Discussing the challenges delivery businesses face during the holiday season, underscoring the importance of using advanced route planning software like EasyRoutes to handle high-volume deliveries efficiently.
Everyone enjoys the holiday season since it allows them to spend quality time with their families, loved ones, and friends. Sending gifts to one another and organizing lunch or supper get-togethers are all part of what makes this time magical.
However, this is the busiest time of year for delivery businesses. To make the holiday season enjoyable for senders and receivers, they must deliver thousands of shipments, packages, and gifts on time.
Delivering gifts during the busy holiday season has its own set of obstacles, such as traffic, bad weather, and a lack of communication, to name a few. A number of issues might make it difficult for delivery companies and drivers to deal with high-volume deliveries. Read on to learn how to deal with high-volume deliveries during this busy time.
The following are some of the most prevalent issues that seasonal gift and courier delivery organizations experience when making deliveries throughout the Christmas season:
You’ll need good planning and precise optimization to avoid or even solve these issues. That’s where advanced route planning and optimization software can help.
There are a number of factors that can cause delivery delays during the holiday season. And these factors grow in tandem with the number of deliveries and the complexity of the routes. These considerations must be taken into account while establishing a delivery route:
When these variables are combined with others such as the number of stops to be made, delivery speed, and the number of vehicles in the fleet, the route planning and optimization process becomes even more complicated.
It doesn’t matter how much time or effort you put into manually arranging delivery routes; it will never be accurate. There will always be variables that are overlooked, resulting in huge errors.
You’ll need to think about things like real-time traffic patterns, driver shift timings, delivery time windows, priority orders, and the time it takes to get from one stop to the next when manually designing delivery routes.
Let’s face it, technology is better at these calculations than we are. Your drivers will lose time on the road since their delivery route is inefficient if the majority of difficulties are not resolved at the time of planning.
Manually planning multi-stop routes is fraught with the potential for human mistake. Even the tiniest detail in the address is significant.
For example, if the street name or pin code are incorrect, your drivers will be directed to a location that does not exist. These errors not only waste time and fuel, but they also can’t be fixed right away.
Real-time delivery constraints such as traffic, road closures, client unavailability, and service time must all be taken into account. It will take a lot of your time and effort to do it manually.
Assume you have 80 stops on a delivery route that you want to optimize and split between two drivers. However, because driver shifts fluctuate, you must consider service time for each stop as well as the ideal route to cover each stop. These routes could take you a full day to plan, and it will likely still be inaccurate.
Customers also frequently request that their delivery be delivered at a specific time. Such priority orders may have delivery times that conflict with deliveries in another area. This makes route planning harder.
It’s easy to overlook such priorities while manually planning routes. A customer’s delivery experience is a deciding element in whether or not they will return to your business. Failure to meet client demands can be costly to your company.
You must match all of the delivery stops with the available drivers for the day while planning. When these elements are ignored, you will wind up with a route that has more stops than you can handle.
When a driver calls in sick and you have to re-plan the route with a different driver, it can be challenging. We don’t have to tell you how aggravating last-minute alterations may be, do we?
Why don’t you try utilizing an advanced route planner instead of manual route planning? Consider some of the most significant advantages of route planning software for last-mile delivery.
It is a waste of money to assign a team of dispatchers to design delivery routes. Furthermore, while on the road, your delivery drivers spend at least an hour or two actively improving routes. This is a waste of both time and money.
You must utilize an automated route planner to make the most of your resources and increase production. It assists you in streamlining all of your planning and optimization processes to guarantee that all of your resources are fully used.
Your drivers can snap photographs of the package delivered while utilizing a route planner like EasyRoutes. Customers’ signatures might also be recorded as proof of delivery.
Signatures from customers or photographs of the box let you keep track of each successful delivery. When clients make fraudulent claims about their packages never being delivered, keeping records comes in helpful.
Only mapping software allows you to create sophisticated routes with over a hundred stops and priority delivery orders. EasyRoutes powerful optimization software allows you to create a single route with all of your stops, service time, and delivery time frames.
When you’re making a lot of deliveries, your delivery route has to be complicated. Why waste time having your entire staff map delivery routes for days when EasyRoutes can do it in minutes?
You presumably have a crew of drivers to make hundreds of gift deliveries throughout the day. Are you planning to plan separate delivery routes for each driver? No, that’ll only take up a lot of your time in the back office.
Select all of the orders you want to deliver and the number of routes you wish to use with EasyRoutes. EasyRoutes will evenly distribute the addresses across all of your drivers. All you have to do now is distribute the links and sit back and enjoy the ride.
EasyRoutes not only helps you save time in the back office, but it also helps you save money. It cuts down on the number of hours your drivers are on the road. You may make your drivers’ jobs easier by using our optimization features and thorough remarks.
For starters, automated optimization saves them time by eliminating the need to manually optimize routes. Second, they can use our route inventory to place packages in the van according to delivery sequence.
Customer service must be a priority for delivery companies. It’s critical to maintain clear communication with your customers and arrive on time to ensure a positive delivery experience.
EasyRoutes assists you in providing an amazing delivery experience by informing your consumers at each stage of the delivery process. Customers will receive delivery event notifications from EasyRoutes, and they can follow their deliveries using our customisable tracking website. You can give them an estimated arrival time and even how many stations they are away.
Not only that, but your clients may provide particular delivery instructions for your drivers, allowing them to make deliveries to their specifications.
The most effective strategy to deal with late deliveries is to communicate directly with the consumer. Customers aren’t to be avoided. Make sure you’re communicating effectively. You should never leave your consumers in the dark.
You must utilize route planning and optimization technologies to boost delivery capacity. You may improve routes using the software by taking into account certain aspects such as driver availability, time slots, and priority. When real-time parameters are considered during route design and optimization, delivery capacity is boosted.
EasyRoutes will send out delivery notifications to keep your consumers updated. Your customers will also receive a tracking link to check on the status of their order.
Realistic preparation might help you avoid delivery delays. It is easier to construct realistic routes according to time and resource limits when routes are created with real-time constraints in mind.
We realize you’ll be inundated with more deliveries than you can handle, whether you’re a store, wholesaler, or e-commerce company. We’re here to make it easier and more flexible for you to make on-time deliveries during the busy Christmas season.
This holiday season, EasyRoutes simplifies the overwhelming amount of deliveries, saving hours of route planning and optimizing time in only a few minutes. To maximize your delivery potential, get the most efficient routes. Good luck with your deliveries!
Roundtrip's mission is to equip every business with the software tools they need to deliver products to their customers in a delightful way. Thousands of Shopify merchants worldwide choose EasyRoutes to power their local deliveries across dozens of product categories, from meal kits and groceries to coffee, cupcakes, kibble, and so much more. Our easy-to-use route planning and delivery optimization app is certified Built for Shopify, a two-time Shopify staff pick, and the top rated local delivery app on the Shopify App Store.
