e-Commerce is the new way of doing business these days. Everything is ordered on internet and is delivered at doorstep. The Process of ordering to getting the product in hand of the customer is a long supply chain. The Last Mile Delivery is the tail end of this supply chain where the Customer gets the ordered product into his hands. This step is often the most inflated and less efficient step of the chain. Though the Last Mile Delivery seems to go soft, it has its own set of distinguishing challenges. The most common challenges are cost issues, brand interactions, customer dissatisfaction etc, and there are also a few specific issues.
The first challenge in Last Mile Delivery is Parcel/Courier or Shipping Service. Usually companies sign-up with courier services or shipping services to deliver the goods to their customers. These services are not available or do not reach the remote areas and villages where people order on internet and these lead to delayed or no delivery and are main cause for customer dissatisfaction and skepticism. Some companies like Amazon solved this problem by using their won vehicles. Some companies use bicycles to deliver the orders of the inside the city. New and innovative dispatch service ideas are also being implemented on the basis of feedback from customers.
As the increased numbers of shoppers go online these days, E-commerce business men are trying to leverage advanced technology to find ways to alleviate the problems of Last Mile Delivery. They created customer friendly software where the customer can select time of delivery. They encouraged the customers to choose afternoons and day times. The second solution was real time tracking where the customer can track where his order is in supply chain line. Apart from these solutions there are new ones being added like heat map analytics, Payment and cash reconciliations, enhancing worker productivity etc.
