Retailers can balance profitability and customer satisfaction by offering Same Day ‘last-mile’ delivery
Same Day ‘Last-mile’ delivery is becoming a crucial part of retailers’ e-commerce strategy as consumers are increasingly demanding more convenience options. Increased demand for same day has seen traditional last-mile delivery models fall short with high costs, late deliveries, poor tracking and an inability to scale and deliver swiftly making this convenience option unsustainable. A new focus on areas such as optimizing fulfillment processes and delivering from multiple distribution points are essential to enabling consumer-centric fulfillment.
In Australia, the delivery industry is going through radical changes. More fast delivery logistics service providers such as Amazon Prime, Uber Eats and Deliveroo are growing and getting more popular with consumers and are proving that in most cases they are valuing convenience over cost as they choose to pay higher delivery fees for items delivered in 1-3 hours. In order to keep up with the changing industry, local retailers must adapt and be prepared to offer this service to keep the life time value of a loyal customer. Drive Yello offers a range of options to simplify the management of last mile logistics.
Helping retailers solve the last mile delivery problem in Australia
‘DriveYello’, a last-mile delivery enabler, is playing a pivotal role in helping medium to large sized retailers adapt to Australia’s changing delivery industry. With their headquarters in Sydney, Australia, Drive Yello was conceived by Steve Fanale in 2014 when co-founder Johnny Timbs was unable to find a driver to deliver pizzas for his Crust Pizza store. They recognized this as a major business problem that went beyond delivering pizza and Steve Fanale, CEO has designed a product capable of solving this real-world problem.
With consumer adoption of delivery services set to grow rapidly, there is higher pressure on local retailers and couriers to match their expectations. The Yellow platform gives retailers the ability to meet customer expectations through fast delivery and transparent communication.
By provisioning an efficient last mile logistics management system with useful data and a courier marketplace, DriveYello is directly addressing the last mile delivery challenge. Steve Fanale explains, “Our platform makes it easy for businesses to inform their customers of delivery status, manage their own drivers and riders or book delivery personnel from the marketplace for a shift or single delivery.”
Innovative thinking and flexibility in how Drive Yello tackles this challenge has been a major strength. The Yello platform offers many options to clients and allows them to choose according to their SLA, type of vehicle, type of engagement and target price.
Steve Fanale updates, “With average delivery times of 60 minutes, courier shift bookings within 24 hours and on time delivery in the 95%+ band, the convenience factor is not only high, but the satisfaction levels are equally high and contribute to the value of any brand.” Through enabling innumerable retailers with last mile express delivery capacity, DriveYello has contributed to its clients’ business success with higher online sales and building brand loyalty.
Helping clients build brand loyalty
DriveYello treats its customers as partners in delivering the best service to consumers. For this, the company fosters a high level of trust, understanding and transparency. “Logistics is no longer a black box service; we give our customers full access to their data to provide insights on how they can improve their delivery service. We also spend time learning their current business operations so that we can provide a customized service that suits their needs,” explains Steve Fanale.
Currently, the Drive Yello solution, supported by over 14600 drivers across Australia’s east coast, caters to many spaces within retail. Some of their customers include Woolworths, BWS, Clearly, Malt Shovel, Betta Electrical and McDonald’s.
A recent customer, Annette Karantoni, GM, eCom Operations, Woolies, shares her feedback, “The Yellow logistics platform continues to evolve, improving the user experience from both the consumer and business perspective. We see tremendous synergies between our two businesses as we continue to strive to increase customer satisfaction and improve their experience through innovation.”
Simplifying e-commerce logistics
Steve Fanale shares, “Having serviced the industry for the last four years, we believe we are in the prime position to take advantage of the expected growth in the e-commerce market and by doing so, will set us up to take our technology global. We have proven we can do this on a relatively small scale and it’s now time to scale up here in Australia and internationally with our first test markets being US, Singapore and the UK over the next 12 – 24 months.”
Steve Fanale shares, “Our mission is to ‘make e-commerce logistics as easy as ordering a cab’. To achieve this mission, the Yellow platform has to be working and integrated with the largest e-commerce platforms, partnering with the biggest global retailers and providing work for courier marketplaces or fulfillment technology providers around the world.”
Looking ahead, DriveYello will continue to invest further in technologies such as AI and machine learning to enhance services and customer experiences. Steve Fanale also hints at DriveYello utilizing driverless cars, drones and robots in the future.