‘Tis The Season To Talk Holiday Fulfillment

By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1

Last week, Matt Pillar explained how digitally-enabled salesmanship can aid the customer experience during the upcoming Holiday shopping season. While it’s still too early for sales projections, retailers should have made their Holiday prep lists and checked them twice, especially when it comes to order fulfillment. In an attempt to avoid a repeat performance of last year’s fulfillment blunders, retailers and carriers alike have been aligning and strategizing since December 26^th of last year. Indeed, your shipping and fulfillment strategy is integral to maximizing both holiday sales growth as well as the customer experience. The 2014 UPS/comScore Pulse of the Online Shopper study is packed with fulfillment-related statistics about today’s online shoppers and their shipping, delivery, and returns expectations. Keep an eye on your mailbox; our October issue will include an in-depth e-commerce report dedicated to omni-channel fulfillment — for this Holiday shopping season as well as the rest of the year. Our report covers the upcoming holiday and the strides the retail industry’s taken to avoid last year’s fulfillment nightmare, and we cite the UPS/comScore study throughout. I don’t want to give away the store (you’ll have to read the E-commerce Report for yourself), but when it comes to shipping and delivery, there’s plenty of research to support shopper’s preference for cost and certainty over speed.  And, aside from free shipping, customers want to see costs and delivery dates at checkout. Note that customers don’t want a range of potential delivery dates — they want actual dates. And, they want hassle-free returns.

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