‘’What you see is what you get’’ is an expression often used to describe daily life situations but it certainly doesn’t fit with the Last Mile delivery world. What the end customer sees is just the driver who delivers the order. It’s the only visible part of a much complex journey: the tip of the iceberg.
Many articles describe the drivers’ delicate job situation. In this piece by The Guardian, a good picture is given of what being a driver for next day deliveries means. Exhaustion, fatigue, long hours and unreasonable workload are some of the characteristics that define this role.
Could this change? Drivers need to be given the right importance. Their commitment and knowledge are of extreme value in the last mile: they have to become an active part of the eCommerce life cycle and be considered an endgame for the Retailer’s strategy. Their failures become the Retailers’ones.
Because of lockdowns and the pandemic, quick deliveries became a lifeline. With things slowly going back to normal and online purchasing remaining a habit, is next day delivery really necessary? Wouldn’t it be more sustainable to let end users plan deliveries, consolidate purchases and choose the most convenient time slots in terms of price and carbon emissions? This is where a smart and high-value planning and execution last-mile approach needs to be adopted
New roles come to the stage that need to guarantee the right management from depot to final destination: Omnichannel Managers, Customer Success Managers and Last Mile Managers are all on the radar.
- The Omnichannel Manager needs to supervise the whole eCommerce and coordinate systems and processes through the various sales channels.
- The Customer Success Manager ensures that all operations run towards the same objective: to make customers happy and satisfied with both the delivery and the product.
- The Last Mile Manager pulls all of the above together for the last part of the delivery journey: delivery services to customers’ doorstep, delivery times and innovation strategy. Last but not least, drivers’ training, the new face of the shop.
Technology has to be considered a relevant key player underpinning all these new roles. It’s what enables active visibility and control, necessary to pull the right strings at the right times. It can have a huge impact smoothing the running of the operations and helping all main actors. With full automation, better-planning, better-scheduled deliveries, and accessible customer knowledge, it can make ‘’what you see is what you get’’ closer to the reality of the delivery world.
Milkman Home Delivery Platform allows businesses to incentivize economically wider slots for better-distributed volumes eliminating infeasible deliveries and reducing operational infeasible deliveries, reducing operational expenditures.
