Increase Order Accuracy and Boost Customer Loyalty

Sixty-five percent of your business’s sales will come from current customers. In fact, 80% of your business’s future profits will come from 20% of your customers, which is why building customer loyalty is key. But to build customer loyalty, you need to give customers exceptional service, and that means increasing your order accuracy. 

Incorrect orders are one of the leading customer complaints for businesses that deliver — whether it’s ecommerce packages or food. Giving customers the wrong order results in a bad experience, and just one negative experience prevents more than half of your customers from coming back.

Learn how to improve your order accuracy and provide a better experience, earn your customers’ loyalty, and boost your bottom line. 

In this article, we cover:

• What Is Order Accuracy, and Why Does It Matter?
• How to Improve Order Accuracy
• Improve Order Accuracy With Self-Delivery

What Is Order Accuracy, and Why Does It Matter?

Order accuracy is the percentage of your orders that are fulfilled and delivered to their final destination without errors. A high order accuracy rate means that your customers almost always receive the exact items they order in the proper condition.  

Your order accuracy rate matters because it’s a KPI that shows how successful your business is at giving customers what they want. When you have poor order accuracy, it costs your business time, money, and negative customer perceptions, so it should be a critical focus of your order management process.

Here’s how boosting your order accuracy benefits your business: 

• Save time and money correcting incorrect orders. CNBC says the average cost of a return is 30% of the purchase price. Depending on your profit margin, you could lose money processing inaccurate order returns. Then there’s the added expense of going the extra mile to please unhappy customers, which could mean free or discounted stuff. 
• Increase customer loyalty. Giving customers what they expect creates a positive experience, and today’s customers give their loyalty to businesses that provide great experiences. On the other hand, provide a bad experience and you could lose almost 60% of your customers.
• Get more positive reviews and decrease negative ones. Twenty-eight percent of customers will leave a review after a positive experience, but customers are more likely to leave one after a negative experience. About half of consumers say they leave reviews to warn others about doing business with the company. Those negative reviews will drive away potential new customers. 
• Increase sales. Positive reviews lead to more sales. A Harvard Business Review study found a business’s revenue increases 5-9% for every one-star increase on Yelp. 

How to Improve Order Accuracy

Here are ways you can increase your order accuracy. 

1. Set an order accuracy goal

The first step in improving order accuracy is to set an order accuracy rate metric and measure it. If your order accuracy rate is between 95%-98%, you’re on par with competitors. A rate below 95% means your business is at a competitive disadvantage. Want to stand out and boost customer satisfaction and loyalty? Aim for an order accuracy rate of 98% or higher.

2. Improve your inventory management

Good inventory management makes supply chain management (and order accuracy) much easier, since you will always know exactly what you have on hand (and what you need). Improve inventory management at your fulfillment or distribution center by making sure inventory is sorted and stored to make products easy to find, especially if you have products with multiple variations, such as different sizes or colors. You could also consider inventory management software that creates barcodes and SKUs for each product and lets employees use phones or tablets to scan products and make sure they have the correct item. 

3. Review your picking and packing process

Review your current order picking and packing process to see whether you can improve order fulfillment by increasing your efficiency. For instance, there are several different methods you can use to manage your order processing that could boost your fulfillment operations.

The most common is the single-order picking method, which is when one employee or picker works on one order at a time. This method could be good for order-picking accuracy, but it’s also the least efficient, which could affect your on-time delivery metrics. There is also multi-order picking, where employees work on multiple orders at a time. Zone picking involves employees picking items for multiple orders within their zone and then passing it to another employee to get items from their zones.  

4. Incentivize employees for accurate orders

A study on employee incentives and motivation found that incentive programs can boost employee performance by as much as 44%. But they don’t just boost performance; they also increase employees’ interest in work and help attract quality employees, all of which can help reduce your error rates. 

To start incentivizing employees, set an internal order accuracy goal, define the measurement period, establish benchmarks, and reward your team when they reach the goal.

5. Track orders

Order accuracy means you are tracking the order from beginning to end, including the delivery. The order isn’t accurate if it never arrives or it arrives later than a customer expected. 

6. Try self-delivery

One of the top reasons customers return items is because it was broken or damaged in transit. No one will care more about your order accuracy than your own employees, and a third-party definitely won’t go the extra mile for special requests. With self-delivery, you have more control over the process and customer experience. 

Improve Order Accuracy With Self-Delivery

Have you considered self-delivery but thought it would be more expensive and more complicated to manage than using a third party fulfillment provider? If your deliveries are focused on a specific geographic area, in-house delivery is the best option. With self-delivery, you can control your delivery costs and provide a better experience, which will increase customer retention and profitability.

OptimoRoute helps you keep your delivery costs low and provides features with diverse functionality that help you provide a better experience in the following ways:

• Improving order accuracy with in-house delivery: No one will take better care of your products than your own employees. 
• Providing Realtime Order Tracking: You and your customers can track drivers while they’re en route to their destination, so all parties know when a product has reached its final location, and the order accuracy cycle is complete. 
• Getting orders delivered as fast as possible: We automatically calculate the most efficient routes for you, so your customers get faster deliveries, and you save on fuel and mileage costs. Your drivers will be immediately notified of any mid-route changes as orders are placed.
• Reducing delivery exceptions: With real-time route modifications and workload balancing, your customers won’t miss out on a delivery because of an overbooked or sick driver. 
• Providing Proof of Delivery: Add an additional level of verification for product or service delivery with Proof of Delivery. You can capture signatures, photos, and notes in our app and eliminate unnecessary paperwork. Check out our proof of delivery template here.

Biomed Care Services Improved Order Accuracy With OptimoRoute

U.K. based Biomed Care Services is a specialist pharmacy that delivers to care homes, residential homes, and private hospitals. Before using OptimoRoute, Biomed was struggling with inefficient deliveries and order accuracy problems. 

Drivers were overlapping routes because deliveries were based on postcodes (ZIP codes). According to Sajid Khan, Biomed’s managing director, this inefficiency “created substantial losses since one driver could easily make a delivery to a care home they passed along the way.”

The business also had an issue with customers saying they didn’t receive their orders or didn’t get all of their order. This meant Biomed had to send out repeat orders at a loss to their business.

When it started using OptimoRoute, the business increased its efficiency and cut its cost. Biomed reduced its delivery planning and scheduling from days to hours and increased its deliveries by 25% with two fewer drivers. 

It also boosted its order accuracy. With OptimoRoute, Biomed was able to “have a record of items delivered, what day they were delivered and we can match that to the physical signature collected in person that day.” As a result, the company reduced the number of incomplete or duplicate orders to zero. 

With better efficiency, fewer miles traveled, and improved order accuracy, Biomed saved £3,000 a month by using OptimoRoute. 

Improve Your Order Accuracy With OptimoRoute

When customer retention is crucial to increasing your profits, provide a better customer experience, and boost your order accuracy by providing in-house delivery with OptimoRoute. Try it for free to see how easy it is to get started.