Overcoming the Greatest Obstacles to More Effective Last Mile Delivery

Poor last mile delivery services can make or break a company. DispatchTrack’s own Big and Bulky Delivery Report recently showed that 90% of consumers want the ability to track their delivery orders, and that six in ten (61%) were unlikely to purchase from a retailer again when a previous order missed the scheduled delivery window. Simply put, standards are high, and winners and losers are determined in large part by who’s able to meet them. 

Now more than ever, optimizing customer delivery experience is the name of the game—which is why more and more businesses are investing in cutting edge last mile delivery systems. Customer satisfaction is the key to profitability. This means that you need to continue improving last mile deliveries to ensure consistent delivery performance for your customers. 

Understanding Last Mile Deliveries

Last mile delivery refers to the movement of goods from a distribution center or transportation hub to the end customer, meaning that it’s the final leg of the supply chain process. As with other logistics processes, the goal here is to get the right goods to the right place at the right time. 

But anyone who works in the industry knows that it’s a lot more complicated than that. You need visibility into what inventory is available at what time, what customers across the board have ordered, and what your truck and driver capacity can actually deliver in a given day. Based on all that, you need to find a way to make delivery promises to your customers that you can actually keep. 

Optimization is crucial for getting this right. But transparency is just as important. In order to provide a great delivery experience to customers, you have to do more than just show up on time—you have to keep the customer informed at every step of the journey. If they have an issue or a question along the way, they need a way to contact you instantly to get answers. If you can offer all of this without breaking the bank, you can retain existing customers and win new ones more effectively than the competition. 

Last Mile Delivery Challenges

Everyone wants to delight their customers. But last mile logistics is complex, which is why many businesses have a hard time providing the customer with great last mile delivery services. It also doesn't help that the final mile is typically the most expensive area of the supply chain. Here are some of the most common challenges businesses face in the final leg of the fulfillment process:

High Operating Costs

Last mile deliveries account for a huge percentage of overall delivery and logistics costs. Making individual deliveries is always going to be less efficient than delivering to a warehouse or hub, and finding the shortest routes in the modern last mile is no mean feat. The result is that businesses tend to spend a lot on both driver pay (including overtime) and fuel throughout the process. 

On top of all that, consumer demands are also giving businesses more challenges to handle. Last mile delivery expenses can go up significantly when businesses aim to provide customers with more delivery options like same-day or next-day deliveries. They go up even further when things start to go wrong on the day of delivery, whether that’s customers not being at home or drivers delivering the wrong goods. 

Operational Complexity

If cost weren’t a factor, the challenges that come with last mile deliveries wouldn’t all magically disappear. You would still need to find a way to figure out how quickly you could fulfill a given order and exactly when the driver was going to make it to the customer site. This requires a high degree of visibility to start with, but it becomes much more complex when you factor in things like variations in service time for deliveries of different products, differences in driver speed and skill, customer time window requests, etc. There are so many moving parts that setting reasonable expectations and then actually meeting them can be a real challenge. 

High Customer Expectations

We mentioned this above, but it bears repeating: you don’t just have to get the last mile right to keep your costs down, you also have to get it right in order to keep your customers happy. You might have the best products and best sales reps, but if you can’t make good on your delivery promises, your customers are going to look elsewhere. 

Customer expectations go beyond on-time deliveries. They expect to be kept in the loop and have total visibility into their orders. If you don’t have a system for automating customer experience touchpoints, it’s going to take an entire call center’s worth of people to continually keep customers connected.  

How a Last Mile Delivery System Can Help

All of the above might sound a bit daunting. Luckily, last mile delivery systems offer businesses a way to meet customers' demands while managing costs effectively. These solutions can offer real-time visibility, allowing distributors, retailers, and other businesses to track deliveries at each touchpoint. Real-time visibility also enables customers to know where their orders are, which can make them feel empowered and taken care of. Here are some of the other ways in which last mile solutions help delivery organizations provide a great delivery experience:

Route optimization

Businesses that still rely on conventional ways of route planning can't provide their customers with accurate ETAs or meet promised delivery times consistently. This is because even the most seasoned planners can’t compete with the computing power of today's technologies. 

A last mile delivery system with route optimization and automated dispatching capabilities allows businesses to find the shortest and quickest routes, taking into consideration all variables affecting delivery times in just a few clicks. You can even find the best suited drivers for each delivery assignment.

This enables you to provide accurate ETAs and meet promised delivery times with ease. In this way, you can minimize irate customers demanding to know why the delivery team failed to deliver on time. 

Automating route planning and dispatching also empowers companies to offer customers more delivery options, including same-day deliveries and self-scheduled deliveries. This is, in part, because drivers’ hours are maximized as they are traversing the most optimal routes—but it’s also because the routing process can be sped up considerably, empowering dispatchers to create (and update) efficient routes without tremendous lead times. 

Real-time updates

Last mile delivery solutions offer better visibility not just to fleet managers or dispatchers but also to customers as well. This gives customers the ability to track their orders from the comfort of their own devices. This is particularly crucial in an era where many people seeing picking up the phone as a last resort. 

Like we mentioned above, customers can be unforgiving if you don’t show up at the right time. A smart last mile delivery system provides customers with real-time updates about the order's location or status, helping to inform them of any possible delays in the delivery ahead of time. This has a huge impact on customer satisfaction across the board, and it powers experiences that will keep your customers coming back. 

Two-way communication

An advanced last mile software solution opens direct lines of communication between dispatchers, drivers, and customers. This is particularly useful when customers have special instructions about deliveries (e.g. asking drivers not to ring the doorbell because there’s a sleeping baby in the other room, or warning them about a dog in the yard) or want to help drivers locate the delivery site quickly.

Customers these days want faster and more reliable delivery options, the ability to track their orders, and easy communication with drivers, sales reps, and customer support staff. All these demands make the already challenging last mile delivery logistics process even more complex. Fortunately for businesses, there are last mile solutions they can rely on to meet increasing consumer demands and help manage the costs of the final mile.