Key Takeaways
Peak season is the busiest time of year for businesses that ship products to customers. It’s typically the period from October to December with peak holidays, including Prime Day™, Black Friday, and Christmas.
It is important to start planning for peak season shipping early. By taking the time to prepare, you can avoid costly delays and disruptions and ensure that your customers receive their orders on time. To help you navigate this busy period, we’ve outlined five key steps to a successful peak season shipping strategy.
1. Forecasting Demand
One of the most important things you can do is to forecast demand for your products during peak season. This will help to ensure that you have enough shipping supplies, including labels, tape, and packaging materials on hand, and that you’re working with the right shipping partners.
Analyze Historical Data
The first step in preparing is understanding the demand you’re likely to face. Analyze your sales and shipping data from previous years to identify trends and anticipate the level of future demand. Use inventory forecasting formulas to put your data to work.
Stock Supplies Adequately
Once you have a clear idea of the amount of demand you expect, ensure you have a sufficient inventory of shipping supplies. Running out of stock during peak season can cause unnecessary shipping delays. It can also eat into your profit if you ship items in larger boxes because you ran out of small sizes.
2. Secure the Best Shipping Rates
Once you’ve forecasted demand, you need to secure the best shipping rates with your shipping partners. This involves negotiating with shipping partners and diversifying your shipping options. This is especially important if you’re working with multiple carriers.
Descartes can help you secure discounted carrier rates by providing you with access to a network of over 200 LTL and small-parcel carriers. This allows you to automatically compare rates and services from different carriers and choose the ones that best meet your needs. Here’s how to save on shipping with real-time rate shopping.
Negotiate Your Own Rates
Well before the peak season hits, contact your carrier account representatives to negotiate rates and secure capacity. This is the time to lock in favorable terms that can help you manage costs during high-demand periods.
Do your research ahead of time and understand the discounts, fees, and surcharges your carrier is already providing. Then, collect data and create cost models, benchmarks, and rate simulations to justify your request for reduced rates.
Take Advantage of Pre-Negotiated Rates
While it’s always a good idea to secure your own negotiated rates, you should also look for a shipping solution that has its own specially negotiated carrier rates. This allows you to rate shop against both sets of rates and always find the cheapest option.
Make sure the shipping platform allows you to use your own carrier rates without imposing heavy label fees. Descartes ShipRush does not charge a label fee when you bring your own accounts, but other shipping solutions do.
3. Optimize Your Fulfillment Process
Efficiency in your fulfillment process directly impacts your ability to meet delivery timelines. Here are some quick ways to streamline warehouse operations and automate tasks to significantly improve this efficiency.
Automate Where Possible
Start using shipping software to automate tasks like rate shopping, batch label printing, box size selection, and carrier service selection. Automation can significantly reduce human error and speed up the fulfillment process. Here are some ideas for automation rules to use.
Increase Warehouse Efficiency
A streamlined warehouse is crucial for quick and accurate order fulfillment. Consider placing a pack/ship station with a thermal label printer near the storage/staging area to minimize steps between picking and shipping.
For customers shipping large items (think kayak, bike racks, etc.) the use of a mobile printer may be even more practical so the process becomes a pick/ship.
4. Communicate with Your Customers
It’s important to communicate with your customers about your shipping policies and procedures during peak season. This will help to avoid any surprises or disappointments. Clear and timely communication with your customers can make or break their experience. In fact, sometimes, this might be the difference between earning repeat business versus a one-time purchase.
Transparency is Key
Customer communication should always answer the key question, “Where is my package, and when will it get here?” Be upfront about shipping timelines and any potential delays. Providing branded delivery notifications and real-time tracking information can greatly enhance the customer experience and reduce the burden on your customer service team.
Enhance Customer Support
Ensure your customer service team is well-equipped to handle queries and complaints promptly. Extended live support hours or chatbot assistance can go a long way in managing customer expectations during peak season.
5. Have a Backup Plan
Even with the best planning, things can sometimes go wrong with peak season shipping. Preparing a backup plan for shipping partners and shipping insurance ensures you can adapt to unexpected challenges.
Alternative Shipping Partners
Always have a secondary shipping partner on standby. If your primary partner faces issues or delays, you can quickly switch to the backup to keep your delivery promise and avoid shipping delays. Multi-carrier shipping software allows you to integrate multiple carrier accounts so you can easily switch from one carrier to another without having to learn a different software program or website.
Plus, by diversifying your carriers, you can take advantage of services that certain customers (but not all) need, such as guaranteed delivery by a certain date and time or signature services.
Shipping Insurance
Make sure you have shipping insurance automatically applied to high-value orders to protect your customers from losses due to package theft and other delivery problems. Our customers like ShipRush Total Shipping Protection for quick claims processing and minimal disruption to peak season operations.
Ensure Customer Satisfaction This Peak Season
By following these steps, you can prepare your business for peak season shipping and ensure that your shipping operations are equipped to handle the surge in demand. This leaves you free to focus on providing an excellent customer experience.
Peak season doesn’t have to be a stressful time filled with challenges. Instead, it can be a chance to impress your customers with your reliability and service quality. So, as you prepare for the peak shipping season, remember that good preparation can transform challenges into opportunities for growth and customer retention.
We’re Here to Help
Descartes is here to support you through the peak season by helping you forecast demand, secure shipping capacity, optimize the fulfillment process, communicate with customers, and stay adaptable.
Find more helpful tips for peak season preparation here.
Ready to make peak season easier with Descartes ShipRush?