TheAddressers.com: The Primary Benefit of Product Fulfillment Services
What is the key issue which makes product fulfillment services so important to retail businesses? It is important to occasionally step back, and ask this question.
The answer is simple: Product fulfillment services are important, because when they work well they insure that your customers get their products in a timely manner, and when they are not working your customers will not.
Studies have shown that speed of delivery is the chief determining factor in whether or not a customer returns to buy more products from you. Speed of delivery is more important than quality, more important than reliability, even more important than customer service. So whether you hire an outsourced firm to provide product fulfillment services or you have an in-house department that handles this, you have to firmly keep in mind how important it is to get the product delivered in a timely manner.
If your product fulfillment team is inefficient, delays getting the product out to the customer, or makes lots of errors in terms of sending the wrong items or allowing them to be damaged, this team is killing your business.
When a package arrives in the customer's hands, you are sending an important message about your company. If the product is late or with incomplete or damaged contents, you will have sent a very negative message to the customer. He will have a negative emotional reaction, and think that you do not care about him.
With the rise of overnight and 2-day delivery services such as FedEx, DHL and others, it became possible for people to shop from catalogs or over the Internet, but still receive the product the next day or in two days. Ordering something over the phone no longer meant you had to wait a week or two for it. And it was actually easier than driving around to various stores to find what you wanted, and the choices were often greater.
But if the process breaks down with a slow fulfillment team, all the excitement of anticipation of receiving the ordered product turns into disappointment, frustration and anger. The customer may call or email you multiple times to find out the status of their order, creating more traffic for your company, and he probably will not buy from you again.
Contrast that with the order coming in today, and the customer receiving his item tomorrow. The customer is thrilled and customer retention is much more likely.
So if your fulfillment team is not doing the job, and it’s an in-house team, either get that team fixed (often with a new manager who can get the lead out), or consider going outside for an outsourced product fulfillment house. They are specialized at doing fulfillment so chances are they will have their act together in terms of speedy delivery.
Product fulfillment services provide a valuable link in the marketing chain; and stepping back and viewing the most important aspects of the service gives us a valuable perspective and view of the process.
Kent Moon is President of The Addressers (http://www.theaddressers.com), a large direct mail, fulfillment, and database development and management company located in North Hollywood, CA. More of his articles on direct mail, fulfillment and database management can be seen at http://theaddressers.typepad.com/my_weblog/
