It can be annoying when we receive our food and it’s already cold, or when our parcel did not arrive at its expected date, right? This is why it’s important to hire the right courier to avoid creating different problems for your business. When an issue does pop up, and your courier puts little effort to rectify the situation, it may still bring a negative impact on your business.
If you want to avoid that from happening, consider reading these 5 common courier or delivery complaints from customers and some tips on how you can prevent these issues from occurring.
1. Long Waiting Times
If you will ready delivery review sites, you will notice how long delivery times are one of the most common complaints that customers leave as feedback. These confused customers are most likely going to hate your business and will not order for your delivery service again, which means that you lose one more customer. Here are some ways that can help you lessen delivery wait times:
Provide your own in-house delivery service because this will help you get a sense of control over serving your customers with a strict quality standard.
Give updates to your customers when a driver is on the way.
Ensure that there are enough delivery drivers that are scheduled. Use an advanced POS that can assist you with the guesswork out of scheduling by projecting the number of drivers you’ll need based on historical sales data.
2. Late Deliveries
The late delivery of goods or services is a concern for both the sender and recipient. You as the sender or business owner don’t want to receive negative feedback and a bad reputation for not being able to deliver on time, and the recipient hates to wait longer than they need to receive their delivery. Customers are normal people who have busy schedules, so remember that they make plans around the time that your courier has identified for delivery, if that deadline was not met, they’ll be confused and inconvenienced.
To avoid late deliveries from happening, consider conducting thorough research into a courier’s reputation. For instance, you can try looking at their reviews and testimonials prior to making a decision. If they see that your courier has a lot of five-star reviews for timely deliveries, they will trust to use your service since they see that you can get goods to their destination on time.
3. Damaged Goods or Broken Items
Every courier service owner aims to deliver their goods in the condition that they originally sent them in. Nobody wants their recipients to contact them and telling them that their items are broken or unfit for purpose. And if this happens, you’ll be required to send replacement stocks so you end up losing sales. This is why it’s important that your courier ensure safe and secured delivery of the items to the best of their ability.
4. Food Arriving in Poor Condition
We’re sure that most of us have experienced getting smashed, unappetizing, cold food once in our lives. Nothing is more disappointing than food arriving at you in poor condition. This may include soggy fries, cold pizza, melted dessert, spilt food and drinks, and etc. If the food you have ordered arrived in poor condition, this will reflect on your brand and might make other customers not order from you. So what can you do to make sure that your food arrives in the best condition as much as possible?
- Don’t put food in the same place with the same temperature. Make sure they’re separated by temperature.
- Try to invest in the best packaging options to lessen leakage and spills, and test it on your next delivery.
- Provide your delivery drivers with insulated food bags.
- Have a POS and utilize it to estimate food prep time so the food doesn’t sit waiting, and drivers can deliver the next goods immediately.
- You may use the controls in the POS to ensure drivers aren’t making five stops before they drop the next order off.
- Offer proper pieces of training for your delivery drivers to carry and drop off food properly and with care.
5. Slow Customs Clearance
Having problems at customs can normally bring delays to deliveries. Like what we previously mentioned, late deliveries can make customers unhappy. To avoid further delay and trouble at the customs, your shipment should have all the accurate documentation. In order for you to avoid detrimental late deliveries, pick a courier that’s well-recognized for having expertise and knowledge with customs. This just means you will immediately get notified if any possible issues arise with shipments missing the right documents. A good courier provider knows how to avoid any problems with shipments before even sending them.
6. Do Not Pay Attention to Special Instructions
Customers use their extra time to fill out special instructions since it’s essential for them. It’s a responsibility for delivery drivers to read and understand these reasonable requests and place special care on them. Usually, these special instructions are particularly made about the food orders, while others are created to specialize the delivery itself. It’s important that you train your delivery drivers to check and verify the order and special instructions before leaving the restaurant. Or send all the complete details like name, address, and order to the delivery driver so they have all the information they need and avoid possible complaints.