A Guide to Smooth Dispatching for Online Businesses

When it comes to running an online business, there is little more important than shipping in terms of aspects of your company that you need to get exactly right. With no physical products available for customers to pick up off a shelf and take home with them the same day, customers expect a smooth and speedy delivery process that works for them, doesn’t cost a fortune and doesn’t require them to chase you up about missing orders.

To ensure consistent deliveries, smooth dispatching is of paramount importance. Once a product has been dispatched from your premises smoothly, you know that you have done everything you can at your end, and it is now down to the courier to uphold their end of the bargain. 

Why Does Smooth Dispatching Matter?

Smooth dispatching is the first step to fast delivery – something that continually proves itself to be a top priority for online shoppers. When you think of the top online retailers, virtually all of them offer fast, often free, and transparent shipping. From Walmart’s guaranteed two-day delivery to Amazon’s next and sometimes even same-day delivery, the giants of the e-commerce world are using quick shipping to simultaneously secure return customers and entice new ones.

With all of this in mind, just how do you work towards ensuring quick dispatching?

Automated Sales Systems

One of the first steps you can take to ensure a dispatch goes smoothly is to start using sales automation tools. These tools can carry out several useful tasks such as forecasting sales, managing sales leads, identifying upselling opportunities, and integrating click-to-call functions. Sales services such as these allow staff members to spend less time on the administrative tasks of selling, meaning they can get down to processing orders sooner and more efficiently.

Efficient Storerooms

Imagine your business has just received an order, your automated sales systems have kicked into action, and your distribution team has set about to process the delivery. What happens next? Whatever the answer, it should include the use of efficient and intelligent software or storeroom machinery. These may include:

• Distribution assisting machinery. Conveyor belts at fluentconveyors.com are ideal additions to any storeroom and are an excellent example of machinery that can assist with the distribution of heavy items.
• Digital inventories. Inventories can be run in several ways, but the restaurant method can work for storeroom stocking any type of product, not just food and drink. 

Track Deliveries

Once the distribution process reaches the point of dispatch, tracking deliveries is the best option for ensuring a smooth delivery process as it offers an open and transparent logistics report for the customer. This is especially important for international shipping, for example from the US to the UK, as customers are desperate to know that their parcel has at least arrived at a local sorting center.

Tracking deliveries also allows you to form reports on the speed and success rates of deliveries, as customers are often able to rate their delivery experience. This should be used to decide whether you stay with a current courier or change to a new one to improve the smoothness of dispatch and delivery processes.