Logistics Ops Focus Areas During BFCM Unfulfillment
Black Friday / Cyber Monday is like election day: after months of preparation, you finally see if your campaign was successful.
From email marketing and social campaigns to promotional offers and product bundles, 80% of e-commerce merchants plan their BF/CM strategy at least one week in advance. Products have been manufactured, warehouses are stocked and couriers are on standby to streamline fulfilment.
So what should your logistics and operations teams focus on during BF/CM week? Unfulfillment.
Why you should focus on unfulfillment during BF/CM
Black Friday / Cyber Monday may be your biggest sales week of the year, with three in five e-commerce businesses experiencing a significant sales spike. But BF/CM is not a one-off sales event - it's an opportunity to grow your customer base and e-commerce revenue for the rest of the year.
Large discounts and time-limited offers attract new customers to your e-commerce offering, with 75% of all shoppers making a purchase during BF/CM. If these new customers have a great customer experience during BF/CM, they will keep coming back in the future.
However, their e-commerce experience is intrinsically connected to your courier's delivery performance, with the majority of UK shoppers (52%) holding retailers accountable for lost, delayed or damaged deliveries - not the courier.
Given BF/CM leads to a surge in shipping volumes and delivery issues, it's the best time to address the issue of unfulfillment. Here's how you should track, analyse and take action regarding your delivery performance.
Track your shipping issues
During BF/CM 2024, European parcel volume increased by 93.7%. With couriers under increased pressure, the number of shipments encountering delivery issues also rose from 6% to 6.7%. When you multiply that across thousands of orders, that's a lot of lost or damaged shipments.
But delivery issues do not affect all e-commerce equally. The exact number of issues will depend on your products, routes, couriers and order volume. To get an accurate picture, work out the % of shipments that encountered delivery issues in the last week of October and then compare with the % during BF/CM week.
Analyse the impact
No matter whether parcels go missing from the doorstep or get damaged in transit, unfulfilled deliveries during BF/CM negatively impact your revenue well beyond November as they lead to:
Reduced trust. One in five shoppers loses trust in the retailer if their BF/CM order fails to arrive as expected.
Reduced future custom. A quarter of buyers will never shop with you again after a bad experience and 17% will tell their friends and family to avoid you too.
While it can take time to notice these negative impacts (unless you get an angry customer email), you can address these problems quicker by analysing your BF/CM delivery issues in real-time.
In particular, look at the product type, freight mode, courier and journey involved with each delivery issue. This will help you pinpoint the root cause of delivery issues and avoid similar problems at Christmas and during the January sales.
Take action before Christmas
By quickly assessing your BF/CM delivery performance, you can take immediate steps to rectify the situation. In particular, you can:
Reach out to affected customers with discounts. To avoid a negative customer experience, give a discount on future purchases or a time-limited Christmas offer.
Choose the best couriers for your products or journey. To minimise future issues, select couriers best-suited to delivering during the peak season rush.
Claim back compensation from couriers. To recoup money from lost/damaged shipments, use Claimit's automated courier claims.
Claiming BF/CM courier compensation with Claimit
In the weeks after BF/CM in 2024, our platform processed 5x more claims than the end of August.
By automating claims for BF/CM delivery issues with Claimit, you not only recoup compensation with minimal effort, but you can:
Use the money and time savings to improve the customer experience.
Use Claimit's data analytics to improve your courier choices.
Example: Fashion marketplace Wolf and Badger has saved £50k since using Claimit while nutrition brand Bulk has saved 80% on claims processing time; time now spent better serving customers' needs.
So if you're wondering what your logistics and ops teams should focus on as the BF/CM mayhem unfolds, choose unfulfillment.
