For retailers selling heavy goods, specifically furniture, the delivery process is a bit different than shipping a small package (just a bit). You’re faced with questions such as, what’s the appropriate delivery method? How can the product quality be ensured during transit? What are the rates we should consider in our delivery costs? Most importantly, you want to make sure that you’re building a loyal customer base to grow your business – which means it’s even more important to perfect your last-mile experience for customers from beginning to end. In this blog, we’ll discuss some of those factors that go into planning a furniture delivery, so that you can solidify your logistics plan, and make customers happy.
Don’t Just Pick Any Carrier, Choose a White Glove Service
If you’re thinking about partnering with a general delivery service like FedEx to ship your furniture to customers’ homes, you may want to think again. Heavy shipping requires completely different methods than shipping a typical amazon package. For furniture, the approach becomes even more specific to ensure that it arrives at the customer’s home on time, and in piece. Instead, choose a furniture specialized delivery company that offers white glove service in their offerings to ship your products. Investing into a white glove service means a few things for your business. By having a professional delivery team handle your products – from pre-inspection of items, addressing repairs, assembling the product upon arrival, and placing it in the room of choice by the end of the delivery, you’re upgrading your customer experience and business growth with quality service. Leave your customers with peace of mind before, during, and after the delivery than having to worry about a unprofessional delivery disaster.
The Best Business Practice Trend: Building Your Online Presence
If you didn’t know yet, here’s the shocking news: Consumers today are not the same as they were before the pandemic. With brick and mortar stores gone, consumers flocked to e-commerce as it became their only available shopping source during Covid. According to Forbes, online spending in May 2020 increased 77% from the prior year to $82.5 billion. The surge in this demand also left a big impact on the transportation sector to keep up with the explosive growth. Now, popular platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce offer integrated delivery network services for their merchants to automate their entire booking and shipping process to deliver their furniture to customers. What’s more, you can also grow your audience coverage beyond your store’s physical radius capacity with an online business. In this age of growing digital era and tech modernization, just know that delivery won’t be a limiting factor anymore for your business.
Understanding Your Shipping Costs
When shipping heavy goods, you may be confused at some of the high costs associated with the delivery process, and wonder if it’s worth going down that road. In actuality however, you’re actually saving more money for a better service from the long term perspective. Rates for white glove shipping can range anywhere from $60 to $400, depending on various factors such as weight, quantity, packaging, distance, entry process, and so forth. If an item is over 300 lbs, it may require a third man fee to handle the extra weight and ensure safe handling of the product. If a product arrives damaged to the warehouse before delivery, the delivery team will perform any necessary repairs before it ships out to the customer’s home to prevent failed delivery or worse, buyer’s remorse with your brand. With white glove shipping, your furniture is handled by professionals who are well experienced to support your logistics needs, while also saving you thousands of dollars down the road in exchange for a small upfront cost.
Consumer Demand for Delivery Flexibility and Visibility: That Includes Furniture
Despite the pandemic’s global supply chain crisis, consumer expectations are the highest it has ever been – and many companies have successfully risen to meet those demands. Whether it’s a UPS package or a 200 pounds dining table, they want not only fast delivery but also flexibility and visibility into their deliveries. Therefore it’s important to partner with a carrier service that can provide those offerings for your customers. Companies like Deliveright for example run their entire delivery operations on Grasshopper – its proprietary AI platform for managing logistics. Available via mobile app and with any device, shippers and consumers receive real-time notifications into their white glove delivery process- from booking, eta, item condition, tracking, photo documentations, payments, and even customer surveys at the end of each trip. With Deliveright, retailers can rest easy knowing that their products are in good hands but also because they can access every touchpoint into their logistics, in real-time. Leave the heavy work to the experts to handle, so that you can focus on growing your business.
About Deliveright
Deliveright is the first AI-powered logistics and delivery technology company to solve final-mile, heavy goods delivery challenges for e-commerce, retailers, and manufacturers needing white-glove service. Launched in 2018 to streamline the supply chain for heavy goods, Deliveright’s technology, combined with its vast delivery network, makes white-glove delivery seamless, transparent, and accessible for businesses of all sizes, enabling improved customer experience and increased revenue. Deliveright’s proprietary logistics technology platform, Grasshopper®, manages all stages of fulfillment, enabling complete supply chain visibility to the customer’s home. Serving more than 1,000 customers in e-commerce and manufacturing across the furniture, industrial equipment, and transportation industries, Grasshopper is also licensed nationwide by delivery and freight companies, ensuring that every delivery is tracked across a complex transportation network and customer service platform. The company is headquartered in North Carolina and operates across the U.S. and Canada. For more information, visit https://deliveright.com/.
