Things to consider when scaling a delivery business

Communication is the key to any successful business however with delivery it becomes even more important. Every customer wants to know where their delivery is at all times so they can plan their day around it. Gone are the days where they call an expensive call centre up to find out the status of delivery. Use delivery management software to communicate in real-time the status of your customers delivery so they never need to call your support team. This will save you thousands in customer support overheads

Don’t make decisions based on assumptions. Collect data for every part of your delivery business and then let that data tell you what decision to make. How many orders will be expected today and do you have enough drivers? How can you better position your drivers when there is high demand e.g. a pizza shop peak delivery window would be 5pm - 8pm and then you can plan to slowly send drivers home.

Planning and prioritising is not enough, you also need to think about your backup and emergency plans when all of your drivers are busy: Can you have a select number of drivers on call for a higher delivery fee on a Friday night? What about when your customer is not at home is there a quicker way for your driver to call your customer? Every driver will need a courier app on their phone so they can make quick actions to communicate with the customer and get smart routed directions during busy times. If you continue to use paper print outs for  delivery jobs, then your drivers will waste significant time going through each sheet, then entering phone numbers and google map directions manually all while food might be getting cold.

Maximise driver efficiency you need to understand what is the quickest way to move your product through a city. How is parking in your chosen areas? How big are you parcels? Most messengers are on bikes in NYC, scooters or cars in parts of San Francisco and Sydney and cars or vans are ok in areas of Melbourne, Australia. Think again if your business is on-demand furniture in New York City because there will be limited parking, traffic will slow you down and dispatching large bulky items won’t make for a sustainable business model. Perhaps you deliver all sizes and shapes, well make sure the delivery software you build or choose to use can identify which drivers to dispatch which deliveries to.

Your drivers are your brand and they need to be managed like an army corporal manages his troops. Every customer should be automatically sent an SMS or email to be asked to rate their experience. Drivers’ should be rated internally based on their response rates, speed, items per hour, customer rating, delivery issues and lateness.

A well-managed business should always give importance to their customers; their opinion, demand and enquiries should be considered valuable for your business to grow. Look to use a live chat tool like olark so customers can have access to a real human in case of emergencies. This gives them piece of mind and will remove their delivery anxiety. Allow customers to communicate directly with your driver to increase the chances of a fast delivery completion.

Can you deliver within 60 minutes or is it going to be a bit longer? How can you accurately quote an estimated time of arrival? Manage your customer expectations early with an SMS notification to outline a delivery window. As you collect more data this delivery window will become more accurate based on the parameters you set: time of day, weather, driver speed, parcel size, delivery pipeline, driver supply, traffic, previous routes, distance etc.