6 Fulfillment Strategies When Disaster Strikes: What the Outbreak of COVID-19 Taught Us
Traditionally, an excellent fulfillment strategy helps your business lower running costs, extend your customer base and improve customer services, especially if you consider joining accomplished Transaction Heroes to sell online. It’s also a perfect option to use state-of-the-art technology in your goods and services, especially since most fulfillment order service companies employ advanced technologies.
How a Disaster Like COVID-19 Impacts Your Business and the Ecommerce Fulfillment Industry
While it can be a seamless process to operate your business via Ecommerce Fulfillment options, it’s not the same case during catastrophic moments like when COVID -19 came. When Covid truck, most business owners turned to eCommerce buying and selling, which hiked the competition among companies. This brought many factors you wouldn’t have realized about fulfillment without the occurrence of a disaster. As such, due to the effects of Covid and in preparation for other unpredictable calamities, the following strategies will magnificently keep your business running in the eCommerce world:
Expanding and Making Good Use of Your Sales Channels
Typically, the start of a disaster is usually the most challenging time your business will face. Once customers and other business people are used to the calamity, the best strategy to beat the competition in the eCommerce world is to make sure you’ve got a reliable plan that maintains and keeps your sales channels engaged. This means making sure customers are more involved while establishing loyalty between you and them.
From selling to guiding your customers, make sure everything you do makes them want to stay with you during and after the disaster. You can implement ways like regularly updating them with engaging content that doesn’t focus much on selling but making sure your services and products satisfy them. Engaging customers via your sales channels such as social media platforms will help you nurture new customers, keep old ones, and create substantial referrals.
It’s also a way of helping your business drive more partnerships, especially since most entrepreneurs and investors at this time hardly have a business to endorse unless they notice a company is doing tremendously well regardless of the circumstances at hand. For instance, if eBay, for example, is your most profitable fulfillment platform, you’ll want to reschedule your normal business operations and start fulfilling urgent orders and more based on either urgency or the number of customers ordering a specific service or product.
Taking Advantage of Brand Hoppers
Brand hoppers are companies offering digital marketing and communication services your business can take advantage of. According to a Digital Commerce survey conducted by eCommerce marketing and sales authorities, about 44% of brand hoppers in the United States alone have helped at least a single company during the Covid pandemic season. This helps companies boost sales and customers, especially because other marketing means and increasing sales came to a standstill.
Therefore, during this Covid times or other calamities, one of the best strategies to keep your business without hassles is ensuring you make good use of brand hoppers. However, since brand hopper service contractors are many, make sure you can meet their needs before working with them. They will quickly help you create a considerable customer base you’ll be selling to and getting referrals from despite the calamity’s adverse effects on your niche.
Create Backorder Incentives
Unless you’ve incentives where your products have backorders, you risk losing many customers during and after a disaster. Backorders means customers can wait for products and can choose to order for goods and services on backorder options rather than on brand hopping option and more. This way, you’ll be able to offer your customer free or expedited shipping and discounts, thus driving more clients than you’d anticipate.
Keep Your Prices Fair
While others may find disasters as opportunities to hike their prices, avoid doing it like a plague. Maintaining fair pricing means establishing loyalty between you and your customers, making it easy for them to find you their best business person and spreading the gospel about how good your business is. When this happens, you won’t hassle customers but focus on productivity because you’ll have more to sell.
Watch Out for Your Business Inventory Processing
While you are vulnerable to suffering from labor issues as a business owner, these issues increase during disasters; hence, watching them is an excellent option. As such, make sure you’ve got your inventory process streamlined by working closely with your IT team to organize tools and equipment that’d improve remote abilities where workers and customers can access anytime, anywhere.
Expand Your Distribution Centers
Unless you’re handling shipping by yourself, disaster times are the moments you’ll want to rethink your shipping strategies. During such moments, think about expanding your distribution centers by working with reliable warehouses you know and more. Also, make use of third-party logistic companies to help distribute your goods to customers on time. Still, make sure your distribution centers are easily accessible to customers.