What factors cause shipping delays and how to keep customers happy？

A majority of the world today uses online shopping for a lot of reasons. Compared with personal shopping, they find it more convenient, practical, and fun! People like to see different products in just one click, choose from a variety of them, and make orders within just minutes. After that, all they need to do is to wait for the package to reach their doorstep after a few days. That’s fun, isn’t it?

However, what’s not fun about shopping online is when the delivery gets stuck somewhere and makes customers wait longer than expected. Ever since the evolution of online businesses, delays have become a common issue. Yet, until today, this problem has not been resolved and many customers haven’t been used to it.

Factors that Can Cause Shopping Delays

Online businesses reach their customers through shipping and delivery. We’re aware of how delivery happens, but what about shipping? And how about shipping delays? This pertains to the date when the package or goods will be leaving the warehouse before they will be delivered. So, when shipping has been delayed, it means that the date of moving the product has been changed due to certain reasons.

With the increasing popularity of online businesses, delays in the shipping and delivery of goods are inevitable. However unintentional, merchants tend to lose their customer’s trust for not being able to stick with the schedule. No matter how much they’d like to prevent shipping delays, certain things cause them to happen. Some of the most common ones are listed below.

Current Events

As of 2022, shipping delays still happen due to Coronavirus that started back in 2019. A lot of shipments have been delayed, like in China, Singapore, Italy, India, and other countries around the globe. The curfews and lockdowns are the main reasons for this and are aimed at combating the disease that has already taken almost three years now.

International to Domestic Shipping

Customs requirements and the congestion in airports are the common causes of shipping delays in international shipping. Packages are held up due to incomplete or incorrect documents. Domestic shipping, however, may be restrained due to bad weather, traffic, detours, accidents, and more. With this kind of delay, the shipment volume increases and causes things to become worse.

Holidays and Special Occasions

Christmas and New Year are two major occasions around the globe that people cannot miss. The same way for online businesses. It is an occasion when they earn double or triple, yet shipping delays become doubled as well. It’s the peak season for all businesses including the physical ones. The increase in shipment volume typically causes overwhelm among couriers and shipping delay happens when customers wanted their packages to arrive on time.

Supply Chain

Logistics is a top factor in the shipping delays. When couriers do not have enough people to go on with the delivery after it’s been shipped, a delay occurs. Likewise, problems in the supply chain such as incapacity to process orders can cause constraints to the normal process of shipment that thus lead to shipping delays. Trackingmore and Parcelpanel are two of the top logistics app you can try to ensure success in shipping goods to your customers. They have enough workforce and other resources to proceed.

Customs

Each country has its own customs requirements which your carriers should be completely aware of. Filling out all necessary documents and attaching them as part of the requirement must be completed during shipment, otherwise, customs will put the package on hold. The package shall be released until couriers can present the right information. Dropshipman is a trusted dropshipping application that can fulfill all those requirements and ship your orders from the China warehouse to any country in the world within only 7-15 days.

Incorrect Address

Errors like misspelled or incomplete information and wrong address mislead delivery companies and cause them to deliver the package back to the seller for correction. It can result in shipping delays or no delivery anymore. This can be avoided by making sure that you put the right address, clearly and legibly.

How Shopping Delays Affect Businesses

As a customer yourself, you might be thinking that the courier had been irresponsible in delivering your order, or that it may have been delivered to the wrong address. Many things pop up in your mind especially if that package is something very important to you.

As an owner of an online business, an order cannot be considered completed and successful unless the package has safely arrived at the customer’s address. This is so because shipping delays including the actual delivery of the goods greatly affect the reputation of an eCommerce business. To guide you on improving your ways to avoid delays in the shipment, here are some vital facts to consider.

• Shipping delays cause an eCommerce business to lose its loyal customers and a 25% chance of getting new ones.
• Two to three shipping delays cause 55% of customers not to shop from an online business again.
• Almost 70% of customers will no longer purchase from your store if the shipment will be late for more than two days after the scheduled delivery date.

What to do When Shopping Delays Occur

No matter how good your intentions are which are to earn money and to grow your business, it’s just hard to avoid shipping delays because they happen all the time. Despite that, whatever the reasons are for the delay, always remember to approach and comfort your customers first and foremost. The most effective way to resolve this is by learning the right thing to do when such a delay occurs in one of your shipments. To help you further on this matter, below are some of the tips you can try:

1. Reach out to your customers. Communication is always a key to anything. Once you learned that there will be a delay in the shipment, the first thing to remember is to inform your customers so at least they know that you are worried about how they feel about the issue. Make that through a direct call to customers to make it more felt so you can clearly explain what happened.

2. Provide free shipping service. This offer is actually in your favor. Free shipping means waiting a little bit longer since the customer did not have to pay for anything. Customers expect less in this case and thus allow eCommerce businesses to work on their shipping time and still avoid delays to keep up with the competition.

3. Ask to track the order for them. Easy tracking methods help in alleviating stress among customers. When you share the tracking details with them, customers can check the location of the package themselves and worry less.

4. Create a deal with local shops. Partnering with local suppliers in a country where you do transactions with customers ensures to get the orders are delivered right on time. This is because they can look for the closest warehouses in their location and reduce the shipping time of the product.

5. Give special discounts. This is good news for customers because it means saving some for future transactions. When you offer discounts or vouchers, it may cost some money. But, what is 5% of the price compared with the 100% cut from your profit from losing a valuable customer, right?

Ways to Reassure Customers

There are ways to bring back your customers’ trust after shipping delays occurred. Take a look at the list below for more details:

1. Show gratitude for their trust.
2. Be honest with the shipping delay.
3. Explain clearly why the delay happened.
4. Apologies for what happened.
5. Express directly why they should still trust your services.