Table of Contents:
- What is an Attempted Delivery
- Back in 5 minutes
- First Attempt Makes the Best Impression
- Setting the tone
- Quality products delivered on time and intact
- Going the Distance
- Communication is key
- Plan for the worst
- Make Sure Somebody’s Home
Attempted deliveries can be detrimental to your customer’s satisfaction and your company’s profitability but with some easy management strategies you can avoid making deliveries when there’s nobody home
Everybody loves getting a parcel delivered. Whether it’s a shiny new gadget, a flash pair of shoes, or just a few boxes of stationary for the office, there’s something exciting about getting a package from a courier.
But what happens if there’s nobody home to take delivery of the package? Missing a delivery on the first attempt not only impacts your clients’ satisfaction: it has a ripple effect that can upset the flow of other deliveries and add significant costs to the delivery process.
So what are attempted deliveries and how can you turn them into successful ones? Our guide will help ensure that your deliveries are completed on time and on budget, even if nobody is home.
What is an Attempted Delivery
When you think about it, getting a package from one side of a city (or the world) to the other requires many discrete factors to come into alignment. But that’s what delivery companies are good at: making all of those factors join together into a seamless flow from source to delivery.
Sometimes, however, the final destination can prove to be the trickiest, mostly because you have no control over it. You can have the best tracking and logistics operation possible but if the end customer has popped out for a latte with a friend, your driver is going to be knocking on the door of an empty property.
Back in 5 minutes
When the phrase “attempted delivery” appears in your package tracking information it simply that the delivery driver was unable to deliver the package for some reason.
The most common cause is simply that the consignee wasn’t there to accept the package: maybe they decided to go for lunch after the latte!
But there are plenty of other reasons why the package could not be delivered on the first attempt. Here are a few:
- Incomplete or incorrect address. Customers may inadvertently put the wrong address on their order or leave out critical information. The consignee may no longer live or work at the address.
- Unable to gain access. A locked gate, a savage dog, road works or even bad weather can make it difficult or impossible for a courier to deliver the package.
- Left with a local agent. Occasionally, a courier company will have a local agent where they can leave undelivered packages for collection by the client. This adds time to the delivery and can be highly inconvenient for the customer.
First Attempt Makes the Best Impression
A delivery company that can successfully expedite its deliveries on the first attempt is going to gain a reputation for going the extra kilometre to make sure that each delivery is completed on time, regardless of the difficulties it encounters.
Setting the tone
Making an extra effort to get a package into the waiting hands of a customer is a great way to build customer loyalty. The companies you ship for want their clients to be happy and satisfied, so if they know that your delivery company can be relied on every time, they’ll keep coming back to you for their delivery needs.
Quality products delivered on time and intact
Your customers produce quality products so it’s natural for them to expect a quality delivery service. By effectively managing the different facets of the delivery chain — including robust protocols for missed deliveries — you can make your delivery company stand out from the competition.
Going the Distance
Successfully avoiding missed or incomplete deliveries is all about managing expectations. Unplanned events such as a customer not being at home, a breakdown in the supply chain, or damaged/missing packages can be difficult to manage.
But with an effective delivery control system in place, your company can overcome these challenges and get the job done when others fail.
Communication is key
Successfully avoiding a missed delivery begins with good communication between you and the client sending their goods with your company. This can include:
- Making sure that your client packages and addresses their goods correctly.
- Ensuring that you know exactly what is being sent and why to avoid difficult or fragile goods from being delayed due to incorrect handling methods.
- Keeping them in the loop about the progress of the consignment and any possible delays.
- Ensuring (as far as possible) that the receiver is there to take delivery.
Plan for the worst
In the complex world of product shipment, there are always going to be contingencies that cannot be foreseen. But by having a logistics system that can cope with sudden or unexpected hiccups, you can make changes on the fly to ensure that a package still turns up on time, intact and at the correct place.
Make Sure Somebody’s Home
Transvirtual offers complete, stand-alone software packages for managing deliveries from start to finish. By ensuring that every detail of the shipment — packaging, address, time of delivery, contact numbers, etc — is up-to-date and correct, and monitoring the package’s progress from shipment to complete delivery, you can be sure that your company can successfully complete every delivery.
And when things go haywire due to unexpected circumstances, systems such as our Driver Delivery App make it easy to track changes in delivery time and keep your customers informed. TransVirtual’s logistics software will give you confidence that every package will be delivered successfully. So can sneak out for a latte yourself!
