Professionals at supply chain technology provider FourKites have seen industry stakeholders’ expectations shift over the years, underscoring the importance of shipping visibility due to two major sources: COVID-19 and Amazon.
Rush Enterprises Tech Skills Rodeo, W. M. “Rusty” Rush, CEO of Rush Enterprises, spoke alongside other experts on a FourKites webinar about the “Amazon experience” changing expectations and impacting businesses.
“We all demand that [efficiency] in our personal lives, the Amazon experience,” Rush said. “We all demand more; just think about what you demand. We see that and want to drive it into how we perform, because that drives business our way, and it drives efficiency.”
Efficiency is a priority for Rush Enterprises, a dealer group that services its customers’ fleet vehicles. Rush explained his company is working to improve his customers’ visibility when it comes to parts shipments, in particular, because their fleet customers need to know the status of the parts they’re relying on to get their trucks back on the road.
Tom Gregorchik, VP of industry strategy at FourKites, addressed this need for visibility and customers’ changing expectations in a recent webinar.
“One of the things that's really become apparent in the last couple of years is that customers have become more demanding,” Gregorchik said. “And so it's become very competitive out there in the last couple of years. Manufacturers are looking to get a competitive advantage, and they really want to improve their customer experience.”
Visibility is a prime way to enhance fleet customers’ experience. Customers highly value insight on their orders in terms of location and ETA and being transparent with fleet customers about when things go wrong can help establish trust between both the customer and company.
“If you're not able to fulfill on time and in full, having that transparency with your customers really helps build upon that trust,” Gregorchik said. “Customers realize that issues do occur, but as long as they see that and they're prepared for that, that's where that competitive advantage comes into play.”
Fleet visibility tools
There are a variety of companies now that offer visibility tools for fleets to improve their customers’ experience. One of these companies is telematics provider Samsara. Estes Express Lines (No. 11 on the FleetOwner 500) began using Samsara’s Connected Operations Cloud earlier this year to provide better experiences for the fleet’s customers.
“Providing customers a frictionless shipping experience comes down to having the right data,” said Estes CIO Todd Florence in a press release earlier this year. “Samsara provides the increased visibility customers want and drivers with a better day-to-day since they spend less time on data entry and more on the work they love.”
See also: Samsara joins California fleet smog test pilot
Visibility takeaways
When disruptions in deliveries happen, it's important to have backup plans. But according to Gregorchik, since disruptions are becoming more frequent, visibility is more important now than it was 10 years ago. During the webinar, a clip from FourKites’ Visibility 2023 conference was shown. In this clip, Amy Johnson from Cardinal Health spoke about how her company handles visibility.
“There are essentially two questions that the recipients really want answers to: the first is ‘Where's the shipment now?’ And the second is ‘When is it going to be here?’” said Johnson, director of logistics products and solutions at Cardinal Health. “So what we try to do is take all of that data and translate that into two different statuses. The first status is a most recent event status. So we're really trying to look at all the scans and then interpret that into one of six different most recent events. This could be something like released to the carrier in transit from our (distribution center), or from our depot, or it could be delivered.
“The second one we create is the punctuality status,” Johnson continued. “Is it awaiting an ETA? Is it on time, or is it late? So we're really trying to boil all that data into very simple easily digested statuses. These are things that would make sense to a recipient and try to help answer those main questions that they have.”
At the end of the webinar, FourKites highlighted three takeaways: Give customers a portal to go to, which includes all their purchases; leverage customer scorecards for top customers; and for shippers and carriers to collaborate strategically on the most critical customers.
