A. The first interaction is often with the customer service department. This team makes the first impression, setting the tone for the relationship and the perception of how your brand can fulfill their needs. Suppose the experience is pleasant and productive; your credibility increases. The customer will be uncertain and doubtful if it’s less than ideal.

Without a strong foundation, the probability of your customers considering a competitor significantly increases. Retaining customers and reducing churn is crucial to the bottom line, and, in the age of online reviews, a positive customer experience is also a profit driver.

Q. How can the internal silos impacting the customer experience be better connected and streamlined?

A. All customer-facing teams should have reliable processes that alleviate internal silos and deliver seamless customer care. If a customer needs to repeat activities, such as requesting an invoice, filing a dispute, tracking a shipment, or inquiring about a pick-up, it diminishes the value of the relationship.

Customers demand a seamless experience that minimizes time investment and stress level. Evaluate your customer experience and remove blockers or dead ends. Staff training is also essential to ensure consistency of service.

Q. How would you describe most customer service departments’ visibility of their companies’ supply chains? How can that be improved?

A. Visibility into the shipment lifecycle is critical to the team’s ability to resolve concerns during the first interaction. DDC’s partners have a variety of technologies that allow us to track and monitor all shipments throughout the entire journey. Access to CRM, TMS, and partner sites allows agents to view the status in real-time. This is key when locating a delayed or misplaced shipment or changing the routing number on the fly.

For each of our tailored Customer Care programs, we have access to a variety of tools to gather information, share updates, and help resolve any glitches in the shipment process. If 100% real-time visibility is unavailable, DDC will advise on the best technology solutions to close the gaps.

Q. How should operational support address critical delivery failures or supply disruption? How does DDC tackle these challenges for clients?

A. Weather, traffic, technical issues, driver problems, and human error impact this industry. With consistent training, business continuity processes, disaster recovery plans, and equipping your customer service team to be frontline problem-solvers, you will calm customers and find the solutions to meet their needs.

DDC’s goal with our Customer Care suite is to always go beyond what is expected. Every customer should not only be satisfied but delighted with the outcome. This builds loyalty and confidence in your brand. This level of service is critical to customer retention and growth.

Determine what’s in and what’s out of scope on any business transaction. Frequently, customers are lost because they had unrealistic expectations, usually for something that was out of scope. Setting expectations up front and with all parties will lead to better outcomes and ultimately, greater customer satisfaction.

–Kevin Day
President, LTL
AFS Logistics

Begin your partnership with open communication. Setting expectations and key performance indicators from the beginning allows you to ensure goals are met and more easily measure performance. These can be revisited quarterly as your business evolves.

–Amir Ghoddousi
SVP, Sales, Parcel & Managed Transportation
Transportation Insight

Procure a quarter zip or polo with each of your customers’ logos on it. Put them on whenever you’re handling that customer’s freight. You can’t afford to treat your stakeholders’ business as if it’s anything other than your own. Their vendors are your vendors. Their KPIs are your KPIs. Their success is your success.

–Whit Smith
Director of Operations
TA Services

Help them help themselves. Doing business by email and phone no longer suffices. By empowering customers to do more themselves, like get quotes, track shipments, and pay online, you elevate the customer experience.

–Gary Nemmers
CEO
Magaya

Keep your commitments by managing customer expectations and providing transparency into production, supplier capacity, and inventory. Technology like automated order promising, for example, enables successful customer service, taking the guesswork out of order evaluation and multi-echelon inventory optimization. It ensures products are where they need to be—at appropriate times.

–Lachelle Buchanan
Vice President
Logility

Provide accurate, realistic lead times for orders, be highly responsive, and understand stakeholder requests. Visibility is key as businesses tackle supply chain issues, including shifting demand, labor shortages, and evolving structural and geopolitical factors.

–Andrew Billings
Vice President & Supply Chain Lead North
Highland

Offer services proactively to differentiate your offering, as opposed to waiting for the customer to drive conversations around supplier relationship management, visibility, collaboration on pricing, timing, contract length, etc. Suppliers can offer those services proactively as a differentiated service.

–Tom McDonough
Senior Director of Supply Chain Solutions
Anaplan

First, understand your total delivered cost. Next, having clear metrics on which dollars drive incremental service and better execution is key. Lastly, avoid silos by having shared goals and projects among your supply chain leaders.

–Eric Dunigan
President and Co-Founder
Arrive Logistics

Make it easy for stakeholders to share their requirements; monitor your supply chain for availability; be ready to find alternate suppliers at a moment’s notice; and make internal purchasing easy. We don’t usually view supply chain processes through the lens of customer service, but we should. Internal customers need access to goods and services essential to running a business.

–Tony Harris
SVP and Head of Marketing and Solutions
SAP Business Network

Offer detailed, real-time, honest communication. Ensure accuracy when setting up and dispatching orders and provide updates. Be honest about what is going on—fake excuses are easy to see through and hurt your credibility.

–Adam Putzer
Director of Sales for Permanent Transportation Logistics Services
CPC Logistics

Listen with the intent to understand, not respond. Having empathy for your peers and customers will support better outcomes.

