What Are the Keys to Exceptional Last Mile Fulfillment?

At a recent panel, the logistics experts at Maersk noted the increased prominence that NPS had gained in the last few years among last mile operators. Given the increased emphasis on last mile fulfillment in what feels like every corner of commerce recently, this shouldn’t come as too much of a shock. As the concept of the last mile has increasingly become a household term, expectations for deliveries across the board have become more ingrained—and exceeding those expectations has gotten more and more crucial to success.

In the midst of all this, economic headwinds, cost pressures from numerous sides, and supply chain disruptions of all shapes and sizes have made effective last mile deliveries more challenging than ever. It’s not enough to get the right goods to the right place at the right time—you need to do so in a cost-effective way, all while keeping the customer in the loop and connected. 

Luckily, these challenges are being outpaced by the technology and processes that are used to combat them. As delivery organizations continue to turn their attention towards delivery NPS—and customer satisfaction in general—they have a chance to leverage new technologies to ensure efficient last mile fulfillment that consistently delights customers. 

Here’s a few ways to make that happen:

Take a Customer-First Approach

This might seem pretty obvious on its face—but what does it actually mean to take a customer-first approach to last mile fulfillment? It’s not just about offering friendly customer service interactions and courteous delivery drivers. 

Taking a customer-first approach means viewing the entire last mile of the supply chain through the lens of customer experience and shaping your processes accordingly. This might mean letting customers self-schedule their deliveries from within your specified capacity parameters. It certainly means making it easy for the customer to reach out to you with any concerns or requests, ideally via text, email, or even chatbot. 

The rubber really meets the road when you get to customer communications around the delivery. Customers want total transparency and connectivity in their delivery experiences, and you can prioritize that by integrating the customer’s needs into the execution of your last mile fulfillment programs.

How? By communicating early and often with notifications when an order is routed, loaded onto trucks, and en route. Also by offering real-time delivery tracking to customers with live ETA updates. Crucially, you can also enable customers to communicate directly with dispatchers simply by responding to system-generated notifications. In this way, they’re brought into the delivery experience and empowered to get what they need out of it. 

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Optimize from End to End

One of the key things to bear in mind when you’re trying to upgrade your last mile delivery process is that the elements that go into last mile deliveries are also closely connected. Your routes will impact your customer communications, your driver management will inform your delivery tracking, and your proof of delivery will impact your billing and settlement. 

When these areas are dealt with and optimized separately—within separate processes and using separate tools and technology—the result can be a disconnect within processes and the potential for inefficiencies and disruptions cropping up where you don’t want them.

When you have a connected process that you can optimize from end-to-end, the results are drastically different:

• Orders come in via your PoS and are sent to the routing engine. At this point customers are notified that their orders are going to be routed. The engine generates optimized routes based on your specified parameters.
• If applicable, customers are sent a self-scheduling message before the routing stage to give them the chance to choose their preferred delivery time slots. The routing engine is closely integrated into this process so that customers are only shown options that actually work. 
• Before the delivery, customers are sent reminder notifications with ETAs generated by the route optimization engine. Here, they can also receive info about the driver or be given a rundown of what to expect from the delivery process. 
• On the day of the delivery, the driver sets out on their route and indicates that they’re going to first stop in a driver mobile app. This app needs to be fully connected and integrated with the rest of the last mile fulfillment technology stack so that the driver’s actions can inform notifications to customers as well as ETA updates generated by the routing engine.
• At the same time, updates made in the driver mobile app should be transmitted back to dispatchers in real time so that they can easily visualize truck locations, job status, and exceptions. Ideally, you’ll also turn around this visibility to your customers so they can track deliveries in real time. 
• Once the delivery or service is complete, the driver captures proof of delivery in the mobile app via photos and signature, which is then made instantly available to dispatchers. It can also be sent out to customers in their delivery receipt or invoice, if you’re using the same software for last mile management and generating invoices. 
• After the delivery is complete, dispatchers should be left with a complete audit trail based on the driver’s updates and proof of delivery, as well as planned-vs-actual data that you can use to better understand your last mile processes from an analytical standpoint. 

By taking all of these separate parts of the last mile fulfillment process and connecting them in this way, you’re able to optimize them as a whole. This means not just faster routing and planning, but more cost-effective execution from end to end. 

Promote Connectivity Across the Board

The kind of holistic approach to the last mile that we outlined above depends on total connectivity across roles, functions, and touch points. This connectivity isn’t something that you can take for granted—rather, you need to be deliberate about ensuring the seamless flow of data from one part of the process to the next. 

Luckily, modern technology makes this easier than ever to achieve. A powerful last mile delivery platform should ensure that all roles have access to the data they need, and that everything that happens within the software platform is transparent and visible. It will also connect drivers with dispatchers and managers via a mobile app, in addition to connecting you with your customers by way of two-way communications. 

Why is this crucial to exceptional last mile fulfillment? Because it means that you have the information you need, right when you need it—in a form that’s actually actionable. For managing exceptions and disruptions, and simply for ensuring last mile visibility, it’s hard to overstate the importance of connectivity. 

Leverage AI Built for Last Mile Fulfillment

Technology plays a huge role in the modern last mile. At the same time, no business wants to take unnecessary risks when it comes to meeting customer expectations. That’s why last mile logistics technology is often slower to evolve—and new technologies in the supply chain often make their presence felt in the last mile less quickly than touch points further upstream. 

So you might be surprised to see AI on this list. And yet, AI-based technologies have actually been impacting last mile logistics in domain-specific ways for many years. 

For route optimization in particular, AI is increasingly becoming a foundational technology for boosting efficiency. AI and machine learning-based algorithms can take delivery data from multiple sources and turn them into more accurate routes and more precise delivery ETAs than even the most experienced human planner could hope to achieve unaided. The result is lower costs and smarter deliveries. 

Choose Your Software Wisely

All of the above might sound a little bit daunting. But it doesn’t have to be. If you leverage the right last mile delivery and fulfillment software—something that can offer a connected experience across the entire last mile delivery journey—achieving exceptional last mile fulfillment becomes (comparatively) simple. 

That’s why one of the most important keys to getting the last mile right is to partner with the right software provider. Look for someone who offers more than just the features we described above, but also a track record of true partnership and a history of powering last mile delivery success. If you can make that happen, you can set yourself up to delight customers, reduce costs, and decrease the number of last mile headaches you have to deal with each day.