It’s been called the “Amazonification” of the industry. The eCommerce giant Amazon has set new standards for shipping speed. That said, while speed of delivery is still a requirement, consumers are placing more emphasis on shipping transparency, according to a McKinsey & Company survey. What’s more, the same survey found that about half of consumers track the status of their orders, making accurate freight tracking a necessity.
For any business shipping freight, the cost to meet these expectations is significant.
Businesses are being crippled by labour costs, as the need to hire, onboard, train and retain customer service professionals increases – along with the demand to keep buyers informed at all stages of the purchase cycle. Any business failing to do both of these adequately is going to battle with customer dissatisfaction as we move into a new era of direct freight tracking and logistics management.
These higher customer demands can mean a lot of headaches and unique challenges for businesses trying to manage communication at scale. Whether you’re a retailer, a 3PL or a freight broker — the challenge is unavoidable: how do we give customers the confidence they need when buying online?
In this blog, we will cover the biggest problem with freight tracking and how technology can help you solve the challenge. Continue reading to uncover insights that will give you back more of your time (and money) back to focus on customer satisfaction and business growth.
Freight tracking for online retailers
As eCommerce becomes the standard way of shopping for households, one major challenge has arisen for merchants: the customer experience. How do businesses selling goods online give their shoppers the instant gratification, trust, and satisfaction that they would experience when buying products in real-time from brick-and-mortar businesses?
A huge piece of the answer is more accurate freight tracking and better communications with customers. But the costs associated with this are substantial and many merchants are forced to cut corners. Sending a tracking code is no longer an adequate way for brands to keep their customers informed in the post-purchase journey. A report by SOTI reveals that 77% of Australian shoppers expect complete transparency about their online order’s location throughout the entire delivery process.
Customers want real-time visibility and they want to know:
- When exactly am I going to get my goods?
- How will I know where my parcel is?
- What will happen if my shipment doesn’t arrive?
You need to squeeze as much value as possible out of every tool in your arsenal to create the high level of experience that customers expect.
The benefit of using MachShip’s freight tracking software is that it enables online retailers to send out branded communications that keep customers informed and excited about their orders, regardless of which freight carrier is used.
MachShip also integrates with 500+ Australian carriers and makes customer satisfaction, at scale, a simple and achievable for most businesses. To have one of our team show you how Machship can help your business with freight tracking book a demo today.
Freight tracking for large enterprises
For larger companies, the challenges of freight tracking visibility, cost efficiency and customer communication around tracking are enormous. To make your freight operations more efficient, it’s crucial that you have easy access to the shipping information you need. This is where technology comes to the rescue — in the form of a sophisticated freight tracking system.
Enterprise businesses can use MachShip to arm their customer service department with fast and reliable tracking information to give customers a much better experience.
Example one: Manage multiple sites with ease
Using the MachShip parent-child structure, you can set up a head office as the ‘parent company’ with distribution centres and other locations added underneath it. Once this is set up, the customer service team can jump in and get immediate access to all the company sites and all of the carriers’ tracking information in one consolidated dashboard.
Having this single aggregation point can also reduce your freight operations costs significantly. Your employees will be able to make better decisions, faster and say goodbye to hours of manual labour every day.
Example two: Track your consignments in real-time with live dashboards
Any good freight carrier knows it’s essential to be aware of any issues before you hear about them from your customers.
MachShip allows you to create a ‘late consignments’ dashboard, displaying all outstanding consignments that have exceeded the delivery ETA. This can be filtered to a particular time frame post ETA (e.g. two days overdue) and filtered by carrier so you can make decisions based on performance.
You could also set up a consolidated ‘active consignments’ dashboard. This feature will enable you to pinpoint any active consignment just by entering a few simple details.
Example three: Receive proof of delivery data as soon as the package hits the shop floor
A carrier may provide proof of delivery (POD), but that doesn’t always mean it hits your system in time for you to track it meaningfully.
MachShip can automatically receive PODs in real time with a quick and easy API integration. PODs can also be sent to your ERP, or other systems your organisation uses.
Freight tracking for Freight Brokers and 3PL companies
Customer satisfaction is also vital for freight brokers and 3PLs looking to grow their business. Providing exceptional visibility on the tracking of goods is the centre of the bullseye, but this becomes very challenging as the business scales and variables expand.
Things become much more challenging for freight brokers and 3PLs overseeing many customers’ shipping needs at scale. This includes many customers, using many different carriers, shipping all sorts of freight types — across Australia and internationally.
As a supplier, it’s your job to serve your customers and manage the relationships with carriers on their behalf. So, you need a way to drill down and look at the freight status for any individual customer — along with many, many other customers.
Fortunately, a solution exists. At MachShip we provide a consolidated dashboard to save you time and help you provide a much better service to your customers.
With the MachShip parent-child structure (a company tree that users can configure within the platform), you can easily segregate customers, business units or despatch sites and gain visibility on the important tracking information you need such as DIFOT (delivered in full and on time), one of the major KPIs for carriers.
While you’re following every step using MachShip’s dashboards, your end receiver can also be kept in the loop via a fully branded tracking notification page. This reduces the amount of tracking requirements you receive and helps set clear customer expectations.
Get the freight tracking certainty you need with MachShip
MachShip is a cloud-based platform that allows you to see everything you need in one place — and to communicate with your customers at all of the critical post-purchase delivery milestones.To see how MachShip can help your business grow, book a demo with one of our freight tracking specialists today.