What is order fulfillment? This term refers to the process of receiving, processing, and shipping customers' orders, whether it is an e-commerce order or B2B order by EDI. These order fulfillment best practices will help you maintain the best services to all your customers:
Keep Accurate Inventory: This is the most important part of order fulfillment and inventory management. Accuracy of stock levels helps to avoid overselling, being out of stock, or backorders. Many brands or 3PLs use inventory management software to keep track of inventory levels in real-time and can even provide alerts as inventory gets low.
Fast Order Processing: Keeping your customers happy means you must process orders fast, accurately and efficiently. This requires a very streamlined and organized process. You can even automate many tasks such as order confirmation emails, shipping labels, and tracking information. Omnichannel software can even manage and process orders from multiple sales channels in one place, so use technology to your advantage.
Fast Shipping: Your customers expect super-fast 2-day shipping, and if you don't, your competitors will. Having a wide (or narrow) range of shipping options can achieve your customers' goals of when and how they want to get their order, with real-time tracking available.
Carefully Pack Orders: Stuff breaks regularly if it’s not packaged properly, and you always want to ensure that orders arrive in good condition. Use quality boxes, bubble wrap, and other packing materials to prevent damage from the freight companies during transit. There is also a wide range of eco-friendly packaging options to attract environmentally conscious customers.
The Best Customer Service: Customer service is an extremely critical part of your order fulfillment. Recorded messages or emails to nowhere will do nothing to grow your brand. Make sure your customers can quickly and easily contact you with any questions they may have. Get back to them quickly with a smile and you’ll have a customer for life.
Always Be Improving: You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Create your own KPIs and metrics for your business. Look at your customer feedback, and always be looking for ways to improve your customer experience.
By following these six easy best practices or order fulfillment, you should be able to stay ahead in the e-commerce and B2B world, as well as your competitors! This is all what we do and provide for our customers every day at Verde Fulfillment USA. If we can help you grow your brand, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us anytime.