Ways to Fulfil Customer Orders Quicker

In a world in which more and more people are ordering products online, you are likely to find that your eCommerce business is facing a whole host of stiff competition. Not only is this coming from the leaders in the field, such as Amazon, but you are also likely to find yourself challenged by a whole host of small businesses as well. So, if you can improve your customer order fulfillment time, this is obviously going to stand you in good stead in all sorts of different ways.

Fully Understand the Time Taken to Fulfil Orders 

To start off with, it is worth working out how long you are taking to fulfill orders. However, you cannot do this in isolation. You also need to work out why it is taking this long if there are any hold-ups along the way, and how these can be cut back on. There are several different aspects of this to bear in mind. First of all, you have the source and production time at your own company. You also have the delivery time to bear in mind. Once you have all of this, you can use it to provide a realistic estimate to customers of how long their orders are going to take to arrive. This is important as you do not want to risk overpromising and underdelivering, which is always going to be a major problem to businesses. 

Think About Your Returns Policy 

Many businesses are understandably concerned about how easily that they can get their stock out. As a result, their return policies are often somewhat lackluster. You should certainly bear in mind that the fulfillment of an order does not end when your customer receives it. The endpoint is when the customer gets their order and is happy with it. Along the way, they may need to return their order for an exchange or a complete refund. Customers may even be checking out the returns policy before they commit to ordering from a particular company, so this is also certainly worth bearing firmly in mind. 

Carry Enough Stock 

When you no longer have any stock, this immediately presents a problem as customers are more impatient than ever these days and are highly likely to look elsewhere if they can. One way that you can prevent this particular problem from happening to your business is through the idea of safety stock. Essentially, this means that you continually have a set number of items forever in stock. However, this is a difficult balancing act to strike as you do not want to get into the situation in which you are simply carrying too much stock, as this can end up running up your warehouse bills. Plus, there is the risk that it is going to expire, which is an issue if you have perishable products. Ultimately, better management and understanding of your data can certainly play a big role in ensuring that your business is always well-stocked. 

Organize Your Warehouse 

No matter whether your ‘warehouse’ is a spare room in your home or you have an actual facility, it is worth organizing it as much as possible. One way of doing this is by organizing your stock depending on how quickly it is generally sold and dispatched. This way, you can make sure that you maintain an adequate stock of all of your fast-moving items. Another option is to put the items that are commonly ordered together side-by-side. Ultimately, proper stock organization can play a big role in cutting back the amount of time that you spend processing each order, which can help you to get them out much more quickly. Further down the line, you can find truck loads that work.

Use Automation Where Possible 

Automation has become a common feature of modern businesses, and it makes sense that you use it to its fullest advantage. If you think back to the days in which every single order would have had to have been inputted manually, it is clear that we have moved forward by lightyears. By automating some of the most mundane and repetitive tasks, your employees will be left free to focus on the other aspects of the fulfillment process that require more creative and/or lateral thinking. There are various aspects of automation that can help out, including the generation of invoices, order confirmation emails, and reminders. Plus, automation has the natural advantage of reducing human error and the role that this can inevitably play in certain business activities. 

Minimize Warehouse Decision-Making

What does it mean when we talk about minimizing warehouse decision-making? Well, it is all about how you can make the lives of your employees that little bit more straightforward. When tasks make sense and can be easily replicated, this reduces the likelihood that they are going to be completed successfully. However, if any protracted decision-making is thrown into the mix, this can inevitably lead to complications that could have otherwise been avoided. A few areas that it does not help for your employees to be thinking about include deciding which orders to fulfil and in which order, seeking out product locations that are more obscure, working out which packaging should be used for each order, and deciding on the best shipping method for the order. An order management system is an invaluable tool that can really play a positive role in the overall running of your business. 

Set Out Your Metrics 

Without measuring how successfully you are doing your job, you are always going to struggle to make all of the necessary improvements along the way. You will want to check out a whole host of different factors, including the percentage of on-time order shipments, the average delivery lead time, the fulfillment cost per order, the order error rate, the inventory turnover, return rate and processing time, customer retention rate, and overall customer satisfaction levels. 

Hopefully, the above advice has helped you out in your task of fulfilling customer orders as quickly and effectively as you possibly can.