We all know that today’s consumers expect fast delivery — in fact, more than 50% of global shoppers say delivery speeds influence their purchasing decisions. Speed may reign supreme, but customer expectations have grown increasingly more complex than the timeliness of an item arriving at their door. Speed. Accuracy. Flexibility. Sustainability. When it comes to fulfillment and delivery, these four facets can make (or break) your customer experience.
That experience is crucial, especially when a seemingly endless list of brands are competing for consumer dollars. Now more than ever, every customer experience can have a massive impact on your brand, particularly where customer loyalty is concerned. It’s even been reported that more than half of U.S. consumers have left a brand due to just one bad customer experience.
Fortunately, it’s the role of third-party logistics (3PL) providers to connect brand and customer values down to the last mile.
GoBolt’s CEO and co-founder Mark Ang recently spoke with Darcy Mercier (former Director of Operations at Mindful Collective Co.) and Soren Valentin (former Chief Operating Officer of Christopher Cloos) about how 3PLs are behind the wheel of achieving an amazing customer experience.
Here’s some of what they had to say:
Overcoming challenges with end-to-end logistics
Before partnering with a North American 3PL, Christopher Cloos’ entire operation was based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Yet, 80% of its product sales were, and remain, in North American markets. Shipping 50 to 100 small parcels overseas daily was highly complex and costly. The fast-growing Danish eyewear company with over 500 authorized retailers in Europe, North America and Australia needed a change. To better serve its central customers, the company selected GoBolt to fulfill its North American logistics needs and moved its customer support operations to New York.
“Moving our logistics and our supply chain closer to our main market has been extremely important to us and it’s had a major impact on our business,” Valentin said. “It’s just extremely important that our customers can reach us, and we can ship to them, when they’re awake.”
For Mindful Collective Co., inaccuracies, delays, volume uncertainties and an inability to scale internal logistics operations led to the realization that their logistics approach needed to change to ensure a better customer experience.
“What we were challenged with was a team that wasn’t quite up to the standard we needed to serve our customers,” Mercier said of Mindful Collective Co.’s insourced logistics. When the company outsourced to GoBolt, “our accuracy issues and delays have since gone away,” he said.
Elevating the customer experience at scale
In choosing the right 3PL for its business needs, Mindful Collective Co. has been able to address one of its greatest challenges: managing the unpredictability of sales volumes. The ability to scale their logistics with the ebb and flow of sales is one reason Mercier chose to partner with GoBolt –– because we employ our own warehouse and delivery workers to fulfill the needs of our merchants.
“Everyone knows you are going to be busy around BFCM (Black Friday and Cyber Monday), but how busy,” Mercier asked. “Then there are the other times where you either have far more or far less orders than what you expected to get in that period. If you’re doing it (logistics) on your own, it gets really tough, especially in today’s climate with availability of staffing.”
This underscores a central need merchants have – finding a 3PL to help scale operations without compromising quality.
Committing now to a sustainable future
When Christopher Cloos relocated its inventory and fulfillment operations closer to its primary customers, the company gained a huge advantage in achieving its zero-carbon goal by 2025.
“Moving our fulfillment from Copenhagen to North America cut half of our CO2,” Valentin said.
This itself is impressive and demonstrates the company’s commitment to sustainability, but Christopher Cloos’ efforts went further by also reducing its carbon emissions. How? By electrifying its last mile deliveries by partnering with a 3PL with an electric vehicle fleet.
Today, logistics remains one of the largest contributors of carbon emissions in the world. Consumers recognize this, so it makes sense that 60% of consumers rank sustainability as an important buying factor, and 88% of consumers have pledged loyalty to brands prioritizing sustainability. Moving forward, planet-positive logistics (from recyclable packaging to greener delivery methods) will play an increasingly critical role in the customer experience.
Final thoughts
Consumers know what they want from brands. Topping the list of expectations: Quick delivery speed. Inventory accuracy. Order flexibility. And, last but not least, environmental sustainability.
From the moment customers place an order, to when it’s being processed, shipped, delivered and even upon an item’s return, consumers are in search of positive shopping experiences. To elevate their customer experience, leading brands are partnering with tech-centered, 3PL providers such as GoBolt that offer seamless services that wow customers from start to finish.
Take a front row seat to their full discussion. Watch the on-demand webinar now.