–Matt Reddington, CPSM, CPM
VP Operations
Procure Analytics

Make sure your team is satisfied with the roles they play. Your workforce is as important as any other component of the process (trucks, materials, etc). Viewing them this way and keeping them engaged is an integral part of success.

–Joe Parisi
Strategic Account Executive
Aerotek

Leverage the power of data to drive actions that balance cost and service level. Sophisticated providers can deliver data insights that empower shippers. With a data-driven supply chain profile, shippers can challenge providers to identify opportunities that leverage their shipment volumes to everyone’s benefit.

–Jim Blaeser
Chief Procurement Officer
Omni Logistics

Examine the entire customer journey throughout your supply chain from end to end. Focusing on just a single piece of customer service along the way could prevent you from enhancing the overall experience.

–Chris Warticki
Vice President, Customer Experience
Epicor

Be upfront. With today’s supply chain challenges, being upfront about inventory, shipping timelines, and other order needs is only going to make for a stronger partnership in the future. Building and maintaining trust through frequent touch points can help suppliers address challenges early and anticipate customer needs.

–Casey Huffling
SVP, Barcode and Point-of-Sale
ScanSource

Implement cohesive processes that meet customer expectations, while investing in better network design and data systems to drive a streamlined user experience. The current omnichannel revolution impacts all parts of the supply chain, with consumer behavior evolving to expect a frictionless brand experience wherever they shop.

–Steve Sivitter
CEO
1WorldSync

Embrace collaboration and open communication with your customers. Having customers at the center of your execution strategy ensures not only their needs are met but also opens the gate for knowledge and mindshare, lending way to potential new innovations to offer.

–Dr. Thomas Evans
CTO
Honeywell Robotics

When you make a mistake, own it. Commit to resolving it and educate your team to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

–Bryn Heimbeck
President/CEO
Trade Tech Inc.

Supply chain stakeholders need to gain transparency across their supply chains. Getting customers what they want, when they want, and how they want cannot be achieved without transparency across all the stores, distribution centers, production facilities, and broader vendor and supplier network.

–Bryan Palma
Industry & Solutions Marketing Director
Kinaxis

Over communicate. Supply chain has always been challenging due to its dynamic nature and number of touch points from beginning to end. Today’s environment layers in even more complexity from global challenges. Now, more than ever, over-communication between and across stakeholders is necessary to maintain strong customer service.

–Felix Vicknair
VP, Supply Chain Solutions
Kenco Group

Offer speed, value, quality, and transparency all at the same time. Your customers are your business. If you are too consumed with the bottom line today, you may not have a business tomorrow.

–Dimitre Kirilov
President of Consumer Services
Montway Auto Transport

Find ways to make the right information more transparent and readily available to the customer, as well as across the internal teams that support them. Supply chain professionals are more pressed for time than ever before, so it’s critical to not slow them down.

–Justin Thompson
VP, CX Strategy & Research
Coyote Logistics

If you don’t do it, your competition will.

–Aron Scalissi
Director of Warehouse Operations
TA Services

Eliminate as many manual processes as possible from your business model. Automation will allow you to go direct and gain visibility throughout your supply chain, helping to eliminate delays. As a result, you can deliver to your clients faster and communicate effectively at all times regarding their delivery status.

–Rick Burnett
CEO
LaneAxis

Professionalism, positive attitude, honesty, and detail. I believe you must show these things in some form for the best customer service.

–Levi Ross
Operations Manager
TA Services

Use composite digital twin technology to unleash the power of data across your entire supply chain to deliver breakthrough digital transformation for your business. This will turn your supply chain complexity into a competitive advantage that will enable exponentially more benefits for your customers.

–David DeFreitas
CRO
TADA

Providing supply chain workers straight-forward, easy-to-use technology to help expedite manual processes gives them additional time to focus on the customer. Automating manual processes also helps to cut back on errors, creating less headaches for you and your customers.

–Ravi Panjwani
Vice President
Brother Mobile Solutions

A prompt and honest response with a genuine willingness to be of help. Everyone is busy these days, and when someone is willing to give me an opportunity, the first thing I must do is acknowledge the request and assure this customer they made the correct decision. I must enforce the feeling that this is a helpful and beneficial relationship, able to identify the stakeholders’ needs and offer attractive solutions.

–David Anderson
Quality Systems Engineer
TA Services

That’s no longer the case. “Supply chain plays a key role in the customer experience,” Dankert says, noting this encompasses both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail. “Ensuring the products people want are on the shelves is a big part of the customer experience,” she adds.

Similarly, brand manufacturers selling directly to consumers “need to behave like retailers, as consumers want the same experience,” says Tom Enright, research vice president with Gartner’s consumer retail team.

Facilitating seamless customer experiences does more than build loyalty, as important as that is. It also drives companies’ growth. “Supply chain has moved from being an enabler of growth to being integral for growth, especially in e-commerce and omnichannel,” says Sameer Anand, principal, Americas supply chain practice leader, with EY Parthenon.

