Farrukh Mahboob, Founder and CEO of PackageX, explains why technological advances have not kept pace with e-commerce customers' increasing service demands.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon.com has been changing the expectations of e-commerce shoppers, and today they expect most orders to be delivered in one to two days. Mahboob says.
In fact, he says, they want three things from the merchandisers they do business with: visibility, convenience, and speed.
Visibility is essential for customers who want to know exactly where their shipment is at every stage of its journey. This includes knowing when and where deliveries will take place.
Convenience means purchasing options for how and where you purchase products, whether online or in-store, and how you receive them, including direct delivery, in-store pickup, or in-store pickup for a “no-touch” experience. means to provide it to someone. .
The need for speed is clear as consumers are becoming impatient with waiting for their orders to be fulfilled. Again, Mahboob says it's important to offer options so buyers can weigh the desire for quick delivery against the cost of rushing to their doorstep.
The problem for many e-tailers is that they lack the technology to deliver on these three promises. E-commerce is the main reason why around 200 billion packages are shipped around the world every year, and that number is growing by 20% every year. But to efficiently manage that huge volume and meet customer expectations, businesses need the latest applications at hand.
“Supply chains and logistics systems are built to support the needs of 20 to 30 years ago,” Mahboub says. Today, systems need to be flexible enough to adapt to new fulfillment models, from buy-in-store, ship-from-store, pick-up in-store, and even processing from micro-fulfillment centers. there is. “You need a modern, flexible technology backend to meet expectations,” he says.
