When you run a local business, serving the local area day in and day out, there’s probably one question on the back of your mind: what can you do to serve your local customers even better?
And in answering that question, you’ve probably come up with a great idea: offer a delivery service that takes your goods straight to their door.
Many businesses can benefit from such a service. Customers know they can call you up in the morning and get the product they want by the afternoon. In some cases, it could even take less than an hour to get the item they’ve ordered on their doorstep.
But is this really as good an idea as it sounds, when it comes to your business? Let’s think about this with the points below.
What Do You Sell?
Same day delivery doesn’t track for every single type of product out there. Some products simply aren’t needed in a pinch like this. That’s the first thing to consider.
How likely is it that your products are going to be needed ASAP, once someone has realized they’ve run out or that they’ve got the wrong thing for the task they’re doing?
Thinking About the Logistics, How far are you willing to go?
Local customers are the only ones able to benefit from a boutique delivery option like this, but you need to decide just how local this distance really is. 5 to 10 miles out? Or are you willing to cross the region radius in full?
How will you need to secure goods during transport?
They can’t just be thrown into the back of a van and driven away. Someone’s paid good money for both the product and the same-day delivery you’re offering. Anything you transport should be kept as secure as possible during transit.
Take food and drink as a good example here. Food can be squashed, bruised, pierced, and even broken during transit. Fresh fruit, eggs, meat, etc., are all fragile items that need to be prevented from impact damage.
Food products that need to be chilled should be kept in color-coded trays that can be stacked and secured away from anything else. You can hire out rentable bale arm trays for products like these, especially if they’re low-value products compared to the rest of the produce you have on sale.
Dealing with Delivery Complaints
Staff will need to be trained on how to handle on-the-spot complaints during deliveries.
You can’t be sure when a customer will have an issue, but you can bet that there’ll be at least one person who wants to send something back immediately after you’ve delivered it.
Staff should know how to handle this issue, what to offer, and how to de-escalate, if need be.
So, should you offer a delivery service to your customers? It depends on your products, the distance covered, and how much money you can sink into training and equipment. Will it all pay off in the end?
