Route Optimization: Meeting Customer Expectations in Last-Mile Delivery

Last-mile delivery has become the battleground on which customer satisfaction in e-commerce and on-demand services is won or lost — and it is a fierce battle indeed.

Despite its short distance, the last mile accounts for a significant portion of overall delivery costs and is often the most challenging and expensive part of the supply chain. Delivery drivers face numerous challenges, from navigating through traffic congestion and adhering to strict time windows to managing multiple deliveries in a single trip and accommodating customer preferences for delivery timings. 

Timely, cost-effective and error-free deliveries are essential to meet customer expectations, enhance customer satisfaction and build brand loyalty. As customer expectations continue to rise as they always have, businesses must employ many tools and strategies to differentiate themselves and stay ahead of the competition. One of the most crucial and impactful of these is route optimization — an intelligent technology- and data-driven approach to streamlining the last-mile delivery process. 

Here’s how route optimization can help your last-mile delivery business meet customer expectations. 

i) On-time deliveries every time

Fast order fulfillment is now a baseline expectation, with over 90% of retail customers demanding delivery within 2-3 days and 30% expecting same-day delivery. Inefficient routes directly impact delivery times, and failure to fulfill orders within promised timelines will result in the loss of customer confidence.

The solution to this problem? Advanced routing tools, like NextBillion.ai’s very own Route Optimization API. Such advanced solutions can account for factors like traffic conditions, weather, vehicle availability, vehicle capacities, driver skills, delivery time windows, employee work hours, etc. to generate the best routes and sequences that fit your specific operational needs, with accurate ETAs. Manually achieving this level of complexity in modern logistics is practically impossible.

By incorporating all of these factors and leveraging real-time as well as historical data, route optimization solutions provide customers with accurate ETAs and ensure that nothing gets in the way of customers getting their deliveries on time.

ii) Transparency and visibility across operations

Customers want features like real-time tracking, live updates and direct communication with delivery drivers because they provide transparency and visibility into the delivery process, empowering customers and instilling a sense of control over their orders. Today’s routing tools have evolved to meet these expectations, enabling customers to monitor their order progress from the moment it is dispatched until it reaches their doorstep. Going a step further, they can be notified of any unforeseen changes, such as delivery delays due to weather conditions, in real time. 

This heightened level of transparency and active involvement in the delivery process inspires confidence and a feeling of being valued by the brand. The combination of real-time updates and direct communication establishes a stronger bond between the customer and your organization, ultimately leading to improved customer loyalty and a positive brand reputation.

iii) Options for customer convenience

Customers today expect a range of delivery conveniences — flexible delivery windows, rescheduling deliveries, changing addresses, etc. To meet these expectations, route optimization software must consider a wide array of variables, ensuring the most feasible and customer-friendly solutions for your business. The software takes into account factors like road restrictions, shift hours and adequate breaks for delivery drivers while striving to meet customer expectations for delivery times. 

It’s not just your customers who stand to gain from this, though. By letting customers select their preferred delivery timeslots, the likelihood of unfulfilled deliveries is greatly minimized, leading to a reduction in reattempted deliveries and a smoother, more efficient delivery process.

iv) Data analytics for consumer behavior insights

Routing solutions ingest, analyze, manipulate and create significant volumes of useful data — data that plays a crucial role in guiding last-mile delivery planning and strategic implementation. For instance, customer feedback and last-mile delivery metrics such as On-Time In-Full (OTIF) provide valuable information about customer satisfaction and the overall delivery experience. Through insights drawn from such rich data, you can identify trends and patterns in customer behaviors and preferences, helping your business better meet customer needs and differentiate itself from the competition. 

Adopting a modern last-mile routing solution helps you gain deeper insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your operation, as well as understand your customers’ ever-evolving expectations. Such actionable insights enable you to minimize inefficiencies, improve customer service and deliver customer delight more effectively.

v) Sustainable operations

Customers increasingly expect businesses to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability. To the environmentally conscious consumer, it’s important that the money they spend goes to supporting a responsibly run eco-friendly operation. Route optimization significantly decreases the number of miles traveled, leading to reduced fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and traffic congestion, helping minimize the overall carbon footprint of the delivery process.

With optimized routes, drivers can avoid unnecessary detours and delays, ensuring packages are delivered promptly. This, in turn, reduces the number of failed deliveries and returns, further driving down the environmental impact of your operation. Incorporate sustainability into your last-mile delivery operations to gain a competitive edge by appealing to environmentally conscious customers and delivering a positive, eco-friendly customer experience.

NextBillion.ai’s Route Optimization API and other such sophisticated solutions make all of the above (and much more) possible. All you need to do is follow these five steps:

• Plan delivery routes
  The core function of route optimization — generate the best possible routes to execute faster deliveries. 
  
• Enable dynamic route optimization
  Empower your fleet to efficiently handle unexpected changes in weather conditions, traffic patterns, delivery windows and addresses, etc.
  
• Enable visual live tracking
  Give customers the ability to visually track their deliveries on a map in real time.
• Provide live updates
  Keep customers informed with always-updated ETAs and notifications of any changes in their delivery status.
  
• Identify trends and bottlenecks
  Analyze operational data and customer feedback to spot inefficiencies and understand customer behaviors for service improvement.
  

It’s easy to see how route optimization can play a leading role in the quest to meet customers’ ever-evolving expectations. It serves as a dynamic response to their diverse preferences, enabling you to cater to each individual’s needs with multiple delivery time slots, alternate routes and real-time tracking. This personalized approach resonates with today’s customers and has precipitated an era in which the last mile adapts to the customer, rather than the other way around.

Route optimization is the common thread in last-mile delivery that weaves together customer convenience, operational efficiency and business success — so you have to make sure you’re using the right tool for the job. That’s where the flexibility of NextBillion’ai’s Route Optimization API comes into play. Our API accepts numerous custom constraints, from specific vehicle characteristics and types of goods being carried, to delivery priorities and emissions regulations. 

Schedule a call with our team to see how seamlessly NextBillion.ai’s Route Optimization API can fit into your last-mile delivery operations.