FenixCommerce: Retailers Choose Smart Carrier Rate Shopping (Part 2)

Supply chain leaders and retailers face one of the biggest challenges in managing shipping and delivery costs. Thankfully, automated technology like the Fenix Carrier Optimization platform is actively helping eCommerce brands leverage multi-carrier rate shopping to drastically cut down shipping and fulfillment spending.

By implementing carrier rate shopping, you adopt and deploy a multi-carrier shipping strategy that allows you to optimize every shipment so that you can keep delivering on time at the lowest cost possible.

FenixCommerce carrier rate shopping platform isn’t the only rate-shopping tool out there. Take a look around and you’ll find some other solutions that try to help retailers find the lowest-cost carrier services too.

So why do we consider ours to be the superior solution? Read on!

How Does Fenix Compare to Other Rate Shopping Software?

A deeper investigation shows that many other multi-carrier shipping solutions may have some weak points that limit them from doing what we call “true carrier rate shopping."

For us, a true carrier rate shopping software must be able to speed-search for the best shipping rates and services across multiple carriers directly at checkout, and then intelligently select and display the most cost-effective ones for the customer to see and decide. 

The emphasis here is that Fenix rate shopping is done in real-time at checkout (in addition to doing it at the time of label printing), which makes it superior to other solutions that only have partial rate shopping capabilities. 

Here’s what we mean:

1. Some software tools only shop and display the current rates at the time of label printing. The process isn’t totally automated because the software just displays available rates for different carriers. So you’ll have to manually choose a carrier service.

In addition to being painstaking if you have to process hundreds to thousands of orders, another downside is that, at the label printing stage, you’ll always want to pick the lowest-cost service even if it falls outside the customer’s delivery expectation. 

While that could save you some money in the short term, you’ll end up delivering later than expected, thereby ruining the delivery experience and eventually losing that customer. A Voxware survey concerning shoppers’ delivery expectations found that 69% will most likely not buy from you again after a late delivery. So, in the long run, you’re still losing money with rate shopping at the label printing stage.

2. Other software also attempts to do rate shopping at checkout, but the process isn’t smooth. That’s because these tools are designed to call carrier APIs individually for every carrier to obtain their shipping services and rates.

You’d agree that the whole process of calling APIs, obtaining the rates, and then displaying the best one at checkout consumes valuable time that translates into considerable delays at checkout. This delay keeps customers from deciding and getting through the purchase quickly, thereby ruining the shopping experience. 

At FenixCommerce, what we’ve done is build a superior platform that improves upon the deficiencies of current solutions. Our software ensures that retailers are doing true carrier rate shopping at checkout without the drawbacks faced by other software. 

Consider some ways in which Fenix ensures you’re delighting your customers with a superior experience throughout their buying journey.

• Multicarrier database

To save time and increase speed, our carrier optimization platform has an internal database that houses the latest rates for multiple carrier shipping services in real-time. With the built-in database collecting and updating the rates at the backend, no need to call carrier APIs for every order. Our platform uses the cached data to select the most optimized rates and shipping services for any order within milliseconds. It also works even when carrier APIs are down. 

• Clear and accurate EDDs at checkout

Our platform intelligently calculates and displays accurate delivery date estimates for every order to boost customer confidence. That’s possible because it uses your upstream data (including customer location, inventory distribution data, warehouse locations, product parameters, and negotiated carrier contracts), and then pairs that data with real-time optimized shipping rates and services that can get the package delivered on time.  

• Advanced Date Shopping

Consumer expectations of when they want their order delivered can vary based on their individual circumstances. While customer A might be willing to wait 2-3 days, customer B might need it the next day. So our carrier optimization platform doesn’t stop at shopping for rates alone. It also takes the customer’s delivery date expectation into account and eliminates any delivery options that don’t fit into the customer's desired window. That way, you can always ship on time with the best rates for every order while keeping your customers happy.

Fenix Carrier Rate Shopping vs Other Solutions

Benefits for You and Your Customers

By integrating your eCommerce store with our platform, you’re literally gaining a material advantage over your competitors and providing a superior delivery experience for your customers. 

• Increase Conversions with Multiple Shipping Options

Eliminate the purchase barrier by making shipping more appealing to shoppers. You can now offer options like free shipping by using carrier rate shopping. 84% of customers are convinced to buy when shipping is free and 30% will even add more items to their cart if it helps them qualify for free shipping. 

Displaying multiple shipping services such as Free Store Pick up, Overnight/Next-day delivery, and Two-day delivery to get the items in the cart delivered by a promised date can help you get more customers to checkout.

• Simplify the checkout experience

Baymard Institute found that nearly 20% of shoppers abandon their carts due to a complicated checkout flow. Customers want a smooth experience, not a shopping flow that overwhelms them. With Fenix, you reduce cart abandonment by utilizing key data to remove unnecessary delivery options from the checkout page but only display optimized costs so customers can easily understand what they need to pay.

• Increase shipping convenience

With Fenix, you have ample time to plan for every order and shipment. Since our platform does all the hard work at the checkout by picking the best carrier in line with the customer’s preferred delivery date, you can then conveniently plan the logistics to get their order shipped even earlier.

• Make money from shipping and delivery

By selecting only the least-cost service, decluttering your checkout, reducing cart abandonment, and increasing conversions, you automatically increase your shipping efficiency and profitability.

• Save your customer's money

61% of customers usually abandon their purchase when they see high shipping charges at checkout. Hence, by using Fenix to decrease shipping costs for your business, you also reduce costs for your customers. That’s how you boost customer loyalty and gain a material advantage over your competitors.

Optimize Your Shipping Operations with Fenix

FenixCommerce Carrier Rate Optimization platform helps you to unlock strategic value from your shipping operations by comparing multi-carrier shipping rates and services in real-time to ensure you’re always picking the most cost-effective services to get every order delivered by the promised date.

Ready to leverage Carrier Rate Optimization and streamline shipping operations so you can always deliver on your promise in the most cost-efficient way?

Get in touch with us at sales@fenixcommerce.ai or request a free demo.