Delivery Gone Wrong: 4 Steps to Improve the Same-Day Delivery Experience

By Jennie Lewis, Senior Manager, Customer Insights, Airship.

As a New Yorker, I live on same-day delivery services. Groceries, Thai food, Roman-style gnocchi with a litre of Negroni, laundry… you name it; we have a delivery for it. With the abundance of options here, I’ve grown accustomed to the speed and convenience – and the excellent customer service from our local stores continuously raises my expectations. 

So, when I ordered pet supplies a couple of weeks ago from a national chain store, I expected a great experience. What happened was one of the most bizarre customer experiences I’ve had… 

“With the abundance of options here, I’ve grown accustomed to the speed and convenience – and the excellent customer service from our local stores continuously raises my expectations.”

After finding all the items I needed and adding them to my cart, I realised my card on file had expired. I tried to place my order through the app but wasn’t able to add a new credit card to my account. The form kept failing with no error message. I jumped into my account on the website, but the ‘add a card’ form there was failing without error messages, too. Finally, I was able to link my PayPal account to place the order. Phew. 

Then all the messages started. First, the order confirmation emails and text messages and then the delivery partner started sending ‘Your order is on its way’ and ‘Your order is approaching’ messages. At first, I thought they were accidental duplicates (it happens), but after clicking through, it became clear that there were multiple deliveries. I started bouncing back and forth from my messages to the tracking links. There were 4 drivers on the way to me from 5 separate store locations! 

I got messages every few minutes for 2.5 hours (28 text messages and 11 emails). One driver delivered a single can of cat food from a store on the other side of Brooklyn. There was at least 1 missing item from the order, but I couldn’t bring myself to go through all the separate receipts and handwritten stock-picking notes to compare them to my original order to check for other missing items. At the end of the day, I had cat food for dinner time, but the process of getting there was painful. 

Let’s look at how this experience could be improved…

#1: Check your non-happy path

Don’t assume that customers will enter everything correctly on forms. Everyone makes typos or misses the card verification code sometimes. A form without errors in each field is frustrating to customers. Do QA for each potentially missed item to ensure the error messages are visible and relevant, and don’t forget to test on mobile. 

#2: Summarise the order

For many brands, using a delivery partner makes sense. Not every store can spare an employee to make deliveries or have a dedicated delivery driver. In the case where delivery partners are used, it’s important to summarise the order for your customers. Were all the items available? How many deliveries should they expect? What are the links to track each delivery? And don’t forget to add the order status to customer accounts on the website and in-app. 

“When a customer is known to a brand, it is critical for that brand to recognise them across channels. If I’m opted in to push, email, and SMS, it doesn’t mean I want to get the same notification on all those channels.”

#3: Invest in orchestration

When a customer is known to a brand (i.e., have an account or loyalty membership), it is critical for that brand to recognise them across channels. If I’m opted in to push, email, and SMS, it doesn’t mean I want to get the same notification on all those channels (unless it's my bank telling me something is wrong). Prioritise the method of delivery based on the content and urgency of the message. And don’t send duplicates.

#4: Streamline fulfilment

This is a tricky one from an inventory management and technology perspective. For brands with multiple locations, it creates a better experience to fulfil a single order from a single store. Target does an amazing job managing same-day delivery in multi-location cities. If something is out of stock at your selected store, they notify you and give you the option to select a different store to shop for your delivery.

Will this experience stop me from ordering cat food for same-day delivery? No. Will I use a different store next time? Absolutely yes. 

About Jennie

Jennie leads the Customer Insights function at Airship, helping brands to understand the economic impact and quantitative results of their mobile app strategies. She's passionate about using her design thinking and CX innovation training (from eCornell and Northwestern Universities) to guide research projects for customers.

Jennie's previous role at Airship was leading the Strategic Services team in the delivery of strategy sessions, as well as reporting, analytics, and campaign-managed services. Prior to Airship, Jennie led Solutions Architecture and Strategic Alliances at CrowdTwist (acquired by Oracle). At CrowdTwist she managed 150 partner relationships and built a team who designed the technical architecture design of omnichannel loyalty programs.

Jennie started her career in martech at Epsilon where she held positions ranging from Campaign Specialist to Director of Customer Onboarding. Outside of work, she's a mom and fur mom of 3 and an active Rotary member with a focus on environmental sustainability projects.