Here are ways retailers and brands can enhance their customer experience.

1. Make checking out easy and efficient.

The measuring stick is “how close is this experience to what Amazon customers are used to?” says Matt Crawford, general manager of shipping with BigCommerce, an e-commerce platform provider. Does the site offer one-click checkout? Can customers finish a purchase without creating a profile?

2. Ensure inventory information is accurate.

Accurate inventory information remains a basic, but critical function. If a customer places an order because the site indicates the item is available, it needs to be available.

“A consumer is a statistic of one,” says Bob Klunk, president of Respected Connections, an e-commerce consultancy. If customers receive the wrong item, or no item, they are 0% happy, not 99% happy, he adds. A company that ships 10,000 orders at 99.5% accuracy will have 50 people who aren’t happy—and at least some will write reviews.

Customers shopping at brick-and-mortar retailers also expect accurate inventory information online, says Emily Pfeiffer, principal analyst covering commerce technology with Forrester. About one-third of U.S. consumers are less likely to head to a retail store if they can’t check the inventory online first, even when they don’t plan to shop online, she says.

3. Offer timely shipping updates.

It’s no longer enough to send tracking numbers that let customers look up the status of their orders themselves. Consumers now expect automated emails or texts that provide order status.

Fortunately, the technology needed to offer this information is generally available as software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that don’t require millions of dollars and months to install.

4. Ship efficiently from anywhere.

Until recently, many businesses relied on their enterprise resource planning (ERP) or internally developed systems to manage order flow. “These no longer cut it,” Pfeiffer says.

The reason? They can’t pull enterprise-wide inventory and serve local availability and delivery promises to customers in near-real-time, she adds. And, many consumers have become accustomed to fast and free shipping.

Instead, a modern order management system or distributed order management system (DOMS) that enables retailers to manage inventory across multiple locations from a single platform is critical to delivering stellar customer experiences. These systems also can optimize inventory and fulfillment, mitigating costs.

Such solutions also help companies work with logistics providers to build effective distribution networks, without having to open multiple distribution centers. “There’s no way you can pour concrete fast enough to catch Amazon,” Klunk says.

Retailers that convert brick-and-mortar stores, or portions of them, into distribution centers for online orders not only can fill orders, but also can reduce the empty miles distribution trucks typically rack up moving inventory from store to store, says Jonathan Wright, global managing partner, finance and supply chain transformation and sustainability services with IBM.

Artificial intelligence can extract consumption patterns from the data, infusing models with a level of prediction accuracy previously unthinkable. Customers benefit from more efficient and targeted deliveries.

5. Consider marketplaces and social commerce sites.

In 2021, Amazon’s share of U.S. e-commerce sales topped 56%. To capture customers, most e-commerce businesses need a presence on one or more marketplaces, Enright says.

And it needs to be the right marketplace(s). If a business specializes in certain products—say, luxury watches—and there’s a marketplace for those products, the company likely will benefit by offering its products there.

6. Offer hassle-free returns.

As e-commerce boomed over the past few years, most of the focus was directed at the initial customer experience. “Nobody dug around too much in returns,” says Chuck Fuerst, vice president of marketing with ReverseLogix, which provides returns management solutions.

Yet, roughly 30% of apparel purchased online is returned, as consumers’ homes have become dressing rooms. The lack of focus meant many returns experience were disjointed and frustrating.

Now, savvy e-commerce retailers recognize that easy, efficient returns are a key element of strong customer service. Consumers are looking for return options, like the ability to drop off returns at a nearby location. They also want quick refunds, and communication throughout the returns process.

Emerging technology allows companies to leverage insight from the items returned. For instance, a system might collect data showing customers repeatedly say they’re returning one brand’s size 10 pants because they’re too small, Fuerst says. The retailers can then determine if they need to adjust sizing.

A strong returns function also allows companies to leverage the growing interest in re-commerce and the circular economy. This can appeal to customers, while also helping to protect the environment.

7. Focus on packaging and the unboxing experience.

As anyone who has opened a birthday or holiday gift knows, presentation matters. Nearly half of consumers ages 18 to 29 indicate that gift-like packaging makes them more excited to open their packages, the Dotcom Distribution 2021 eCommerce Consumer Study found. The Unbox Therapy channel on YouTube boasts 18.2 million subscribers.

At a minimum, consumers’ packages should arrive intact. The packaging should accurately represent the brand. It should also include the packing slip and return label. Nearly half of consumers also want surprise giveaways included with their orders, the Dotcom survey found, while about 40% would like coupons.

8. Leverage order and sales data.

E-commerce retailers that implement solutions to leverage order, sales, and other data can ensure they’re carrying the products consumers want and locating them where they’re in the greatest demand.

They also reduce the risk and cost of carrying products that aren’t selling, says Mike Graziano, consumer products senior analyst with RSM US LLP. This insight can boost both customer service and performance.

9. Invest in sustainability.

More than half of 18- to 29-year-olds, along with 45% of 30- to 44-year-olds, support the circular economy, the DotCom survey found. What’s more, businesses that invest in sustainability can benefit; IBM research found that companies that have invested in digitization and sustainability enjoy stronger performance than their peers.

