Enabling Peak Season Fulfillment During Ramadan in the Middle East

To believe or not to believe?

Were the literary titan Shakespeare here today, observing the contemporary business landscape, he might pose this question.

There was a time when we considered customers’ beliefs to be unshakeable and deep-rooted, immune to change.

Yet, the landscape has evolved, and a delightful experience can ultimately make or break a customer’s belief in that brand. Could there be a more opportune time in the Middle East than Ramadan to provide that delightful experience through deliveries and win more customers? 
Providing a delightful delivery experience during a peak season like Ramadan is easier said than done. How do we enable that on-ground? Let’s dive in for more answers! 

Read Also: How Dispatch Management Software Helps Businesses Manage Peak Shipping Seasons like Ramadan

3 Must-Haves to Make Peak Season Deliveries Successful During Ramadan in the Middle East

The Internet penetration in the Middle East as of 2022 is 79.7%. It is considerably higher than the world internet penetration of 69%. This internet penetration, ease of online payments, and a tech-savvy population resulted in the 14% growth rate of the MENA’s e-commerce market size to $37 in 2022 compared to 2021. 

Today, enabling a successful peak season fulfillment has become a primary component of acquiring and retaining customers. No customer wants the delivery promises to be broken during these times. But businesses must fight an uphill battle to ensure a delightful customer experience. They need three critical elements in their last-mile logistics to fight this uphill battle during peak season fulfillment and remain successful. 

Read Also: Last Mile Delivery: Problems And Solutions Explained

1. Transparency in Deliveries 

Say you’re a delivery business operating in the Middle East region. On a holy day of fasting much before Ramadan starts, your delivery manager enters the office and is shocked to see the inventory piled up and receiving continuous Where Is My Order (WISMO) calls. Chaotic scenario, isn’t it? 
Is there a connection between inventory piled up and continuously receiving WISMO calls? Yes. That connection is transparency. 

The most critical component to successful peak season fulfillment is transparency in deliveries. There will be a vast sales rush during and just before Ramadan. Say, that a customer orders clothes, household accessories, and groceries online. 

Customers want clear communication through timely alerts, real-time fleet tracking, and chat/call options with the delivery agent, driver, or customer support teams. This transparency could build trust in customers that their deliveries would arrive on time and make them repeat customers.  

The scope of transparency doesn’t stop here. Suppose your business experiences a likely delivery exception or delay. In that case, it is necessary to inform your customer beforehand through notifications, tracking alerts, emails, messages, and calls. It gives the customers a secure feeling that the delivery business is working on their order progress. Beyond this, it allows them to reschedule or cancel the order, thereby providing control over their delivery process. 

Read Also: What is Last-Mile Tracking and How it Improves Delivery Efficiency

2. On-Time Deliveries at the First Attempt 

The Middle East region will have an issue of resource crunch during Ramadan. The shorter working hours and reduced capacity make it difficult for delivery businesses to make on-time deliveries on the first attempt. So, how do companies balance the driver shifts and the order volumes to be delivered? 

The answer lies in a dispatch management platform. A dispatch management platform helps fleet managers plan routes based on driver availability, working hours, traffic, etc. These optimal routes ensure that drivers complete a maximum number of deliveries by traveling a minimal distance. 

There’s one more aspect worth noting here – address inaccuracies. Statistics mention that incorrect addresses could affect over $7.42 billion US dollars of e-commerce revenue in the Middle East. It is more than 20 percent of the total e-commerce market of the Middle East and North African region, which stands at $37 billion. 

The address inaccuracies are the biggest hindrance to on-time deliveries made at the first attempt. Say that the address of a customer is unclear. So, the driver calls the customer and keeps riding around to find the customer’s exact location. This causes missed or failed deliveries leading to a reattempted delivery. 

Logistics experts cite that every reattempted delivery causes the costs to multiply by 4x. And the best way to counter this is by using a geocoding engine. A geocoding engine converts the imprecise addresses into accurate geographical coordinates for the system. This makes it easier for drivers to navigate to the exact customer location and deliver the order on time on the first attempt. 

Read Also: First Attempt Delivery Rate: The Metric for CEP & Retail Success

3. Effective Time Slot Management 

Does your business offer customers the option of choosing their time slots? If yes, more work is required to improve the customer experience and operational efficiency. If not, your business suffers from analysis paralysis in making the right dispatching decisions. 

When your business offers the customers the option of choosing the time slots, things become more manageable. The time slot options make it easier to sort the parcels, secure capacity, and plan routes for the fleet. 

Delivery businesses in the Middle East know that the two busiest weeks occur right before the Eid-Ul-Fitr. Securing fleet capacity during these unforgiving times and planning routes with realistic Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) is necessary. But how to enable this in our delivery management is the question of businesses. 

The best way to manage time slots efficiently and effectively is by investing in a delivery-linked checkout feature. With its capacity-led slot bookings, the delivery-linked checkout feature enables businesses to use their fleet space fully, plan optimal routes, and generate realistic ETAs based on on-ground constraints and business goals. A good dispatch management system, along with a delivery-linked checkout feature, enables your business to plan and secure delivery capacity when it’s needed the most.

By intelligently clubbing the forward and backward orders, the delivery-linked checkout feature helps businesses make full use of their vehicle space to fulfill orders in one trip. It ensures companies reach customers on time and deliver their orders at their preferred time windows. This helps companies to secure their profitability without compromising on customer experience.  

Read Also: Unit Economics in Last-mile delivery

On-Time Deliveries + Customer-Preferred Time Windows + Real-Time Visibility = Predictability (But There’s a Missing Link!)

If one asks customers the most critical element for a successful delivery, they might reply that it is speed. But what’s more vital in logistics deliveries is predictability. Predictability is the trust element that customers have in a delivery business: if they place an order, they will safely get it on time at their preferred time. But how do companies build that predictability in their logistics operations? 

Read Also: How to Improve Net Promoter Score for Your Courier Company

There are three elements that a business needs to have to build this predictability. They are real-time visibility (transparent communication), on-time deliveries, and serving customers at their preferred time windows. But one more part needs to be added – analytical insights. With analytical insights, businesses can rectify the mistakes, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies that impact the profitability of any logistics operations. 

Another question arises. Is there one aspect we can get our hands on that could ensure all these four elements are met? Yes, there is, and that is the investment in technologies that assist your dispatching decisions. That technology is none other than Locus’ Customer Experience and Dispatch management platform. 

With its proprietary geocoding engine, Locus’ customer experience and dispatch management platform eliminates the address inaccuracies plaguing your business. Its advanced algorithms, predictive analytics, and features like route planning, delivery-linked checkout, and real-time fleet tracking enable your business to secure profitability without compromising customer experience. This maximizes the operational efficiency of peak-season deliveries and makes them more predictable. 

Are you looking to delight customers and add more predictability to peak-season deliveries?

References:

https://www.ezdubai.ae/uploads/64182449cb95a_45564574634523546468963.pdf
https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm
hhttps://www.logisticsmiddleeast.com/logistics/do-you-know-the-impact-and-cost-of-inaccurate-addresses-to-your-business