Woes of Last Mile Delivery

Woes of Last Mile Delivery

2 min read

The world’s largest online retailer, Amazon.com, was quick to realize that the value was shifting from “what” was delivered to “how” it was delivered – Kiva Robots, AmazonFresh and futuristic drone delivery are all part of solving the woes of last mile delivery.  While the $62 billion retail giant keeps innovating, our Indian online retailers like Flipkart.com, Yebhi.com, Myntra.com, HomeShop 18, eBay.in and Jabong.com have their own set of unique battles to fight.

The Indian demography and preferences complicate the “last mile delivery” in the following ways:

  • Cash on delivery – 50% of online orders are on COD which means delivery agents carry about 15,000 to 25,000 rupees in cash at any time.  This makes the whole process risky, expensive and laborious!
  • Merchandise return – buyer remorse is a global phenomenon but it is more acute in India leading to reverse logistics, multiple deliveries and effecting up to 40% loss in margins
  • Postal address – a minimum of 10% fuel is wasted on “false miles”; most recipients have to be called multiple times for nearby landmarks & further navigation guidance and this has a direct impact on delivery agent productivity.  This leads to dependency on local field agents as well as inability to utilize field agent of one area in other areas

Assuming that the quality of the product(s) delivered is met, customer satisfaction is directly dependent on two main processes in last mile delivery:

  1. Order tracking – back end call center agents will monitor consignment from supplier to warehouse to local hub, assign orders, guide agents to locations, get customer feedback and report
  2. Order delivery – field agents will collect package(s), locate address, deliver package, collect payment and acknowledgement as required

The whole process has to be managed tightly to ensure higher productivity, reduced operational expenses and also improve customer experience. And this is precisely what, LastMile 360, Uniphore’s mobile solution does.  LastMile360 for e-commerce and logistics industry, is a feature rich software that integrates multilingual speech recognition and voice biometric capabilities with standard mobile data (GPRS) technology to help:

  • Optimize the field agents delivery routes
  • Automate delivery status and acknowledgement
  • Simplify payment processing and receipts
  • Receive customer feedback information
  • Track field force in real time

For more information, please write to me at [email protected] and I can explain in detail about how we solve the woes of last mile delivery!

About Uniphore: Uniphore Technologies Inc is the leader in Multi lingual speech-based software solutions. Uniphore’s solutions allow any machine to understand and respond to natural human speech, thus enabling humans to use the most natural of communication modes, speech, to engage and instruct machines. Uniphore operates from its corporate headquarters at IIT Madras Research Park, Chennai, India and has sales offices in Middle East (Dubai, UAE) as well as in Manila, Philippines.

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