Consumers’ growing interest in sustainability means retailers and manufacturers need to begin considering the complete lifecycle of the products they offer. “Offering this level of circularity to consumers can help differentiate your offering in a heavily commoditized market,” Wright says.

Organizations that can provide a seamless, enjoyable online customer experience can set themselves apart in an increasingly crowded e-commerce retail landscape. “You have to do something to make the customer experience more worthwhile,” says Graziano.

Amazon vs Walmart: Who Owns the Market?

Nearly 60% of all online retail purchases in the United States were done on Amazon in 2021, according to new PYMNTS data. This reflects the company’s tightening grip on e-commerce sales and continues the stair step market share advance it has made over the past 20 years.

In fact, the new findings defy the logic that says it gets harder to grow a large business: Amazon doubled its share of the domestic retail market to 56.7% in 2021 from 28.1% in 2014.

To calculate Amazon and Walmart’s respective slice of the overall and digital retail sales pies, PYMNTS uses a gross merchandise value method which backs out things like revenue from Amazon Web Services, but includes the full dollar value of everything sold, even when an item is sold and fulfilled for a third party for a 10-15% selling commission.

The findings also show how much Amazon dominates Walmart when it comes to online-only sales, having added more than 3.5 percentage points to its share of digital sales last year, completing a 10-percentage point COVID-era jump since 2019.

By comparison, during that same two-year pandemic period, Walmart’s share of domestic digital retail sales has grown nearly 50%—albeit off a much smaller base—ending 2021 with a 6.2% portion.

What does it all mean? Despite Walmart’s efforts and the investments it has made to grow e-commerce sales and diversify its traditional reliance on the 5,000 physical store locations that dot the country, the digitally native Amazon still holds nearly a 10-time lead over its rival on this front.

Syfan Logistics was recently approached by a customer in the poultry industry with a critical, time-sensitive project. The processing company, which was dealing with an off-site rendering operation that had suddenly shut down, needed its poultry waste hauled off for the plant to continue operating.

With the buildup of poultry waste threatening to shut down production, the company contacted Syfan with the hopes of finding a quick solution.

The challenge in this situation was not only the time-sensitive nature of the issue, but also the materials that needed to be hauled away. The excess poultry waste is not the most pleasant cargo for truckers to carry, and coupled with very tight capacity, other carriers were refusing to take on the job.

The customer decided to contact Syfan knowing its longtime ties to the industry and its history of providing dynamic solutions to similar big deadline challenges. Syfan promised to deliver a swift solution.

The Solution

Syfan Logistics had the confidence to take on this challenge based on its strong and expansive carrier relationships. Syfan also had experience with similar projects, not just in the poultry industry but with time-sensitive loads in a wide variety of customer segments.

The Syfan team knew the project would showcase their abilities and a “never say no” approach to business. Syfan prides itself on taking difficult jobs with seemingly impossible deadlines and finding the right solution for all parties involved.

Not deterred by the deadline or by the smelly poultry waste that required immediate transport, Syfan was able to leverage its carrier partnerships to find trucks and drivers who were willing to move these materials on such short notice.

They pieced together 14 truckloads a day, 6 days a week, for 3 months between two different states and several hundred miles per trip. This bought time for the poultry processor to source other rendering operations and a more permanent solution.

Providing power-only transport proved to be key in solving this challenge. It allowed drivers to pick up the loads with minimal contact with the poultry waste.

The separation between Syfan and their competitors becomes most evident when looking at cases like this one. Syfan team members thrive when tasked with finding solutions to difficult problems that other logistics companies would simply turn down.

Syfan is always looking to provide customers with superior transportation services, and they strive to meet and exceed expectations through timely, transparent communications backed by thorough planning.

To learn more:
info@syfancorp.com
855-287-8485
www.syfanlogistics.com

The most effective supply chains are built on a firm foundation of cooperation between suppliers and distributors. Strong trading relationships have a significant impact on just about every measure of performance: customer service, transportation and storage costs, risk, forecasting, lead times, and even product development.

The best way to ensure that your supply chain is capable of meeting an ever-expanding range of customer needs more effectively than your competitors is to make collaboration a top priority. By focusing on transparency, data sharing, and increasing the efficiency of joint operations, supply chain partners will attract and retain more customers than ever before.

Visibility is critical for today’s supply chains. Retailers and distributors can use shared data for accurate demand forecasting, capacity planning, quality management, and order fulfillment. Robust data collection and analysis helps supply chain partners quickly adjust to changing market conditions and track other changes in consumer behavior, which allows them to orient operations and agreements around relevant insights.

Significant majorities of consumers expect ease, speed, and personalization, and supply chain partners will only be able to meet these demands if they work together.

Strive for continuous improvement in your trading relationships. Even healthy supply chain relationships can always be improved, which is why partners should constantly search for ways to improve the quality and accessibility of data, reduce costs and delivery times, eliminate waste, and manage risk.

