What is Fulfillment, and Why is it Important to Your Business?
As the name suggests, fulfillment simply refers to receiving products and then shipping or delivering them to the customers. After all, customer satisfaction is very important for a business to survive. High-quality fulfillment helps the business improve customer experience and upgrade.
Disruption in the retail industry is commonplace lately, and today, customers expect convenience and full-time support from the businesses they’re working alongside. Especially if the customers are far away from the business, customers expect a more proactive approach to fulfillment.
What is Order Fulfillment?
A new sale for the business is always an exciting thing. However, customer satisfaction depends heavily on when fulfillment occurs, and orders arrive in customers’ hands. Order fulfillment is a very important task. It starts with strategic sourcing and ends up with shipping. Businesses also manage order processing, inventory management, quality control, and customer support.
According to recent statistics, about 38% of online shoppers abandon their online order if the delivery takes longer than a week. This behavior speaks volumes of the need for quick deliveries. Also, a whopping 8% of the shoppers will abandon their orders if the delivery takes as long as three days. Proper order fulfillment is critical for the business to survive.
Importance of Order Fulfillment for Businesses
- Encourages Customers to Buy Products Again
The quality of the order fulfillment process determines whether the customer will engage with the company again or not. A smooth order fulfillment process can attract customers and prevent them from moving toward a competitor’s business.
Customers have a lot of expectations regarding the order fulfillment process. According to recent studies, about 25% of online shoppers will simply abandon their orders if there are unexpected shipping costs associated with the order. This shows that businesses need to be transparent with their customers. High shipping costs can also result in 63% of shoppers canceling their purchases. Accordingly, businesses should consider working with individual stores as their distribution nodes to reduce shipping costs and time.
- Impact Company’s Reputation
Customers judge the business according to the way they handle orders and fulfill them. For many people, a high-quality fulfillment process delivers the product undamaged and unhinged within the communicated time and without any hidden costs.
Customers can take a minute to cancel their order if they feel that the company is not trustworthy enough to deliver the product on time and something is missing in the fulfillment process. They can easily leave a bad review online and discourage others from engaging with the business. Accordingly, the fulfillment process increasingly impacts the company’s reputation and needs to be taken seriously.
- Provides Edge Over the Competition
The order fulfillment process also helps the business stand out in the crowd because customers will be far more willing to interact with a company that takes customer satisfaction seriously. Accordingly, businesses can improve their overall efficiency and increase the total long-term revenue in the market by improving their order fulfillment process and considering customers’ needs.
Customer feedback is also important in measuring satisfaction. Responses help the business improve its services. No business should assume its supply chain process is perfectly fine if customers do not leave bad reviews. Companies need to identify if their customers are satisfied with the services of the business or not, and this all comes down to a regular feedback framework.
This way, businesses can generate more sales over time and are more likely to be recommended by their customers in the market. Most importantly, a good fulfillment process can increase the company’s PR in the business world and help it stand out from the crowd.
Conclusion
Order fulfillment is a critical process when it comes to improving customer satisfaction. Customers have a lot of expectations associated with the business when they place an order online. Hence, companies need to take the order fulfillment process very seriously.
Contact Amplify today for high-quality order completion services in Texas and nearby areas.