The eCommerce industry is booming and so is the adoption of home delivery software.
According to a report by the US Department of Commerce, eCommerce sales in the US grew more than 30% between the first two quarters of 2020. This trend is expected to continue in 2021 too.
The credit for the sales boom goes to the pandemic which has been pushing more people to spend online.
So sales are up which must surely both gladden you and worry you. As you’re earning more with the increased sales, you also face more challenges. This has made running a delivery business tougher 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?
This is where home delivery management software comes to the rescue.
A home delivery scheduling software comes with various critical features that make delivery a breeze. These are discussed below.
The Most Important Features of Home Delivery Software
Dynamic Route Optimization to Plan Optimal Routes
The days of manually planning routes or using Apple Maps and Google Maps when delivering to multiple customers are gone, simply because it’s not practical anymore.
It is too time-consuming. Also, 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.
Advanced home delivery software like Route4Me comes with a dynamic route optimization feature that helps you plan a route with multiple stops in just 30 seconds.
In fact, Route4Me’s home delivery service software allows you to add unlimited stops on a route and doesn’t restrict the number of users who can use the software for home delivery.
Route4Me’s home delivery routing software can even help your drivers bypass traffic congestion, while taking into account 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.
Finally, your drivers will have an assigned balanced workload.
Long story short, with Route4Me’s home delivery management software, your drivers will have the shortest and fastest route to work and will always make on-time deliveries, irrespective of the number of packages they have to deliver.
Isn’t that exactly what you want?
To top it all off, Route4Me even comes with a dedicated plugin for route optimization for Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce.
Learn how Route4Me’s Shopify route planner plugin for route optimization allows you to make timely eCommerce deliveries in the most efficient way to help you grow your business.
Learn in detail about Route4Me’s route optimization plugin for WooCommerce.
And learn about Route4Me’s Magento route planner plugin for route optimization that enables you to route local deliveries from Magento with just a few clicks.
Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Boost Your Profits?
Re-optimization to Re-Plan 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 route planned on a desktop can hardly work.
A delivery route planner app installed on your drivers’ smartphones is a much better option.
Such a home 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.
Similarly, your dispatcher can easily rearrange the stops to accommodate customer requests, for example if a customer who was first in line to receive his or her package requests to have the order delivered later in the day.
GPS Tracking to Monitor Drivers
Imagine you get a call from a customer, saying he or she is supposed to receive an order today, but have not yet gotten 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 have an idea of the customer’s delivery time.
This whole procedure will not only be time-consuming, it will also not be very customer-friendly as you’ll have to keep the customer waiting for an answer.
A good home delivery software like Route4Me comes with an integrated GPS tracking feature that enables you to 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 Route4Me’s GPS tracker is that it has the lowest refresh time and offers real-time driver location updates.
Customer Alerting and Notification Through SMS or Email
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.
A home delivery software like Route4Me makes this possible.
Route4Me 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.
You can even create and schedule a personalized alert with the help of the customer notification feature that will be sent to your customers automatically.
Moreover, Route4Me’s home delivery software comes with a next customer notification feature that automatically notifies your customers when they’re the next stop to be visited on an active route.
This allows customers to get ready to receive their orders which means your delivery drivers can complete visits more quickly.
This helps your whole operation stay on schedule. Learn how to use this feature in our article, Customers Love Operational Transparency – Here’s How To Do It.
In a nutshell, update your customers with an estimated delivery time, make sure you keep up with it and win their trust as well as loyalty as a reward. And, it doesn’t need telling how invaluable both of these are.
Dedicated Portal to Allow Customers to Track the Status on Their Own
Another important feature of Route4Me’s home delivery software is the customer portal. This feature allows your customers to log in and track their delivery statuses on their own.
In addition to the alert system that notifies customers when their orders are set to arrive, this feature allows you to satisfy the 93% of online shoppers who demand information all through the delivery process (according to a survey).
These shoppers want the details of exactly where their packages are, from when their orders are shipped, and when they will finally receive their packages.
So, with the alerts feature, you only notify them when the orders are out for delivery or near the delivery locations; with the customer portal, the customers stay informed about their packages en-route.
Route4Me’s home delivery software allows you to customize the information you want your customers to see. So, you can choose how little or how much information you want to share.
For example, you can show them the ETAs, driver identities, and custom fields.
Final Words about Home Delivery Software
Although the top features mentioned above are the most important ones offered by a home delivery software, below is a quick rundown of several other features that Route4Me offers too to make delivery management seamless:
- eSignature for contactless proof of delivery. Read our article on the six reasons why you should go for the eSignature feature of a home delivery management software.
- Speed alert that notifies you when a driver speeds.
- Driver breaks to insert adjustable break stops into the already planned routes. Learn how this feature helps reduce driver fatigue and improve productivity.
- To run a profitable and seamless delivery operation, report and analytics to find all the data you need, such as the total stops made, time taken per stop, and fuel spent.
- An Android and iOS app to help you plan routes and monitor activities, while on the go.
- Geofencing to automate check-ins and check-outs and eradicate the need for paper logs.
Long story short, adopt a home delivery software today and transform the way you run your delivery operations.
Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Boost Your Profits?