Suppliers and distributors can build sustainable relationships by sharing information across all segments of the supply chain, bringing goals and strategies into alignment, and accounting for changing consumer demand and economic circumstances with a robust rebate management platform.

Trust and Mutual Benefit

Respondents to a 2020 Deloitte study agree that the two most important factors in supply chain collaboration are “trusted relationships with the other party” and “mutual benefit for you and the other party.” Suppliers and distributors that don’t prioritize collaboration will get left behind.

Use digital resources. Supply chains face unprecedented competitive pressures, but they also have powerful digital resources at their disposal to meet these challenges. However, while more than three-quarters of companies in the sector are increasing the use of technology in response to recent supply chain disruptions, a Bain survey finds that just 8% have “achieved their targeted business outcomes from investments in digital technology.”

One of the most important digital tools for the maintenance of strong supply chain relationships is a data-driven rebate management platform. Rebates create incentives for suppliers and distributors to continue working together, as they bring projections about delivery schedules, consumer demand, and other variables into alignment with reality.

Supply chain partners need a shared digital platform that allows them to communicate, collaborate, and scrutinize the same data to get clarity on how rebates are calculated and what their agreements cover.

By forging relationships around transparency, integrated operations, and data-driven flexibility, supply chain partners put themselves in a position to give customers top-notch service and outpace competitors.

Holman Logistics provided its client with Extraordinary Service resulting in seamless execution for a warehouse move done in record time.

THE CHALLENGE

Seeking to optimize its Northwest omnichannel supply chain operations and having outgrown its existing 204,000-square-foot distribution center, one Holman Logistics client needed a new facility. The major consumer lawn and garden products supplier needed a space that could better accommodate its growing omnichannel operations and updated picking processes—and it needed the new space fast.

While the typical timeline to find a building, negotiate and execute a lease, and move product is roughly 12 to 18 months, this move would have to be much shorter: In April 2020, the client made the decision not to renew its lease, which would terminate at the end of September. That gave Holman just five months to locate a new facility and execute the move, which included relocating 200 truckloads of product.

Adding to the complexity, the entire process was orchestrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, so operations leadership from the consumer lawn and garden products company were not able to evaluate the site in person and make sure the facility met their needs. Instead, the company would be relying entirely upon Holman Logistics to deliver truly extraordinary service, acting as its eyes and ears and hands by executing the process on the company’s behalf.

One final wrinkle—the client wanted to find a location that would be more cost-effective than its existing one, which was in an area where lease rates and taxes had increased greatly.

Holman Logistics was up to the task.

THE SOLUTION

Holman used ESP, their proprietary process to provide Extraordinary Service. Using Holman operational expertise and Extraordinary Service Process, the client’s operations team was able to examine the new facility and work seamlessly with Holman to accomplish the move.

To ensure flawless project execution, Holman Director of Operations Steve Stewart and Director of Continuous Improvement Don Hornsby worked closely together throughout the process. Hornsby acted as team lead on the project, tasked with overseeing everything from facility design and set up to proper installation of technology and hardware; management of vendors, permits, and service installations; meetings with the landlord and contractors; and transfer of products to the new DC, which was done in strategic phases over a defined 6-week period.

The Holman Extraordinary Service Process included:

• Maintaining constant communication via weekly phone/video/photo updates
• Suggesting process changes like setting up pick lanes based on velocity rather than volume in order to boost productivity
• Creating a detailed project plan to ensure air-tight deadlines
• Tapping into existing vendor relationships
• Using the Holman ground transportation team to maximize flexibility
• Expediting purchases of materials, equipment, and permits.

Ultimately, the move was completed on-time and under-budget, earning Holman a prestigious honor: the 2020 Partnership Award, given to the client’s most valuable partner each year. For Holman, however, the move was simply a normal part of living up to its Brand Promise: Extraordinary Service for Over a Century.

To learn more:
solutions@holmanusa.com
holmanusa.com

E-commerce retailers—and the carriers and last-mile delivery providers who serve them—face tremendous pressure to deliver orders on-time, damage-free, securely, and sustainably. That’s the gist of a new study from Descartes Systems Group, which surveyed 8,000 consumers across Europe and North America to examine consumer purchase and delivery preferences and concerns.

Six top-level findings from the survey illustrate the ongoing growth in e-commerce and highlight the importance of delivery performance in determining consumer satisfaction:

1. Online buying continues to grow. 48% of respondents will make more e-commerce purchases in the future, up 13% pre-pandemic.

2. It’s all about convenience. 54% of consumers cite convenience as a major reason for online purchases and deliveries. That’s even higher for those aged 55+ (64%).

3. Delivery is not satisfactory today. Three out of four consumers experienced delivery problems in the past three months (see chart). Key complaints include:

• Delivery arrived much later than expected: 26%
• Delivery came at a different time than expected: 22%
• Delivery time offered was longer than the consumer was happy with: 22%
• Package was damaged: 20%
• Package was left in an insecure location: 18%
• Delivery didn’t arrive at all: 16%

4. Poor delivery damages consumers’ perceptions. 23% of consumers have not ordered from the retailer again, 21% lost trust in the retailer, and 16% told friends and families to avoid the retailer, due to a poor delivery experience.

