fulfill more orders by outsourcing
This is less of a hack than it is a practical judgment call, but it’s always a good strategy to enlist assistance from a third-party service provider who specializes in efficient, top-notch order fulfillment. In-house fulfillment may be appealing if you prefer full end-to-end control over your business’s whole operation. However, if you’re a small business with a very limited manpower, why not try outsourcing?
At most, three of the five phases of order fulfillment can be tasked to Philippines-based courier services, namely: the pick-up, packaging, and shipping. MyKartero, specifically, offers door pick-up for our partners, and we ship to both domestic and international addresses. Want to track the movement of your products in transit? No worries: We offer easy tracking of packages, and have a reliable customer service you can contact anytime.
From offering competitive prices and fast shipping times, to making sure our website is accessible and easy-to-use, we are here to make life easier for entrepreneurs like yourself. Try our services by booking us today.
