Can Turning Drivers into Brand Ambassadors Help Fight the Driver Shortage?
Written by Scott Gillies, Managing Director at DispatchTrack for Australia, New Zealand, and Asia Pacific
We’ve been hearing about driver shortages when it comes to home delivery since long before the pandemic started, but coming into the holiday season in the next few months, the outlook is so bleak that Australia Post’s chief executive is encouraging people to order presents now if they want them delivered by Christmas.
This comes amidst a major recruiting push by the postal service to hire another 5,000-7,000 seasonal drivers. Even then, it can feel like driver capacity around the country is simply not great enough to meet delivery demand. Of course, this issue is exacerbated by the fact that these are difficult jobs with high turnover. In other words, even if you can hire enough drivers to meet demand, you need to actually find a way to retain them.
That’s exactly why some businesses are starting to redefine the roles of drivers within their organisations, treating them less like just delivery drivers and more like brand ambassadors.
How Drivers Impact Customer Delivery Experience
It’s not a secret that customer experience is becoming an increasingly important aspect of many retailers’ brands, and businesses across the board are trying to adjust their last mile delivery strategies to focus on customer satisfaction. There’s a lot that goes into making a great customer delivery experience, from first-rate pre-delivery communication to consistent on-time deliveries. But, at the end of the day, a huge part of the experience comes down to the driver. After all, with ecommerce purchases, your driver is often the first in-person interaction your customer has with your brand. And if you’re a bricks & mortar retailer, the driver could be the last interaction with your brand for that particular purchase (assuming there’s no customer support follow-up required).
In this way, drivers are already natural brand ambassadors. When you make a delivery promise to your customer, the drivers are the ones who actually keep it. And when something goes wrong, whether that’s a late delivery, a missing item from the customer’s order, or a sofa that doesn’t fit in the customer’s living room, it’s the driver who actually has to deal with the situation. When you empower them to show up on time and provide exceptional, personalised service, everyone benefits: customers feel taken care of, and drivers feel like they’re critical, valued parts of the team.
Best Practices for Turning Drivers into Brand Ambassadors
Many delivery drivers are used to being blamed when things go wrong and given little credit when things go right, when they’re treated as brand ambassadors, that paradigm is flipped on its head.
That said, it’s still important to make sure you’re actually empowering them with the capabilities they need to do the job. What does that mean in practice?
Give drivers routes and schedules that actually work: When drivers are given realistic ETAs for each stop, they can delight customers by meeting delivery time window expectations every time.
Empower drivers to make adjustments at the job site: Sometimes part or all of an order needs to be returned. Sometimes the customer wants to upgrade to white-glove delivery service or add installation services for an extra fee. When drivers are given the ability to process those kinds of scenarios on-site, they can provide the kind of personalised service that sets top brands apart.
Ensure connectivity at every step of the way: Not only do drivers need the flexibility to provide great customer service when they’re out on the road, they also need an easy way to keep in contact with both customers and despatchers throughout the delivery process. This might include automated alerts updating everyone when they’re en route.
Taken together, these capabilities put drivers in a position to do a lot more than just going from point a to point b. In this way, you can create delivery programmes that truly reflect how important drivers are to the process, with the added bonus that drivers feel more appreciated and are less likely to churn.
How the Right Technology Helps
When your drivers are empowered to show up at the right time and provide personalised service at the delivery site, you can improve customer satisfaction while fighting the driver shortage through reduced churn. But what does it actually take on the backend to make that possible?
As with so many things, it’s all a matter of the right technology. For instance, when you have powerful route optimisation technology that can accurately predict drive times and service times, you can more easily nail your delivery ETAs and position your drivers to arrive at the right time. By the same token, a driver mobile application that automatically sends status updates to customers and despatchers, all while enabling job site upgrades and other adjustments can go a long way towards enabling drivers to act in a more customer-service oriented role. If you can turn drivers into brand ambassadors with this kind of technology, you can fight the driver shortage and tackle this year’s peak season head on.