5. Customer expectations vary. Security (32%), proof of delivery (30%), and tracking (27%) are all more important for the most expensive items; cost of delivery (23%) is more important for lower-cost goods.

6. Environmental concerns influence buyer behavior. 85% of those aged 18-24, and 75% of 25 to 34-year-olds, consider the environment when placing an order.

Improve demand forecasting to reduce unwelcome surprises. Typical seasonal products, be it Valentine’s Day in February or Easter in the spring, are more straightforward to plan for. You know with some certainty the variety of products shoppers buy year after year for these events.

That being said, consumer preferences continue to evolve rapidly and sometimes a non-seasonal product will fly off the shelves that you didn’t think to plan for—need I mention toilet paper, yeast, or bread flour in 2020?

To keep customers happy in the grocery aisle, retailers should fine-tune their demand forecasting capabilities. With AI and machine learning powering these processes, retailers can be alerted to changing demand signals and anomalies that a human couldn’t detect as quickly or accurately.

You can’t fulfill a customer need if you don’t know how in-demand that product is today, or will be next week or next month. By the time you realize it’s a key item for your customer base, it’s too late to optimize the upstream supply chain so you can ensure adequate stock levels on the shelf.

Extend supply chain visibility through collaboration and real-time insights. With demand forecasting top of mind, it’s important to deepen relationships within your supplier network. Foster collaboration with wholesalers and manufacturers. Share meaningful data that will benefit both your business and theirs—AI can speed up these insights and present detailed what-if scenarios to contemplate. This will be paramount as supply chain disruptions persist.

As much as you’re able, extend your visibility between the time when the order is placed with a supplier and when product arrives at the warehouse for distribution. As you work more closely with suppliers, you’ll actually impact the customer in-store experience. The more you know about delays and realistic lead times, the more agile you can be in your supply chain decision-making at every step in the product journey.

Expand your understanding of customers and communicate with transparency. A major challenge for retailers is translating supply chain visibility into customer communication and relationship-building opportunities. There’s a big difference between a shopper disappointed but forewarned of stockouts, and one expecting to come in and buy what they need only to find it absent from the shelf.

Make shoppers aware of the disruptions you’re facing—supply chain frustrations are sure to continue for some time. Through transparent messaging, manage their expectations based on the knowledge you have for future availability. Then, reengage them with appropriate substitutions or other alternatives to satisfy immediate needs.

This plays into the importance of having a holistic approach to retail operations with interconnected systems that inform each other. If your supply chain solutions are integrated with marketing systems, you can quickly provide customized notifications to shoppers in an integrated way.

Every day is an opportunity to get the in-store experience right. By leveraging supply chain and inventory best practices, and implementing emerging technology to speed decision making, grocery retailers can ensure everyday delight in the grocery aisle.

Having broken several appliances while fixing them, I’ve learned to get expert guidance first. I put the iron on my workbench and headed to the Rowenta website looking for the user manual. In addition to irons, Rowenta, a multinational global company, manufactures home appliances including heaters, vacuum cleaners, fans, air purifiers, and humidifiers.

However, my search on Rowenta.com turned up something I was not looking for—insight into Rowenta’s business model and the company’s philosophy of using supply chain management to serve their customers better than all others in the home appliance sector.

As part of an ongoing sustainability initiative, the company has spent the past 10 years developing “eco-intelligent” products, explains Alain Pautrot, vice president of consumer satisfaction for Rowenta.

The front end to that starts with product engineering teams who craft small appliances with longevity and repair-ability in mind. On the back end, they sought to guarantee “that repairs will generally cost less than a new product,” Pautrot says, and that the spare parts will be globally available at their network of repair centers “within a few days—for 10 years after purchase,” he adds.

How can the home appliances Rowenta manufactures last or be quickly repairable for “at least 10 years”? The company backs that goal with an inventory investment and global supply chain operation with a stated mission: to stock a global network of repair stations with spare and repair parts available to support repair for at least one decade after the appliance was first manufactured.

“We realize that our products are deserving of a long life,” Pautrot says. What gives his statement legs? Maintaining a global inventory of nearly six million spare parts in 165,000 square feet of global warehouse space.

It gets better. Rowenta sets aside half of those parts to repair products it no longer manufactures. Finally, the repair life cycle can be “extended indefinitely,” says Pautrot, with the use of additive manufacturing, or 3D printing.

It all adds up. You have sustainable product design, a massive global inventory stock, rapid delivery of repair parts, and 3D printing technology all combining to drive supply chain operations that support an incredible commitment to customer service.

Oh, and that iron is still on my workbench. I’ve got at least 10 years to try and repair it.

Steps to Improving the Customer Experience

Heading into 2021, Tran accelerated his purchasing schedule, estimating Comfort Research would receive its products in August and September. By July, however, limited U.S. rail capacity had produced another bottleneck, with some containers stuck at checkpoints for up to eight weeks.

