Consumers today have very demanding expectations when it comes to how fast they want their orders delivered. They also expect high-level accuracy and transparency with their deliveries. And it doesn’t help that brands like Walmart and Amazon are piling the pressure on other retailers to innovate and come up with faster, low-cost shipping options as quickly as possible. 

Is your eCommerce business able to consistently deliver packages to your customers when you say you will? If not, then it's time to pause and rethink how you’re utilizing your eCommerce resources in order to create a robust experience for them. 

It’s one thing to get customers through the checkout process, and yet another thing to get their orders delivered when you promise to. A poor delivery experience will only leave your customers dissatisfied and cause them not to return. 

Let’s take a more in-depth look at buyer expectations regarding order deliveries and how eCommerce brands can win more customers by keeping their delivery promises.

The Rising Delivery Demands of Today’s Shoppers

Customers are not backing down on their service demands. They want to be served better by online brands no matter the cost and that translates to serious pressure for merchants. These online shoppers find it frustrating when their orders arrive late and when delivery dates are not clear enough.

So they continue to move from one merchant to the other until they find one that keeps their delivery promises. And, naturally, they will continue to return to that retailer as evidenced by 96% of customers. Regarding what consumers consider as the ideal delivery experience, check out these four important elements:

1. Cost: they want to have access to varied costs, including free standard delivery, in order to maximize their choices.
2. Options: they want to be offered as many delivery options as possible including in-store pickups and doorstep delivery. 
3. Speed: they want to know how quickly their orders will arrive. Will it be the same day, the next day, two-day, or something else?
4. Transparency: customers want to be able to track their orders and receive shipment status notifications

What’s intriguing, however, is that even with these four elements being the most critical for consumers, they still have sky-high expectations regarding how each of those elements has to be fulfilled.

To illustrate, consider a home delivery shopping survey carried out by AlixPartners in 2018 which shows that customers who opt for free shipping no longer want to wait for 5.5 days to have their items delivered. The expected delivery time was reduced to around 4 days in 2018 when compared to 5.5 days in 2012. 

And now, more businesses are going down that same route by providing free shipping services to meet up with these demands, as evidenced by 77% of businesses in an L2 2017 survey. eCommerce stores are doing all they can to match up with the ever-rising demands of customers. The goal for proactive businesses is to make shipping as cheap as possible while fine-tuning their post-purchase process to effectively manage delivery times. 

As many merchants struggle to scale these huge shipping hurdles by improving their last-mile delivery solutions, one can’t help but wonder if customer demands are now unrealistic. Well, here at FenixCommerce, we believe consumers are right to make such demands, and retailers can rise to meet them if only they implement the right solutions. 

How to Keep Your eCommerce Delivery Promises

Granted, it can get quite overpowering trying to match up to the delivery expectations of consumers. But it doesn't have to be too complicated. Customers have no problem waiting a couple more days so long as they trust that your eCommerce store will deliver their order when you say you will.

So rather than trying to dish out delivery timelines that you have no control over, focus on making realistic promises by offering dates that you can meet. Here are 3 tips that can help retailers continue to meet delivery promises and earn the trust of their buyer base:

1. Survey your customers

Never underestimate the value of feedback, but always be willing to listen to what your customers think. Your business is here to guarantee their satisfaction and they will be delighted to give you their opinions. Ask them about things like shipping prices, times, and options that they consider best for them. Using their opinions, you can then make better decisions that help to better your delivery process.

2. Adopt a new fulfillment platform

If you’re finding it difficult to come good on your delivery guarantees, it’s probably not intentional. It could however be that you haven't adopted technology yet or you’re still stuck with old fulfillment tech. Now is the right time to change your current processes so you can stay on top of order fulfillment. Design a much-improved eCommerce fulfillment strategy and invest in a new fulfillment platform if you have to.

One such software to consider using for your eCommerce order management and shipping accuracy is FenixCommerce. Check out how California baby increased conversions by 7% by providing accurate delivery dates for their customers using Fenix. 

Investing in a back-end system like FenixCommerce will help you keep your delivery date promises every time!

3. Continue innovating

The struggle to keep up with consumer delivery expectations presents a hard time for many merchants. So don't stop innovating and seeking ways to deliver on guaranteed dates and reduce your costs. That's the best way to win your customers’ trust and keep them buying from you repeatedly. 

Be Your Own Amazon

By mapping out a defined fulfillment strategy and combining that with a leading AI delivery platform like FenixCommerce, you can go on to provide a shopping experience that could rival that of Amazon. 

Use Fenix to compute and provide only the most optimized and accurate delivery dates tailored to each customer so you can keep setting clear expectations and win their trust throughout their journey. Find out how it all works by scheduling a demo with us.