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What is Delivery Time Slot Management

What Is Delivery Time Slot Management?

In today’s fast-paced world, customer demand for faster and same-day deliveries is increasing by the day.

However, these alone are not enough to make your customers happy. 

Nowadays, customers prefer to choose a suitable date and delivery time slot to receive their parcels when available and avoid delivery delays.

Facilitating customers with delivery time slots is beneficial for business owners to help in order fulfillment and management.

Let us dive into the details of what delivery time slot management is and how it helps.

Delivery Time Slot Management:

  • Delivery time slot management enables the booking and allocation of time slots for last-mile deliveries.
  • The system allows business owners to set a date and time slots on their products and lets customers select and book their preferred delivery timings on a fixed date when they want the product to get delivered to their address. 
  • A time slot management system allows customers to choose suitable delivery time windows as per their availability and convenience.
  • Setting time slots helps you to plan deliveries more efficiently while providing a more satisfying delivery experience to your customers.

Benefits of Time Slot Management:

For Business Owners

  1. Improves First Attempt Delivery Rate:
  • Reduced Missed Deliveries: By letting the customers choose their preferred delivery time slot, the number of missed or failed deliveries reduce drastically. This reduction further helps to improve your first attempt delivery rate.
  1. Improves Logistics Planning & Execution: 
  • Streamlining Dispatch & Delivery Processes: Delivery time slot management allows shippers to set a sequence for shipments from booked time frames, streamlining dispatch, and delivery processes. 
  • Daily/Hourly Dispatch Planning & Execution: Using time-slot delivery schedules, logistics managers can plan daily/hourly order dispatches more efficiently. 
  • Dispatch Vehicle Management: The time slot management system helps optimize delivery truck handling and reduce truck wait times.
  • Avoiding Road Blocks: To avoid delays due to traffic and road congestions, you can set and allocate delivery windows during non-peak hours.
  • Loading/Unloading Planning:  Shippers can plan loading and unloading according to delivery time slots booked by customers.  
  1. Enables Predictive Resource Planning & Capacity Utilization:
  • Predictive Resource Planning: Delivery time slot management helps in proactive resource planning and capacity utilization by ensuring that the staff availability coincides with the arrival and dispatch of goods. 
  • Uniform Utilization: The system helps in a uniform utilization of loading resources and capacities.
  • Better vehicle utilization: The system optimizes vehicle utilization by integrating empty containers, pallets, and returnable packaging.
  • No Downtimes: It helps to avoid resource downtimes and waiting times.
  1. Provides Greater Visibility & Transparency in the Delivery System:
  • More Control: Delivery time slot management helps logistics managers gain more control over dispatch & delivery activities and stay on top of field operations to ensure on-time delivery of orders.
  • Dashboard View: The system offers a dashboard view of the entire last-mile delivery process, including accurate ETAs and live tracking of order status, thereby providing greater visibility and allowing managers to take immediate measures in the case of unnecessary delays. This real-time view helps in delivering orders to customers during their preferred timeslots.
  • Efficient Co-ordination: The system enables easy and more efficient co-ordination amongst all those involved in last-mile delivery operations.
  1. Reduces Overall Logistics Cost:
  • Reduces Cost of Redeliveries: On average, the cost of redelivery is $15 per order and the follow-on cost for a second attempt delivery is equivalent to the cost of delivering three packages. With delivery time slot management, you can minimize the number of missed or failed deliveries, thereby reducing the cost of redeliveries.
  • Eliminates Additional Cost of inventory & Reverse Logistics: By ensuring delivery of goods during the customer preferred time slot, you can save the added costs involved in storing, transporting, and delivering parcels that remained undelivered in the first attempt.
  • The system also helps to reduce Demurrage Charges or Cargo Rates.

For Customers

  1. Helps to Avoid Delay in Delivery Due to Unavailability:
  • Reduces the order cancellation rate: The customer’s unavailability to receive the order leads to a delay in the delivery, resulting in order cancellations.
  • Reduces Missed/Failed Deliveries: Even if the order reaches the customer quickly but finds a locked door, it amounts to a failed delivery. Failed deliveries leave your customers unhappy while increasing your total cost of logistics. Therefore, it is critical that the order is delivered to the customer when either he/she is available or someone on his/her behalf is available to receive the order at the address. Delivery time slot management lets the customers decide their preferred date and time slot for delivering the product based on their availability, thereby reducing the chance of a missed/failed delivery.
  1. Improves Customer Experience:
  • Customer Happiness: Offering preferred delivery windows and enabling customers to choose a convenient date and time slot for their order delivery makes them happy.
  • Customer Satisfaction: Using time slot management, when the delivery is made to the customer on-time and within the preferred time slot, it improves customer experience and satisfaction.
  1. Improves Customer Retention & Brand Loyalty:
  • Improved Customer Retention: According to survey findings, 14% of customers abandon shopping with a retailer altogether if they receive a late delivery just once. But when the customers receive their orders on time and within their preferred time slots, they feel more valued and are more likely to continue shopping with the same retailer.
  • Improved Brand Loyalty: Successful last-mile order fulfillment using efficient delivery time slot management improves customer’s overall buying experience, leading to improved brand loyalty. 

Conclusion:

Customer preferences and buying behaviors change dramatically, and modern retailers need to respond quickly to such dynamic demands by improving their logistics services.

Time slot management is a powerful tool that optimizes your last-mile delivery planning and processes while ensuring complete customer satisfaction through on-time deliveries within the preferred time slots.

Whether you are operating an e-commerce business, running a local delivery service, or offering third-party logistics solutions, efficient delivery time slot management can help you automate and optimize every element in your delivery ecosystem.

So, are you ready to implement delivery time slot management to optimize your last mile delivery?

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