Tuan worked with third-party logistics provider ODW Logistics to transload—transfer goods from one transportation mode to another en route to their ultimate destination—and ensure products made it to Comfort Research’s facilities in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Lewisburg, Tennessee; and Tremonton, Utah, on time.

“We were willing to pay a premium to ensure we’d have products to ship in the critical fourth quarter,” Tran says.

ODW had already established transloading relationships at many ports, due to its work with an auto company. “If we didn’t have those relationships, we couldn’t have created them so quickly,” says John Weber, vice president of transportation with ODW.

Tran and his team also worked with ODW to direct shipments from Asia to multiple ports, such as Seattle, Washington, and Savannah, Georgia, when possible. This minimized the likelihood they’d get ensnared in the delays at the Port of Los Angeles. Shifting to Savannah and other Gulf Coast ports increased ocean costs but cut transloading costs for materials headed to the company’s Tennessee and Michigan locations.

These steps paid off. As of late October, Comfort Research had received about 85 of its orders, and expected the rest by mid-November. The company was well positioned to support fourth quarter demand.

Supply Chain Chaos

In late 2020 and early 2021, many supply chain challenges boiled over. “It became sheer and utter chaos,” says Ryan Frederickson, vice president of operations with Ruan, a provider of contract and managed transportation solutions.

A mix of factors was to blame, Frederickson says. Labor shortages, skyrocketing consumer demand, and the shift to e-commerce exacerbated congestion at ports and on the roads.

On top of this were several once-in-a-lifetime events, like the February 2021 freezes in Texas that crippled the power grid and closed roads. About one month later, the container ship Ever Given remained stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking traffic in that crucial shipping lane.

A range of strategies help shippers and logistics providers continue to fill customer orders accurately and on time. Many involve purchasing earlier and shifting transportation modes.

Flexibility has become key in managing through supply chain disruptions. Say a company finds out the parts it needs to run its assembly line will arrive late. “We have to adjust and reallocate assets and drivers to another requirement,” says Ron Gabbitas, vice president of operations for CEVA Logistics, a third-party logistics provider.

Most important, partnerships, collaboration, and communication, both internally and with business partners, have proven essential to tackling these challenges. “Collectively, we can come up with better ways to solve problems,” says Valerie Nissan, director of supply chain with HNI Corporation, the company behind office furniture brands like Hon and Allsteel.

Meeting the Holiday Surge

Balsam Brands is the company behind Balsam Hill, a leading retailer of artificial Christmas trees and holiday décor. Its products are “like perishable goods,” says Michael Shaughnessy, senior vice president operations, supply chain and emerging markets with the company, which is co-headquartered in Redwood City, California, and Boise, Idaho.

Most customers, not surprisingly, order for the holidays. Along with meeting demand, Balsam Hill wants to minimize the cost of warehousing unsold goods until the next holiday season.

To that end, Balsam shifted from the typical process of moving a container from a ship to a chassis that’s driven to the warehouse and unloaded. Instead, it moves a container to a local facility, unloads it to a tractor/trailer, and then moves it to a warehouse. Although this means handling goods twice—generally less efficient than handling them once—it allows shipments to more quickly escape congested ports.

Balsam also has worked hard to communicate with customers. Its website provides information on product availability and shows products that would make similar replacements to those that are out of stock. “We’ve been very upfront with customers,” Shaughnessy says. “We want to make sure expectations are set and met.”

Strategy Proves Its Worth

At The Chemours Company, a global chemistry firm, a supply chain strategy put in place in 2019 to enhance customer service “really paid off” during the pandemic, says Sandeep Dalvie, global supply chain director in the titanium technologies business.

For North American customers, Chemours’ dedicated trucking fleets meant that even during the pandemic, the company had an ample supply of trailers, drivers, and other equipment. “On high density routes, we could perform 99% on time,” Dalvie says.

On lower-density routes, Chemours uses non-dedicated carriers, which are more subject to current market reliability. However, if a situation becomes critical, Chemours can request help from its dedicated carriers. And non-contract Chemours customers can access an online portal that provides lead times, market changes, and other data, so they can make informed decisions and adjust operations as needed.

Strong partnerships internally are also key. A SWAT team with members from supply chain, finance, technology, and other functions regularly “meets to analyze and figure out a solution for dynamic or unplanned problems,” Dalvie says.

Say the pandemic forces a suppler to shut down. The team evaluates its production footprint to determine how it can change production plans and move raw material between plants to mitigate disruption. “This collaborative effort has served us very well during these challenging times,” he says.

For example, when access tightened to the temperature-controlled trucks needed to transport a specific raw material in a molten state, the SWAT team worked to shift the material to a flake form, which can be transported in regular trucks. The collaboration and communication helped Chemours “quickly make changes to be successful going forward,” Dalvie says.

Balances Resources

Late in 2020 and flowing into 2021, HNI Corporation “hit a wave of demand,” Nissan says. At the same time, along with transportation delays, some raw materials, like those used in foam products, were in short supply.

