The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked a tremendous amount of havoc in 2020, and the shipping industry was not immune to its drastic impact. As people were forced to stay indoors, a major shift to e-commerce and online shopping created a prolonged peak shipping season, which caused carriers to be overwhelmed. It is interesting to note that experts expect many of the social and economic behaviors that Americans have adopted because of the pandemic to remain once life returns to “normal,” meaning that the e-commerce sector will continue growing and shippers will need to figure out how to mitigate carrier capacity issues.
Lance Healy, Banyan Technology’s co-founder and chief innovation officer, joined Pierbridge’s “10-Minute Parcel Tips” webinar to discuss the issues shippers are facing and to offer shipping tips on how they can adapt to survive and thrive beyond the “Ship-ocalypse.”
The tips include:
- Managing customer delivery expectations
- Work with your customer and clients to manage expectations with delivery options and let them decide which is more important – price or transit time.
- Reduce costs by finding alternatives to shipping – buy online and pickup in store, centralized pickup depot, etc.
- Diversify modes
- Switch to dynamic pricing models.
- Shippers need to move holiday volume forward and rethink operations and determine if they can add inventory to economically switch modes to LTL or truckload.
- Add carrier partners
- Go beyond parcel and add LTL carriers, couriers, and regional or local carriers to your mix.
Pierbridge and Banyan note that ramping up these shipping options quickly is the way to help shippers survive and thrive beyond this incredibly busy shipping season. By using multicarrier rating and integration tools, no matter the solution, shippers can accomplish increasing shipping options while also maintaining margin and keeping their customers happy.
Watch the entire “10-Minute Parcel Tips” webinar below:
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