The shopping trends have changed drastically in the past few years, especially during the pandemic months importance of e-commerce has amplified to a large extent.
Now, you can get absolutely anything delivered to your doorstep with just the click of a button or tap on a phone. Ecommerce giants like Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba, are now ensuring that you get your required commodities within a maximum of two days and if not just in time. E-commerce companies are setting standards for your customers with lightning-fast same-day delivery, real-time tracking, and minimum shipping costs. The rising e-commerce effect and the unprecedented consumer expectations have altered several aspects of the supply chain, including freight forwarding, warehousing, logistics, and last-mile delivery. Another important factor in e-commerce is the reverse logistics that you need to focus on being a freight forwarder.
Online sales are expected to continue to rise and it is estimated that the world retail e-commerce sales with exceeding $7.3 trillion by 2025. According to Gartner, online customer experience is now considered as a cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, networks, systems, seamless delivery process, reverse logistics, and products. Now, your customers are raising questions when an e-commerce company can provide them such a pleasing online shopping experience at a minimum delivery cost, and next-day delivery why can’t a freight forwarder? Doesn’t matter if it is a local delivery or cross border.
The exponential growth of e-commerce and customer demand are major causes that you should prepare yourself to meet the future influx of demand and delivery expectations.
The shift in consumers' expectations
With the online retailers opting for just-in-time delivery and suppliers’ multiple storage facilities to meet local needs, you need to change the way how shipping and delivery are fundamentally done as freight forwarders. So to meet the new standards for e-commerce and freight forwarding, you need to bring in certain changes in your business processes as a freight forwarder.
- Customer-first approach
- Provide transparency in the supply chain with advanced tracking and order management
- On-time delivery and seamless returns policy
- Lower costs to maximize profit
- Optimizing routes and pricing
- Real-time visibility
- Seamless collaboration among stakeholders
Automation as a solution
As a progressive forwarder, you need to adopt the best practices and solutions to cope with the growing and changing new logistical tactics before you are out-competed.
Major online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba are turning to automation and setting standards with the drone and same-day delivery. The robotic delivery services are the upcoming trend since the pandemic as a means of contactless delivery. Furthermore, we are witnessing the increasing use of big data solutions to help you collect data in real-time for analysis and better decision-making. Again, e-commerce has increased the use of mobile for not only digital payment methods, but also alerts and notifications. Likewise, your customers are also expecting all the details about their shipments on mobile applications.
Above all, customer communication is now more important for you than ever before, as e-commerce companies are leaving no stone unturned to provide customer collaboration and customized services.