To minimize the need to extend lead times, HNI began “breaking out all stops,” Nissan says. One step: it has been working even more closely with Ruan, its logistics partner, to forecast volume, taking an increasingly holistic and network view, Nissan says. So, if a distribution center in Georgia is heavy on drivers, they might send one or two to another facility.

HNI also is getting ready to open a new plant in Mexico that will produce chairs; in part, this plant will tap into the labor market there. As HNI moves forward, it’s working with Ruan to develop the inbound logistics network from the plant.

Ruan is also connecting HNI with another Ruan client, Clarios, a creator of advanced battery technologies for vehicles and other products. Clarios has long operated in Mexico. “We can leverage their expertise,” Frederickson notes.

And because HNI’s peak sales period typically runs spring through fall, while demand for Clarios’ batteries generally jumps in the winter, Ruan is working with both companies to align drivers with demand so all resources can be used most effectively, Frederickson says.

The Ruan Freight Exchange (RFX) helps Ruan employees quickly identify where equipment and/or freight are available and where they’re needed, so they can shift resources where they’ll do the most good.

“It takes a provider like Ruan to have a holistic perspective and not isolate customers,” says Robert McCloskey, director, logistics and distribution with Clarios.

Because Ruan manages its private fleet, Clarios has been insulated from many of the recent increases in transportation costs. “The private fleet has been a godsend,” McCloskey says, allowing Clarios to avoid cost increases of 40% to 50%.

Early Birds

Early purchases—often, six months or more—of microprocessors, reagents, and other materials helped Anavasi Diagnostics, a diagnostic technology company, cut several months from any delays in the development and production ramp up of printed circuit assemblies and detectors, says Minh Duong, chief engineer and co-founder.

This tactic also saved approximately $800,000 in expediting fees and broker mark-ups. “Our big learning, though, was to problem solve with our suppliers and contract manufacturers early and often,” Duong says. In doing so, the company could “nip potential issues in the bud before they became crisis situations,” he adds.

While the pandemic has caused challenges, some have been a “boon in disguise,” for supply chains, Dalvie says. They allow companies to differentiate themselves not only through pricing and marketing, but through the effectiveness of their supply chains.

Companies that can reliably meet customers’ needs are able to capture market share from those that can’t. For supply chain professionals, “it’s an opportunity to shine,” he says.

Steps to Improving the Customer Experience

The following tactics can help supply chain professionals meet customer demand, even when materials are limited and shipments are delayed.

Consider reserving some services, like last-minute shipping, for top customers.

This helps cement these customers’ loyalty. It also can encourage less frequent buyers to increase their purchasing, says Juliana Prather, chief marketing officer with EDITED, a provider of market and enterprise data solutions.

Move diligently but quickly to implement technology.

Five to seven years ago, we “had to discuss with customers how automation could bring results,” says Bas Van Steenoven, global director of marketing with Sparck Technologies, formerly Packaging by Quadient. Now, however, many understand that a solution can help and are more likely to begin testing. While the shift is a result partly of greater knowledge, it’s also a result of tougher market conditions, which make technology investments more critical.

Boost forecast accuracy.

More accurate forecasts help logistics providers secure cargo space at contract rates, says Joe Kronenberger, senior vice president, air product and freight forwarding with GEODIS. Absent proper planning, it’s increasingly necessary to pay market rates for immediate delivery, he adds.

Fine tune inventory planning.

Companies now can review, in close to real time and at the SKU level, the products they have in stock and those that are selling, and then determine how their assortment compares to their competitors. They often can gain an advantage by offering a larger or more tailored assortment, Prather says.

Accelerate the promotional calendar.

Launching marketing campaigns before the traditional dates, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, can help ensure gifts and other items are delivered on time, says Mark Kapczynski, chief marketing officer with Gooten, which offers a solution that allows brands to leverage print-on-demand manufacturing.

Make greater use of regional carriers.

These firms can help alleviate the capacity constraints many major carriers are experiencing, says Patrick Lowe, area vice president of business management with PFS, an e-commerce fulfillment provider.

Consider drivers when optimizing routes.

It’s generally most efficient to reduce the number of miles driven when generating transportation routes. However, Ryan Frederickson, vice president of operations with Ruan, points out this tactic won’t work if the route is so long no driver wants to take it. Then, it may make sense to create two routes that together are, say, 20% longer than a single route, but can be split among two drivers. “It’s about creating good schedules for drivers and finding the freight that complements that,” he says.

Factor social media into inventory planning.

Along with sales and other data, social media can inform inventory planning decisions. EPAM Systems, a digital transformation services company, helped a retailer analyze customers’ thoughts on various products by looking at social media and other marketplaces. This helped the business effectively allocate inventory and marketing efforts to different regions and demographics.

Consider nearshoring or reshoring for some suppliers.

While completely upending a global supply chain to produce locally may be more than many companies can feasibly do, especially in the short term, adding local or regional suppliers to handle a modest percent of business “gives a contingency,” says Glenn Richey, Ph.D., chair of the supply chain management department at Auburn University. What’s more, the smaller suppliers likely will be motivated to offer quality products and services so they can gain more business.