Let’s look into what is order fulfillment and how it can be improved in each of the areas involved in the process.
- What is order fulfillment?
- Tips to improve your order fulfillment process
What is Order Fulfillment?
If a sales order is a request by a customer for certain items then an order fulfillment is a response by which the seller or shipper provides the physical items required by the order to the destination requested
- What is order fulfillment?
- Tips to improve your order fulfillment process
What’s there to improve?
At the end of the day, a retailer or eCommerce business needs a strive towards customer delight. True customer delight is accomplished by
How the entire order fulfillment process works?
QC - The secret weapon
At the end of the day, a retailer or eCommerce business needs a strive towards customer delight. True customer delight is accomplished by
- Items are in good shape
- Items are in the sellable form
- Right items are received
- Right quantity is received
Effective Shipping
At the end of the day, a retailer or eCommerce business needs a strive towards customer delight. True customer delight is accomplished by
- Maintain a delicate balance of cost and speed
- Set shipping ETA expectations with your customs and strive to exceed them. Too high an ETA leads to cart abandonment
- Consider premium shipping cost versus return losses
- Classify your items based on weight, size, and packing requirements. Use shipping service based to each class
- Use free shipping tactics wisely. Evaluate margins before you apply
Handling Returns
At the end of the day, a retailer or eCommerce business needs a strive towards customer delight. True customer delight is accomplished by
- Create and share the comprehensive return policy on marketing channels. Context is important
- Track and analyze return reasons to get better insights
- Restock, mark as damaged, or discard if needed
- Make stocked-back inventory available for resale immediately
- In-store returns for online stores - define a process to upsell
Manage 3PL
At the end of the day, a retailer or eCommerce business needs a strive towards customer delight. True customer delight is accomplished by
- Select a partner who is familiar with your product range
- Understand the process which helps monitor performance
- Measure Order-To-Ship and Ship-To-Deliver times separately for 3pl orders
- Use customer NPS scores and surveys to evaluate the 3PLs
Measuring and Optimising Margins
At the end of the day, a retailer or eCommerce business needs a strive towards customer delight. True customer delight is accomplished by
- Allocate a cost to an order - Track margins correctly on order level.
- Instead of fixed cost, use the FIFO technique to clear out inventory to storage and storage to delivery
- Not just a fulfillment process, but how it adds value. Consider attribution of costs like shipping, packaging, returns, labor, etc.
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