Enhancing customer experience with efficient fulfillment

While many factors influence ecommerce customer experience (CX), order fulfillment is one of the most substantive. In online shopping, the order fulfillment experience—from the moment the order is placed to when the customer receives their packages and unboxes them—forms a lasting impression consumers have of your brand.

Given the value modern ecommerce shoppers attach to the fulfillment experience, you cannot have a negative one or you risk driving customers straight into your competitors’ hands. According to a PwC report, one in three customers will leave a brand they love after one bad experience, while 92% will permanently drop a brand after two or three negative encounters.

Seeing that order fulfillment is the lifeblood of ecommerce CX, you must go out of your way to satisfy and surpass customer expectations. This is particularly important during high-volume periods like Peak Season. Fortunately, you can leverage new trends in fulfillment technologies such as real-time inventory tracking, AI-powered predictions, and robotic enhancement to facilitate efficient fulfillment.

Here are some reliable strategies for enhancing customer experience with fulfillment that you can implement.

Embrace the new standard of lightning-fast delivery

Consumer expectations for rapid delivery grow every day. About two-thirds of global consumers expect delivery within 24 hours according to a recent Statista survey. Of these customers, 40% expect delivery within two hours. These are the delivery standards you must prepare to fulfill and exceed.

Strategies you can implement include:

• Optimize warehouse operations: Use a fulfillment management system (FMS), like Logwia IO, that uses AI and automation to streamline operations and expedite order processing, leading to fast deliveries.
• Maximize seamless shipping integrations: Use rate shopping and partner with reputable shipping carriers with real-time updates on shipping routes and carrier rates. This enables you to select the most efficient route regarding speed, safety, and cost.
• Decentralize inventory: Distribute your inventory to several fulfillment centers near your target customers to reduce shipping distance and time and achieve super-fast delivery.

Empower customers with order tracking

Naturally, after customers order items online, the waiting time before delivery often makes them anxious, especially if it’s their first time buying online or purchasing a big-ticket item. Real-time order tracking helps customers track their packages across the entire delivery chain until they receive their order. This reassures nervous customers that they’ll get what they ordered.

Given that 20% of ecommerce packages don’t reach customers on the first attempt, you can’t blame customers wanting to track their packages. Order tracking systems give them real-time updates on their package’s location.

If a customer changes location before the package’s arrival, some systems allow them to reroute their package to a different pickup location. Order tracking fosters trust between you and your customers. Trust is an important ingredient for fostering customer loyalty, which is priceless for ecommerce brands.

Ease the order returns process

Order returns frustrate customers and retailers because they tie up productive time. But as you work on reducing returns in ecommerce to zero, first make the return process as hassle-free as possible. The first step is to establish clear return policies that are agreeable to your customers and also protect you from return fraud.

Common reasons for product returns include:

• Wrong order delivered
• Defective or broken items
• Mismatch of the physical product with its online description
• Last-minute change of mind
• Late arrival that makes the product no longer viable

To earn the trust of modern customers, make your product return process seamless and straightforward. Leverage technology such as inventory management and mobile scanning to process product returns faster and with the same efficiency as fulfilling a first order. Even if some of those who return products may have sworn not to buy from you again, the ease of returning may change their opinion, leading them to give you another try.

Enhance fulfillment with the power of AI and robotics

Using artificial intelligence (AI) in warehouse fulfillment boosts operations accuracy and efficiency. Here are some ways AI can optimize fulfillment operations.

AI for demand forecasting

With its machine learning capabilities, AI analyzes historical sales data, reviews it against current data to predict patterns, and derives smart predictive demand insights. AI for ecommerce enhances omni-channel operations and identifies meaningful trends for brands, retailers, and online sellers. It aids in demand forecasting, competitive pricing, and consumer behavior prediction, enabling informed decisions, effective adaptation to changes, increased customer satisfaction, and higher profits.

In warehouses and supply chain logistics, AI elevates fulfillment processes through predictive analytics, smart inventory management, and order routing technology. These AI-driven functions streamline fulfillment, prevent inventory shortages and overstock, reduce inaccurate shipments, eliminate bottlenecks, and minimize costly shipping errors.

Intelligent inventory management

Smart inventory management systems automate processes such as receiving, monitoring, counting, and storage. An AI-powered inventory management system, like Logiwa IO,  has the following features that facilitate efficient fulfillment:

• Real-time inventory tracking
• Data analytics and reporting
• Automated replenishment

With AI, you get more accurate inventory level reports, allowing you to plan warehouse operations better and deliver quality fulfillment that enhance customer experience.

AI-driven picking and packing

Smart picking, powered by AI, has significantly boosted order accuracy and efficiency for online retailers. Unlike traditional methods, it factors in order priority, item locations, and available labor, to create optimized pick jobs. AI automation results in:

• Fewer order errors
• Enhanced warehouse productivity
• Quicker delivery times
• Higher customer satisfaction

Improved order picking directly enhances fulfillment accuracy, leading to a positive shopping and delivery experience for customers.

AI has revolutionized sorting and packing by enabling warehouse systems such as:

• Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS)
• Robotic picking systems (robotic arms and autonomous mobile robots)
• Autonomous vehicles and drones

These AI-powered systems automate the routine warehouse sorting and packing roles. They use tech solutions such as Internet of Things (IoT) scanners, and barcode checking. Using AI and robotics in warehouse operations eases sorting and packing, allowing you to expedite order delivery and even exceed your fulfillment promises.

Watch the video above to see how Logiwa IO’s Jobs and Waves helps fulfillment centers reach new levels of efficiency.

Exploit real-time inventory management

Real-time inventory management gives you up-to-date inventory data and insights that are useful for dynamic order processing. It helps you avoid two of ecommerce’s biggest mistakes — overstocking and understocking. Customers who browse your site and follow through to the checkout stage only to find it’s out of stock get frustrated and may leave, never to return to your site.

Using AI algorithms for inventory optimization advances management, especially if you sell assorted merchandise. In peak seasons such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, real-time inventory data helps you keep up with the crowds of shoppers.

Real-time inventory management benefits make fulfillment more efficient and elevate customer experience. Better yet, they allow you to communicate with customers about inventory changes as soon as they happen.

Efficient fulfillment will Logiwa IO

Customer experience is increasingly becoming the differentiator between success and failure for ecommerce companies. You must perfect order fulfillment to guarantee favorable CX to your online customers.

For efficient fulfillment, you must stay ahead of the market trends, guarantee fast delivery, implement hassle-free return policies, and maximize new technologies such as AI, robotics, and real-time inventory management systems.

At Logiwa, we understand that implementing strategies for efficient fulfillment isn’t easy. That’s why we’ve designed a top-notch AI-powered fulfillment management system (FMS) to help you transition from inefficient fulfillment operations to optimized ones that enable you to meet customer demands and fulfill brilliantly.

To start benefiting from Logiwa IO, schedule a demo today and talk to our fulfillment experts who care about advancing your company’s short- and long-term fulfillment success.
 

FAQs about how efficient fulfillment enhances customer experience