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Customers Expect Bulletproof Shipping

January 22, 2008 By Joe Rawlinson

Customers trust that their orders will arrive in a safe and timely manner. How does your business ensure that nothing bad happens in transit?

Use Proper Packaging

Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of physics will be working overtime against your package as it travels to your customer. It will be thrown, dropped, kicked, smashed, bent, and possibly subject to puncture wounds.

The product packaging for shipping should be commensurate with the value of the product. The more valuable an item, the more care should be given to packaging. Amazon.com always seems to send my orders in just the right size box with an appropriate amount of cushioning from air bags.

Choose a Reputable Carrier

FedEx and UPS come to mind as reputable carriers. I say that as I don’t recall having trouble with them in the past. The United States Postal Service, on the other hand, always seems to mess things up.

A responsible carrier will also offer you the ability to insure your package against loss and provide you with your package tracking information.

Hide Package Contents

Sometimes you ship products to customers that they don’t want the whole world seeing. This could be because it is a surprise gift or something valuable that snooping or thieving eyes don’t need to see.

This past Christmas, I ordered some diamond jewelry for my wife. The jeweler shipped the package in a generic UPS overnight box. The return address label mentioned nothing about diamonds and surely didn’t scream: “hey mail room guy, your wife might want this.” The package’s boring anonymity offered an extra layer of security for my order.

Customer Perceptions

Shipping and delivery are part of the whole customer experience. When an order is placed, your work isn’t done. The customer judges your business and decides if they will buy from you again based on how that order arrives. A small investment in order fulfillment and delivery will help impress customers and encourage repeat business.

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