Missing Deliveries is very common.
- Imagine this. You have shipped a truckload of parcels for delivery. Some customers aren’t in the location. Your driver partner called the back office and showed adequate proof of customer unavailability. You flagged the delivery as missed. So far so good.
- You look at the missed delivery a couple of days later and want to make a reattempt. Do you know where to find that parcel? Imagine now that the customer called and wants the parcel and they are even ready to pay the additional delivery cost! You are in a deep fix, unless you find that parcel. Where the heck is your parcel?
Welcome to C+++ (and some more pluses extra)
The only way you can resolve this quickly is to ship a new item to the customer. If you do not meet your new delivery ETA, the customer can go online and spoil your reputation. It doesn’t matter that they weren’t available at the time of delivery. You aren’t meeting your promise and they can hang you high and dry!
Let's look at the cost impact. By shipping another item, you are losing the opportunity of selling the item. Not only that, you took the item out for delivery the first time (cost+) and missed it. You brought that item back (cost ++) and now you are shipping it again (cost+++).
It doesn’t end here. Now you have to spend your time and resources to trace the missing item. If you don’t find the item, then you have a possible case of theft or pilferage on hand. This is like pouring water into a pot with holes. It won’t fill. What is filled is quickly lost. You have to keep pouring more water to have any water at all! Good luck with that.
What is failed delivery?
Failed delivery is the most dreaded term in logistics operation. A delivery is deemed failed, when the driver or rider makes a delivery attempt but cannot hand over the package to a customer or place it in a secure location.
On the other hand, customer shipment delivery is successful when the driver or rider is able to deliver the package to the customer at the right address after verification or leave it at a secure location (most often added by the customer as part of their delivery instructions) with obtaining proof of delivery.
On the other hand, customer shipment delivery is successful when the driver or rider is able to deliver the package to the customer at the right address after verification or leave it at a secure location (most often added by the customer as part of their delivery instructions) with obtaining proof of delivery.
In most cases, automatic notification gets sent to customers letting them know about an unsuccessful delivery.
What should be the next steps for a failed delivery shipment?
The ideal scenario for a driver is to bring back the shipment and hand it over to their supervisor. The supervisor will then plan the next attempt for customer delivery or return the shipment back to its origin based on a predefined operation process.
It sounds simple, but there's a lot that goes into ensuring that failed deliveries are returned to the warehouse. If not handled properly, this can result in shipments being missed or lost. As illustrated above, this will lead to a lot of logistics issues.
A Simple, Process Driven, End To End Tracking Solution
To reattempt delivery your delivery management software should be able to track the journey of a missed delivery parcel back to its origin. A business process flow based solution can track the complete inbound shipment processes, shows current status, who has it now with accurate audit trail details for each action.
Here’s how we do it with Logibee
Step 1: Flag missed delivery parcel
Once a driver or rider misses a delivery, they flag the parcel as missing. Logibee can generate barcodes which can be pasted on parcels. The driver has to scan the parcel’s barcode to flag it as a missed delivery.
In case a driver flags a parcel as delivered, he has to show E Proof of Delivery which is a part of the audit trail. Also, the customer is notified that a delivery has been made and prompted to act immediately if they did not receive the parcel. This process handles the Marked Delivered but Not Delivered cases, popularly known as MDND cases.
Step 2: Notify the missed delivery parcel details to back office
The missed delivery is notified to the back office. The remote supervisors/depot managers, as the case maybe can now look into the audit trail to understand, the current status, the rider accountable and a log of other actions taken by the rider for the parcel.
Step 4: Handover missed delivery of parcels and closure of trip
Once the handover is done, the person accountable for the missed delivery parcels can mark all the parcels as received and close the trip. This ensures that the missed delivery parcels are safely in place and the audit trail can show where the parcels are so that they can be scheduled for shipment again.
Logibee: Your perfect technology Logistics Partner
Logibee has a number of features that will ensure you can ace your logistics operations without hiring expensive logisticians or going through a steep learning curve of how to manage your logistics operations.
Connect with us to see a demo of our features based on your requirement. Logibee is a SaaS based platform that can be accessed by you and your team anywhere in the world and offers a complete end to end logistics automation solution that can handle all your logistics issues like a pro.