Why the Customer Experience Matters to Your Logistics Company

As the old adage goes, “the customer is king.” That may be more true today than ever before. With the rise of social media, bad experiences can go viral in the blink of an eye. One keyboard warrior can bring down the hard-earned reputation of a whole business in just a few keystrokes.

To complicate things, expectations for service and speed are higher than ever. As a logistics company, your customers are probably other businesses, but at the end of the day, you’re still dealing with people, and that means you need to manage human emotions and all the expectations that come alongside them.

Customer-centricity has been a buzzword in many industries for many years now. It’s easy to think that the focus for a logistics company should be efficiently moving, storing, and processing cargo, but in fact, a customer focus is considered good business in any industry. Considering your customer and their needs should be at the forefront of every decision you and everyone in your company make.

Do you know what your customers want most? Do you know what makes them happy? While your customers may be diverse, there are a few common supply chain management features that are sure to make everyone happy.

1 – Transparency

While your customers might not want to literally sit in the driver’s seat, they want to feel like they’re in full control when it comes to the movement of their cargo. Customers want to know the status of their shipments at all times, and they don’t want to jump through hoops to access that information.

How can your logistics company keep every customer informed of every shipment, all the time? Don’t worry, you won’t need to hire a whole cohort of new customer service reps! Apps like Magaya LiveTrack enable customers to view their shipment status on a self-service mobile app, 24/7. They can even receive push notifications when the status is updated. This is a true win-win for you and your customers: they get the transparency they want, and you benefit from fewer inbound customer service inquiries, making your team more efficient and leaving more time for proactive tasks.

2 – Reliability

Your customers count on you to keep their cargo secure and to get it to where it needs to go, on time. Their businesses and livelihoods depend on it. There is little room for error here since your customers can turn to another logistics company if their trust in you is broken.
Sure, things happen. Unexpected delays are par for the course in the supply chain industry. But, you need to do everything you can to minimize the risk of delays and errors to show your customers that they can rely on you for their logistics services.

One of the most common ways that errors slip in logistics management is when a logistics company works in various disparate systems. The manual duplicate entry of data in multiple systems is an error-prone process that can lead to unexpected delays or lost cargo. The more you can automate and integrate systems and agents, the more reliable your service will be.

The Magaya Network is one tool used by thousands of logistics professionals to work collaboratively and connect online with couriers, customs agencies, and other businesses in a secure environment. By sharing documents and data electronically in the secure platform, users eliminate the risk of errors and other threats, boosting their reliability and efficiency all at once.

3 – Value

These days, consumers expect nothing less than free and fast shipping. Whether you’re a freight forwarder, an NVOCC, a 3PL, or another type of logistics company, your customers are constantly looking for ways to speed up their supply chain without killing their bottom line. Anything you can do to provide more value to your customers will be a benefit to your customer experience.

Bending over backward to please your customer might be appreciated in extreme circumstances, but that’s not a sustainable strategy. How, then, can logistics companies deliver outstanding customer service while still remaining profitable? Anything you can do to improve efficiency will ultimately benefit your end customer.

Look for ways to automate manual processes. The Dimensioner is one tool by Magaya that automates the lengthy and error-prone process of manually recording pallet, parcel, and cargo dimensions, slicing minutes off of each measurement. That way, you can process more volume faster, passing the savings on to your customers while also protecting your profit margins!