You’ve decided that outsourcing your order fulfillment is the wisest thing to do as you grow your business. What next? Do you start handing out contracts to the lowest bidder for each facet of your operations?
The ecommerce industry is teeming with service providers for fulfillment, contact center, parcel delivery, personalization, and other needs, so you can be sure you will have many providers vying for your attention and possibly quoting the ‘best’ prices. How do you choose?
Here are four reasons why using a single source partner for your entire ecommerce operations is often the best choice.
1) Visibility across all of your channels – and all of your operational departments
A single source provider who handles all your operations is 100 percent accountable for results throughout the entire process. The provider can see the big picture and will be able to provide metrics that show you how every area of your business is performing. From the warehouse to the contact center to the personalization department, a single source partner can track your orders, identify potential snags in the process, and work to make things run more smoothly – all without extra delays and costs because it’s all in-house.
2) Efficiency thanks to one point of contact for all operations
An uninformed contact center is a recipe for disaster. Having to transfer a call to different service providers for questions related to their part of the order lifecycle – or placing them on hold so you can find the answer – only leads to disgruntled customers. Having one point of contact for your warehouse operations and your contact center ensures that everyone fully understands each others’ role in the order lifecycle and has the info on-hand to deal with problems most efficiently.
3) Cost, time, peace-of-mind savings
With a single source provider, you’ll eliminate extra delivery costs, handling charges, and extended shipping times because everything will be done under one roof. More often than not, you’ll also be able to leverage the economies of scale and get a more competitive price on each part of your operations as a ‘package deal’ instead of pricing each individually with different providers. This means a more seamless experience for the customer, too – and you know what that means: MORE SALES!
4) Consistent, unified brand communication
Having your order fulfillment and customer care under the same roof makes sense from a branding perspective. When your contact center understands the SOPs of your warehouse team, they can give intelligent, honest feedback to customers. When fulfillment staff has been trained on your brand, they can create packages that accentuate the customer experience when they receive the package. Best of all, you’ll only have to train one provider when everything is in the same place. You’ll only have one executive team that understands your vision, goals, and unique brand traits. That way, you can train more effectively and frequently and make it more custom-tailored to your partner. Everybody wins!