E-commerce businesses are continuing to allocate more resources and energy into building a consumer-driven supply chain. As the work unfolds, one thing is clear – the end delivery is becoming the new handshake between consumers and brands. Today, customer experience plays as much of a vital role for consumers as product quality and price. In fact, 76% of consumers say they view this experience as the true test of how much a company values them.
The consumer is driving significant changes to the supply chain and e-businesses are striving to keep up with the pace. Customer experience is already making great strides to becoming a primary component in sales conversions. Data suggests that 42% of CEO’s say that better customer experience was “the key change that has driven more wins.”
It’s not just retailers who are feeling the pressure. According to additional research, for 80% of B2B customers, customer experience is the biggest influencer in the decision to work with a certain vendor. Further studies indicate that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiators.
Help Your Supply Chain Stand Out
To date, 89% of companies are primarily focused on improving the customer experience in an effort to take advantage of the growing demand. If your company is among these figures, it can be challenging to determine what will help your supply chain stand out above the rest. It starts and ends with visibility.
Supply chain visibility is the foundation of improved customer experience, which is why more companies are investing in software that allows them to seamlessly integrate increased visibility for both the supply chain manager and the customer. From a consumer perspective, it’s in the ability to be able to track a package with thoughtful details on its progress in addition to fast delivery times. To get there, companies are adopting omni-channel strategies to help offset the pressure of singular modes of delivery. Additionally, more technology is being integrated into the supply chain planning process to reduce time and resources while also making it easier to change and optimize the supply chain quickly.
The Details are in the Data
The most essential factor to a consumer-driven supply chain is the ever-increasing need for real-time data across multiple departments of an organization. Relevant data from software, like a TMS, provides a business-critical level of visibility into customer behavior that helps continue to optimize the supply chain strategy. TMS’s are becoming increasingly innovative and sophisticated to match the end user’s need to more real-time data that allows for faster business decision making opportunities.
A second chance at a first impression is often rare, so companies should take full advantage of this opportunity by instituting software and strategies to help boost their customer experience strategy. There are premier supply chain solutions to increase visibility, reduce resources and optimize your back-end logistics thus making it easier to stand out as a customer-driven supply chain.
Karen Sage is MercuryGate’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and is responsible for the company’s global, marketing, communications, sales enablement and go-to-market efforts. She has more than 20 years of experience in business-to-business marketing and communications helping several industry leaders launch disruptive new categories, accelerate revenue growth, build leadership brands, and establish marketing organizations that scale globally.
When delivery is the only physical contact a consumer will have with their ‘seller’ (ok, so it’s often a 3rd party courier) that piece of the puzzle is the most important. I think it is even more important than tracking, but only when next day delivery is taking place.