Enterprise Shipping Automation Improves Customer Experience
Posted by Rachel Rodenborg on Fri, Sep 16, 2011 @ 09:36 AM
While enterprise shipping may not seem to have a direct effect on customer experience, it does. Consider shipping automation. A feature that is often billed as a way to improve a shipping department’s productivity and increase throughput, shipping automation drives an improved customer experience as well.
Think about how a shipment is processed in a non-automated system. It’s riddled with errors—and as we all know, errors almost never make the customer happy.
Error opportunity #1: The shipper has to pull the order and then manually enter the shipping address into a carrier-specific shipping system. Did the shipping clerk enter the right address? Was all the information entered correctly? Was the right service type selected?
Error opportunity #2: Now that the package is gone, the shipping clerk must either pass the order along to accounting for removal from inventory or the clerk must adjust the inventory levels herself. What if the phone rings and the clerk is distracted and doesn’t enter the item as shipped? What if the wrong quantity is removed from inventory? (If this doesn’t seem like an issue that might impact customer experience, think about the customer that places an order for an item that the site says is in stock but really isn’t.)
Error opportunity #3: Customers like to know that their order has shipped and when to expect it to arrive. What if the clerk doesn’t send the shipping confirmation email? What if the clerk includes the wrong tracking number?
The Solution
Enterprise shipping automation fixes all of these issues. Through integration, order information is pulled from the ERP system and automatically populated in the shipping platform, eliminating the need to rekey and the chance that something is entered incorrectly. When the order is shipped, the integrated enterprise shipping system pushes critical order information back to the ERP to remove items from inventory, mark the order as complete, and record tracking information. At this point, the system also generates an automated notification email and sends it to the customer so that he/she knows that the order is on its way.
Automation not only improves productivity and increases an enterprise shipping department’s day-to-day throughput, it also eliminates a number of opportunities for errors that disappoint the customer and lower the customer’s perception of doing business with you.
So, tell me: Why isn’t your shipping system automated?
Learn more about how to revolutionize your enterprise shipping department—watch the on-demand webinar, Seeing (Shipping) is Believing!
