The market nowadays is highly competitive, and I assume you understand that already. This further means that, of course, speed and reliability when it comes to deliveries are no longer luxuries, but actual necessities. If you don’t meet customers’ expectations, your competitors will, and you will, consequently, start losing business to them, which can’t be good for the company. So, one of your main tasks is to not only understand how delivery delays impact customer trust, but also to learn how to avoid the pitfalls.
Of course, there is one simply solution to avoiding delays, and it consists of you, naturally, partnering up with the right company. If, for example, you are running a pharmacy, you know how important it is to make the deliveries on time, but you should also learn more about how great experts ensure that those are also completed in accordance with the HIPAA standards, thus keeping your business safe and reputable. Clearly, thus, choosing the right partner is a must.
Yet, there are some specific reasons why delays may happen, even if you do have a great partner on your side. Or, perhaps even if you think that you do, but you’re not sure what that means. Understanding why delays happen will, therefore, also help you choose the right partner for your pharmacy, or basically for any other company that you may be running. This is why you have to learn a bit more about that, and this is why we are going to discuss the very topic below.
Why Delivery Delays Happen
So, why is it that delivery delays happen? Well, there are a lot of factors that play a role in that. So, there are a lot of pitfalls to avoid, but we will get to that later, after discussing how those delays are sure to impact customer trust. For now, let us just take a look at why they can happen in the first place.
First things first, supply chain disruptions can be a huge reasons. I’m talking raw material shortages, factory shutdowns, international shipping delays, as well as any other potential pitfalls that you could encounter along the way. Then, there are factors such as natural disasters and other unexpected occurrences that can make this problem even worse.
Read about some reasons here as well: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/common-reasons-delayed-shipments-from-freight-forwarding-lydia-liu/
Furthermore, you could be dealing with some transportation bottlenecks. Those include things like limited trucking capacity, dense traffic and similar. Of course, when you partner up with the right courier service for your pharmacy, or another company, they should do their best to optimize the transportation process in order to avoid those delays, so you can expect this issue to be resolved.
Apart from all of that, there is always the risk of human error. People can make mistakes in packaging, labeling, as well as order picking and transporting the products. Automation can help with this, and so can, once again, partnering up with couriers that use AI driven data to structure their delivery processes and ensure that they are doing great work for you.
Technology can also fail sometimes, that’s for sure. But, the truth is that the risk of that is much lower than the risk of human error. And, the idea is for you to keep your systems updated, as well as for those couriers to do the same, so as to avoid those failures, and thus avoid delays.
How They Impact Customer Trust
How do these affect customer trust to begin with, though? Well, this should be perfectly logical already, but let me mention it anyway. For one thing, when the deliveries aren’t made on time, people are sure to start trusting you less and less, especially if this keeps on being repeated. This, then, has a negative impact on customer loyalty, and basically leads to less repeat business.
It doesn’t stop there, though. People talk. And, if you’re not meeting their expectations, they will talk even more, telling other potential customers how you left them disappointed time and time again, which is never good for business, and especially not for pharmacies, or other companies in the healthcare industry. All of this is sure to lead to them switching to your competitors, and your overall brand reputation will be damaged, which can make it difficult for you to gain new and retain existing customers, and to, thus, stay profitable on today’s market.
How to Avoid Them
As you may have guessed it already, most of these pitfalls can be avoided through partnering up with the right courier company that will take care of the delivery process successfully and efficiently. Make sure to choose those that have experience in your industry, as well as those that are using various tech solutions to optimize their routes and the entire process, and that have a great reputation themselves. This way, you’ll avoid delays and keep your customers happy.
