In a growing delivery business, the question of whether to have a third-party delivery service or not, arises often.
Even though the inclination would be to outsource it, there are many long terms and short-term benefits of having your own fleet of drivers.
So, here are the reasons why you should have your own drivers and also what role they play in the delivery business.
What is the role of drivers in a delivery business?
In the past, business expectations from drivers were one-sided, but now the role of drivers has expanded immensely.
It is crucial and important to hire the right person for the job.
The job of the drivers has become very challenging. Drivers need to be customer-focused as they come face to face with the customers.
Apart from driving, the driver should know delivery skills, appearance, and proper representation of the brand.
Nowadays the drivers are not just behind the scenes but are highly skilled individuals with a lot of responsibility.
They are like the face of your brand.
The drivers should have proper training like material handling, maintaining safety and compliance. Drivers should have the knowledge of loading and unloading, operating material handling equipment, and delivering product on time.
What are the reasons why your delivery business needs your own drivers?
Effective customer service
1. Each and every complaint can be resolved as soon as possible.
2. From the customer’s point of view, the accountability of the good purchased lies with the seller.
3. This includes any damage to the goods, unpleasant dealings with the delivery executive, late delivery & no-shows.
4. If business owners are taking care of all the deliveries, they can ensure that all such issues are tackled effectively through various tools like GPS tracking system, automated feedback system, mobile applications, etc.
5. GPS tracking system can give customers live status and estimated time of the delivery.
6. Keeping our own drivers for delivery gives you the freedom and flexibility to define your own product offering and business model.
Mistakes or praises, make them your own.
There is peace of mind for both sellers and the buyer for the safe delivery of the goods as the delivery of orders is taken care of by the same company.
This would also help to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by ensuring on-time delivery.
Profits Higher Than You Expected
You need to hire delivery staff, purchase vehicles, take out insurance, and invest in the necessary equipment.
This will increase your profitability because it’s much more affordable by managing your own delivery system.
The benefits of having your own delivery really shine through.
- Your potential for orders is essentially limited only by your own capacity to meet the demand and with the necessary resources in place, your product can be enjoyed by far more customers.
- It can also give you the jump on other businesses that are yet to catch on to offering delivery, giving you exposure to a wider market.
- Vehicles can be adequately utilized making it more cost-effective
- .Also having your own delivery staff, it is independent of any public transport strikes and delays.
- Aligning brand as per expectancy.
Brand recognition can be created through advertising.
It gives a scope for the company to spread its brand awareness by adoring their delivery vehicles with their logo and advertisement.
Marketing strategies can be planned and executed with the delivery fleet which in turn helps in business growth.
It can increase the reputation of the business and trust by delivering the goods within the expected time. This constant approach would eventually build on customer’s trust in the company.
It will boost customer confidence. With a trusted reputation, the customers are willing to choose the business doubtlessly to deliver their goods.
This may result in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty if the goods are delivered on time and without loss or damage.
Flexibility
Owning a delivery fleet allows flexibility as owners can tailor their delivery schedules to accommodate customer requests.
Let’s say a requirement for an immediate delivery is made, a fleet owner has more flexibility in fulfilling that request.
This helps the business to be more agile & adopt to the increasing customer expectations which it turns leads to business growth and customer satisfaction.
Businesses that work within set time constraints, having an in-house delivery service can be incredibly useful. This can help to ensure that all orders are delivered on time.
You get to motivate your team
With a good delivery logistic software and your own drivers, you get detailed information about the performance of every delivery man and their KPIs.
You can analyze delivery times, and motivate your team to do better. You will have the data to know what made the delivery take so long, and then, you can deal with any underperformer.
An incentive plan can be set up for the delivery staff in context with the highest delivery, highest customer satisfaction, etc.
ou can reward the delivery staff to motivate them for various accomplishments like the highest number of deliveries for the month, highest customer ratings, highest on-time delivery, employee of the month, an employee with the highest incentive, etc.
Customer Appreciations can be published among the staff to motivate them.
Customer’s Data Protection
Since the business would be owning its own delivery fleet the customer’s data is not shared with the third party which ensures the data protection.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, having your own fleet of drivers makes you self-reliant. It is easier to measure the performance and also to know the progress.
As they are your own employees, it becomes easier to find out the key factors inhibiting growth and to make the necessary changes need to accelerate growth.
It makes absolute sense for investing in an in-house delivery keeping in mind the type of business. It can be successful only with correct planning and budgeting strategies.
At the same time, it is very important and critical to weigh down the advantages and disadvantages of owning a delivery fleet which comes with high responsibility and accountability.
Would you be interested to improve customer experience by transforming last-mile with delivery management software?
