Improving customer delivery experience and transport sharing in e-retail

Abstract

With increasing size and competition of e-commerce industry, the focus is on reducing the lead time of delivery. Here the inconvenience caused because of wrong or damages products delivered to the customer due to speedy process is overlooked. For customer the inconvenience is due to increased lead time for the correct delivery of the product, extra effort on rising the return process and plan according to the anticipated visits of delivery person for return pickup and replacement delivery. The paper proposes an instant return policy to reduce the inconvenience caused by current return and replacement process. It aims to improve overall lead time to delivery, minimizes the visit to customer location and reduction in use of complex reverse logistics process. The paper identifies necessary implementation process changes to reduce the fraud due to the new value add on service by delivery person. Innovative option of OTP is considered for the same and measures were taken to minimise the extra effort needed by customer in executing his process. The limitation of this process is also addressed like feasibility of service in case of third party logistics service. The paper also addresses the option of transport sharing to reduce the overall cost and to improve lead time of the delivery. Transport sharing model is mainly used to between hub to hub transport (or) city to city transport. It tries to overcome the inefficiency in transport due to no-full truck load and save cost by economies of scale through aggregation of demand.