How does your business extend quality service to its customers? Shippers and freight forwarders say they offer the best customer experience, but often, the experience felt by the customer does not match the brand promise, particularly when it comes to shipment visibility. The customer’s experience influences their decision to make a repeat purchase or speak favorably about your brand to others. Lapses in customer service do not go unnoticed. Details like real-time updates of shipment status and efficient, transparent communication contribute to the overall customer experience. By improving the customer experience in the shipping process, shippers and freight forwarders can leave a positive impression and provide customers with additional benefits that contribute to their own business success.
The Importance of the Customer Experience in Shipping and Logistics
Logistics is all about partnerships. The service provided to your customers is an extension of their businesses—and serves their customers, too. Providing quality customer service helps your customers save time and money and reduce risk. They can keep their promises on when shipments will arrive and provide updates, including notifying their customers of delays.
Prioritizing the customer experience establishes a solid foundation between you as the shipper and your customers. It demonstrates they can trust you, which helps promote loyalty even when challenges arise.
Often, your technology partners offer the tools and capabilities needed to complete a one-stop solution of true end-to-end visibility and value-added services customers crave. This gives you a competitive advantage as you extend insight to benefit your customers’ businesses.
10 Ways Container Visibility helps Shippers and Freight Forwarders Boost Customer Experience
Container visibility is one such capability that gives your customers numerous benefits. Here are 10 ways this improves the customer experience.
- Provide transparency – Your customers, given the benefit of real-time data regarding their freight, gain confidence that your business is committed to quality service and won’t try to hide disruptions or delays.
- Give timely status updates – By getting real-time updates on the status of their freight, customers save time trying to find out where their shipment is and can better plan their operations given accurate updates.
- Communicate regularly and thoroughly – Communication is easier at scale when you have a solution to seamlessly provide container visibility. Each customer gets the benefits of thorough communication without taking up valuable time.
- Promptly respond to questions and requests – When your business reaches the point of managing by exception, you can more efficiently respond to questions that customers have and focus on a quality service experience.
- Deliver on commitments – As supply chain visibility is now table stakes, this gets your business to a place where you can focus on higher goals and deliver on your promises, rather than getting caught in the weeds and reacting to every small obstacle.
- Be upfront and honest – You can move away from relaying anecdotal information to your customers and instead establish relationships based on trust, backed by the quality, accessible data derived from container tracking.
- Educate yourself and your partners on best practices – Being freed up to prioritize a more strategic vantage point, you can work more effectively with the consignee to improve the overall efficiency of freight flows.
- Offer proactive solutions – When problems arise, you have the resources to respond more effectively and provide solutions that proactively guard against future disruptions.
- Internally reward accountability – Your business can create a culture of excellent customer experience, as it’s driven by data and not emotion.
- Provide continuous improvement opportunities through technology and analysis of data – You can use data as an opportunity to improve and continue to put the customer at the heart of the shipping experience.
Your Customers are an Extension of our Business
Excellent customer service provides numerous benefits for your customers’ businesses, which, in turn, drives your success and growth. It is worth the time and investment to discover how to best serve your customers. When your customers’ number one question is often, “Where is my freight?” the most effective tool for you is real-time track and trace capabilities, like VIZION provides. As the provider of industry-leading visibility solutions, VIZION offers data on which you can build an above-and-beyond customer service experience. Reach out to VIZION API today to learn more.
