Your start-up soap company’s sales are coming in HOT, and you are trying to harness the momentum to slingshot your company to the next level. Suddenly you receive a customer email, Subject: “Where is my order?” Cue the nervous sweats!
One of the most valuable marketing strategies for a start-up is positive word-of-mouth. There are many ways to achieve this; by ensuring the order fulfillment is physically accurate, selecting the proper packaging to ensure the merchandise arrives whole and unblemished, selecting a shipping provider and service to match the one chosen by the customer, and delivering the parcel to the shipping provider promptly. Sounds simple? Sometimes that last mile, getting the packaged order to the shipping provider promptly, can be the most difficult. With that in mind, here are five (5) steps to creating your start-up’s shipping logistics plan, No Package Left Behind:
- Know which shipping providers service your area. Pay attention to who delivers your mail and packages and which providers’ trucks you see navigating your local roadways. If you see them regularly, it is a safe assumption that those providers will have a local or regional location near you. Spoiler, USPS will be one of those providers if you live in the USA.
- Identify your local shipping provider locations. Once you’ve identified which providers service your local area, you’ll want to search their websites for the closest locations near your fulfillment center. Take some time to understand the different service locations for each provider. Common location types are drop boxes, stores, and service centers.
- Identify preexisting delivery and pick-up routes you may have access to. This is a tremendous value add for start-ups trying to keep their expenses tight. If you operate out of an apartment or your start-up is your side hustle and still work a 9 to 5 from the corporate office, think about what shipping providers pick up and deliver to those locations. Most shipping providers’ representatives will accept properly labeled packages from an unscheduled shipper (you). Your site may have a package limit due to the shipping provider’s route volume.
- Create a reference schedule. Once you’ve compiled your preferred drop-off locations, you’ll want to confirm their cut-off times, the latest time you can drop off a package for it to be sorted and routed the same day. Service centers usually have the latest cut-off times. When creating your reference schedule, establish your hard fulfillment stop based on the shipping provider’s location cut-off time minus travel time and a buffer. You do not want to arrive at a service center five minutes before the cut-off time to be denied service. Trust me, I speak from experience. Timing and personnel issues are bound to happen; mitigate them by crafting a thoughtful schedule and operating within the time constraints.
- Check your tracking numbers. Obvious to some and unnecessary to others, but routine and random checking of tracking numbers can help you to keep tabs on your fulfillment operations and notice trends before they become customer problems. You might find a drop box that has not been serviced, a shipping delay in another part of the country due to inclement weather, or your packages are on schedule. Information is a valuable resource for offering exceptional customer experience.
Fulfill your orders confidently, knowing that no packages will be left behind if you follow your plan. But if they are, it is your shipping provider’s fault; you might want to look into that.
EAF Logistics 
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