The eCommerce industry is booming, and so is the adoption of delivery software that can manage all the operations involved in the delivery system. According to a US Department of Commerce report, eCommerce sales in the US grew more than 30% between the first two quarters of 2020. This trend is likely to be carried forward in 2021 too. The rapid increase in eCommerce delivery has also led to a sudden rise in routing app usage.
The credit for the sales boom goes to the pandemic, pushing more people to spend online. We have seen how the world has changed during this COVID-19 pandemic. There was a sudden rise in online buyers and thus was majorly due to the national lockdown. And when there was a spike in online buyers, it was hard for the delivery managers to deliver the goods to everyone on time.
The growth in the sales had both gladden and worried the owners. As you’re earning more with the increased sales, you also face more challenges. This sudden change has made running a delivery business more challenging than ever.
Consider the following examples of issues you may now face:
- How do you manage this sudden outpouring of orders?
- How do you make sure no driver is overworked or underworked?
- How do you make sure your drivers don’t speed to meet the deadline and make themselves vulnerable on the road?
- How do you provide accurate ETAs to your customers?
The answer to the above questions is simple, and it is a delivery management system. A routing app or delivery management software comes with various critical features that make delivery a breeze.
What features does routing software provide to help in delivery management
Let’s look at how routing or delivery management software can boost your delivery services amidst the boon in the eCommerce sector in 2021.
Route planning & optimization
When delivering to multiple customers, the days of manually planning routes are gone, simply because it’s not practical anymore. It is too time-consuming. It’s just not humanly possible to predict the traffic, weather conditions, and many other constraints, such as left turns and one-ways, which often go unnoticed and become a hindrance later on.
An advanced delivery software like Zeo Route Planner comes with a dynamic route optimization feature that helps you plan a route with multiple stops in just 20 seconds. Zeo Route Planner routing service software allows you to add unlimited stops on a route and doesn’t restrict users who can use the software for delivery purposes.
Zeo Route Planner’s routing software can even help your drivers bypass traffic congestion while considering other factors, such as one-ways, weather conditions, left turns, sunrise and sunset times, time windows, and blocked roads. Moreover, the route optimization software guarantees the routes will be 100% accurate.
With the help of the Zeo Route Planner routing software, you will get the most advanced feature to manage all your delivery address. You get the power to load addresses in the app using the spreadsheet import, bar/QR code scan, image capture/OCR, and manual typing. (Our manual typing feature uses the same autocomplete feature such as Google Maps, but with few more tweaks to make the process easier) Finally, your drivers will have an assigned balanced workload.
Long story short, with Zeo Route Planner delivery management software, your drivers will have the most concise and fastest route to work. They will always make on-time deliveries, irrespective of the number of packages they have to deliver.
Re-optimization of a route
Another advantage of a route planner app is that it updates the routes according to real-time situations on the road. For example, traffic conditions change in the blink of an eye. Hence, having a manually pre-planned route or a print-out of a course planned on a desktop can hardly work.
A delivery route planner app installed on your drivers’ smartphones is a much better option. Such delivery software allows you to re-plan stops according to the latest traffic conditions. In this way, you or your dispatcher can re-prioritize the delivery stops if and when needed. With Zeo Route Planner’s help, you get the option to re-optimize your route whenever you need to do that; also, you get the feature to Add or Delete any stop while you are continuing your delivery process.
Another essential aspect that you get with the Zeo Route Planner is setting the Delivery Priority to ASAP in the app if your customer wants any delivery immediately. You can also alter the Average Time Per Stop in the app to get accurate ETAs.
Similarly, your dispatcher can easily rearrange the stops to accommodate customer requests. For example, if a customer was first in line to receive their package requests to have the order delivered later in the day.
Route monitoring or GPS tracking
Imagine you get a call from a customer saying they are supposed to receive an order today but have not yet reached a notification as to when exactly the order will arrive. How can you update the customer about the delivery time if you don’t know where your delivery driver is at that moment? You would need to contact the delivery driver, ask him or her about his or her stops, and then maybe you can think of the customer’s delivery time.
This whole procedure will not only be time-consuming, but it will also not be immensely customer-friendly as you’ll have to keep the customer waiting for an answer. A routing software like Zeo Route Planner comes with an integrated route tracking feature that lets you track your drivers with ease and figure out their ETAs.
That’s not the only benefit offered by a commercial GPS tracker. You can also use the vehicle tracking feature of a multiple stop route planner to ensure driver safety. For example, if a driver’s vehicle breaks down on the road, you’ll immediately know about the car’s location and can send roadside assistance as quickly as possible. The best part of Zeo Route Planner’s GPS tracker is that it has a low refresh time and offers real-time driver location updates.
Recipient notification
It’s not enough to just let your customers know about the ETAs. Customers are demanding a better customer experience. You can only stay at the top of your game by informing your customers about their packages instead of them reaching out to you for information. Don’t worry; Zeo Route Planner has made this possible.
Zeo Route Planner comes with a customer alerting and notification feature that lets you send alerts thru email/SMS/voice calls to your customers regarding their orders. For example, you can alert customers when their orders are out for delivery and when the driver is near the delivery locations.
Another critical feature offered by Zeo Route Planner software is the customer dashboard. This feature allows your customers to track their delivery statuses on their own. In addition to the alert system that notifies customers when their orders are ready to arrive, this feature allows you to satisfy the 93% of online shoppers who demand information through the delivery process. According to a survey, we found that customers like to know the live status of their packages.
In a nutshell, update your customers with an estimated delivery time, make sure you keep up with it, win their trust, and loyalty as a reward. And, it doesn’t need telling how invaluable both of these are.
Proof of Delivery
Zeo Route Planner offers a seamless experience of proof-of-delivery. Zeo Route offers two types of proof of delivery – signature capture and photo verification. If your customer needs to sign for their package, then drivers can use their smartphone to have the customer sign their name with their finger as the stylus.
If the customer isn’t there to receive the package, then the driver can leave it in a secure location, taking a photo of where they left it. Either way, the customer gets a final notification from Zeo Route telling them their package has been delivered and providing a great delivery experience. All of this happens on the driver-side mobile app, but it is automatically shared in the cloud and accessible via the web app.
By syncing up communication between the driver-side mobile app and the dispatcher’s web app, your delivery business is more prepared to offer better customer service.
Conclusion
To sum up, our route planner app is designed to make your deliveries more efficient by providing you these features:
- Creating the best route.
- Letting dispatch know where their drivers are in case they need to make route adjustments.
- Allowing you to add additional details as well as change preferences according to the need.
- Giving drivers the information they need to complete their stops quickly.
- Providing customers with accurate updates of routes in progress and proof of delivery.
Zeo Route Planner has all the modern features that can boost your delivery process in the age of the eCommerce boom. At Zeo Route Planner, we continuously keep working to bring out the new features to help you in the last mile delivery process. We always strive for the best, and for that, we keep on taking feedbacks from our clients, and after a considerable R&D process, we launch those features in our routing app that can ease the function of the delivery process.
