Business owners need many things if they want to compete within their chosen niche. You will probably need a user-friendly website and possibly an app. You will probably need research and development for your products, a marketing team that can construct an excellent ad campaign and employees who feel passionate about what they do.
You also need to track your packages during transit, assuming you have an eCommerce business model. In this article, we’ll talk about some things you need to have the best possible tracking experience.
Shipment Visibility
Providing an impeccable tracking experience can do a lot for your company. You need to know where your packages are at all times. If you lose track of any of them, you might not locate them again.
If that happens, you may have to inform a customer that you lost their shipment, and you will have to send them a new one. The customer won’t like that too much, and you won’t either. You’ll lose money and merchandise that way.
If you use a shipping API that tracks packages very carefully, that can solve this potential problem. As long as you can see your package’s location every moment it’s in transit, you can feel good about getting some repeat business.
Delivery Date Predictions
You will want to know when a shipment will arrive, just like your customers. They might need that package urgently. Maybe there is an anniversary, birthday, or holiday gift in there. If the package arrives later than expected, the customer might not use your company again next time.
If you use an automated delivery service with a central hub, you can pull up expected package delivery dates at any time. You’ll know how long a package will take to arrive, and you can get notifications if there’s any kind of delay.
You can immediately pass that information on to a customer. If you use a delivery service that keeps dropping off the packages later than you expect, you might go with someone else.
If you find out a package will now arrive later than you first projected, you can pass that information on to the customer. They may not like it very much, but they’ll appreciate that you informed them. You might even offer them a discount on their next order to keep them happy.
Analytical Capabilities
You might see commercials these days advertising analytics-driven technology. Companies in many niches love analytics because you can use them to streamline your business model.
You can certainly use shipment and delivery analytics to help you deliver products more smoothly the longer you’re open. If you see that a particular delivery service got your packages to the customer on-time 99% of the time, you can stick with them. If you see that their successful delivery rate keeps going down, it’s probably time to make a switch.
You can use analytics to see how many customers engage with the shipping emails you send them. You want to make sure and use a service where the emails end up on the customer’s white list. If you see that emails keep ending up in the junk folder, you might choose to go with a different email delivery service.
Accurate Shipping Labels
If you set up a shipping API, it can do all kinds of things for you. One thing you’ll certainly want it to do, though, is create fast and accurate shipping labels you can immediately put on your packages as you get ready to send them through the mail.
You will want to print shipping labels with barcodes that your delivery company can scan effortlessly. If you see that the barcodes don’t come out accurately more times than not, you might need to use a different API. You’ll find several competing ones that do shipping, and you’ll want to select one that produces easy-to-read barcodes.
24/7 Technical Support
If you’re using a shipping API for your company, you’ll also probably want one that provides you with 24/7 technical support. If you ever find that any API feature does not work for some reason, you’ll want to reach out and get some help with that. You need all the features to work, because, if they don’t, you could miss out on some sales.
You want immediate and courteous assistance. API is a service, just like you’re providing your customers. As such, you want to know you’re spending money on something that’s worth the expenditure.