by GetSwift | Jun 3, 2019 | Uncategorized
The long-term benefits of having your own fleet are major.
As a growing delivery business, it’s a good bet you’ve debated whether to partner with third-party food delivery apps such as UberEats, Grubhub, and Doordash. While there are some benefits to relying on these apps (namely: they send you business!), there are often much greater benefits—in the short- and long-term—to delivering from your own fleet of handlers.
As a provider of delivery logistics software, we’ve witnessed the major benefits directly from our customers across dozens of industries. Here are five big reasons you should consider managing your own fleet:
1. Own customer experience from end to end
When delivering food (or furniture, groceries, even laundry), mistakes can happen. Food may spill over into the bag or it might arrive cold or later than expected. The problem is, your restaurant will very likely get the blame for it whether it was your fault or not. Even if a third-party made the delivery, the calls and the bad reviews are coming your way.
But when you operate your own fleet, you can not only prevent lots of mistakes, but you can also own them. You know exactly why food arrived cold, late, or spilled, because you can either see what caused the bottleneck on your dashboard (provided by GetSwift) or you can chat with the handler. You can address the issue with the customer, develop solutions (like better packaging), and ensure it’s less likely to happen again.
2. Address complaints instantly
When you do get that call from a customer who wants to know where their delivery is, both you and your customer will have varying levels of visibility into a third-party handler’s location. And so it may take a while to find an answer.
However, if you run your own fleet—and use the GetSwift map pinpointing your handlers’ locations—you can give all your customers a live tracking link, making them less likely to call you in the first place. And if they do call, you can answer your customers’ questions in an instant.
Armed with that information, you can make decisions to better serve that customer. You might just let them know that the driver is finishing up another job first. Or you might see that another driver is nearby and reassign the order. You can also make a quick call to your team and figure it out. The point is: you have the control.
3. Represent your brand
Every one of your drivers can be an ambassador for your brand, and has the ability to delight your customers and turn them into more loyal followers. If it’s part of your brand to be super nice and helpful, and you instill that attitude in your drivers, customers will notice and write reviews.
It goes further than attitude. You might also want your drivers to dress to a certain standard to match your brand, something you can’t control with third-party services. And when you have your own drivers, you can give customers and drivers their your own white-labeled app, which puts your brand stamp on more touchpoints and gives you control over the customer experience.
4. Motivate your team
With your own drivers and delivery logistics software, you get detailed data on every hander’s performance and your fleet’s KPIs. That means you can track average delivery times, analyze, and then motivate your whole team or individual members to improve. You can get data on outliers and figure out why any delivery took too long, and deal with underperformers. Finally, you can help your team grow their careers. When one of your drivers keeps getting 5-star reviews, it might be time to put that person on track for a promotion.
5. You own the data to make data-driven business decisions
Number 5 really serves as the exclamation point. When you rely on online food delivery apps like GrubHub or Doordash, you don’t see much of that data. Even though it’s your food being made and delivered, it’s now Uber’s delivery data.
However, when you manage your own fleet, you also own your own delivery data, giving you the tools to evaluate how to get more customers and grow revenue. For example, you can know which customers ordered which items—and when—allowing you to market more of the products they probably want directly to them, and grow revenue. You can track specific KPIs like time-to-dispatch or driver in-store-wait-time to know exactly what’s slowing down delivery, or measure your monthly progress on big KPIs like average delivery time to motivate your team.
All in all, as a delivery business, it just makes good business sense to have your own drivers. You and your team can take ownership of the customer experience from end to end—making it true to your brand—and you can use data from your operation keep your team accountable, track overall performance, and leverage your data to reach more customers.
To learn about how our last-mile delivery platform will work for your business, send us a note or start a free 30-day trial.
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by GetSwift | May 30, 2019 | Uncategorized
- Brings Extensive Commercial and Governance Experience
Photo: VentureBeat
GetSwift Limited (ASX: GSW) (‘GetSwift’ or the ‘Company’), a leading provider of SaaS logistics technology, today announced the appointment of Stanley Pierre-Louis to the GetSwift Board of Directors as Non-Executive, Independent Chair. Mr. Pierre-Louis brings over 23 years of experience leading, advising and governing private and public companies with a particular focus on technology and intellectual property issues.
“I am honoured to join GetSwift’s Board of Directors as Non-Executive, Independent Chair. GetSwift has grown to become a sizable organization with offices in the North America, Europe and Australia over the last three years and is an exciting public company with a world class executive team,” Mr. Pierre-Louis said. “The market opportunity for its business units is large and growing with significant runway. I look forward to working with Bane, Joel and the rest of the Board to focus on growing the top line aggressively, while maintaining best-in-class corporate governance practices and creating significant long-term value for all shareholders.”
Bane Hunter, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director said, “Stan is in a league of his own. He has tremendous commercial and governance experience particularly in the technology and digital arenas. His counsel and commercial experience will be a strong addition to the Board. We are thrilled to add such an accomplished professional to the lead a majority independent Board. We look forward to working together to continue growing GetSwift over the coming years for the benefit of all shareholders.”
Mr. Pierre-Louis currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) based in Washington, D.C. ESA is dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of companies that publish computer and video games for the Internet, personal computers, consoles, and handheld devices. He previously served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of ESA. Prior to joining ESA, Mr. Pierre-Louis served as Senior Vice President and Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property at Viacom. Mr. Pierre-Louis has served on governing boards and advisory councils for non-profit organisations and educational institutions.
Once Mr. Pierre-Louis’s appointments take effect the Board will continue to have a majority of independent directors.
by lee bizpro | May 7, 2019 | Uncategorized
Why SMS Alerts are key to any delivery experience.
Some delivery businesses we work with at GetSwift have their doubts about SMS Alerts. One common worry is: “If I send SMS alerts, will I bother my customers?”
In a word: No. Predictable delivery is not just a convenient, nice thing to have anymore—it’s expected. Your customer is building how they spend their day, night, or, in the case of large delivery like a couch or a refrigerator, their week around this delivery. Text messages are a great way for customers to manage their time, interact with your brand, and even get prompted to contact your team if they need to change the delivery time.
Text alerts have also become common courtesy. Remember the days of sitting on your couch wondering when your Chinese takeout will arrive and having no idea if you can take a shower or walk the dog—or not? Those days are long gone.
The best part? Automated SMS alerts can be set up in minutes on GetSwift. You can learn how easy that is on our support page.
As you set up SMS alerts, here are some awesome things you do to add a flourish to your messages:
First, you can automatically personalize each SMS Alert just by adding a field for the customer’s name and the driver’s name when you set up your alerts. You can also choose to add links to a Live Tracking Map, Live ETA, or a feedback form.
Second, you can add your own branding. Write the message in your tone of voice and choose the name of the sender that pops up on your customer’s phone.
Third, you can choose which events will trigger an SMS alert. Here are the events that could trigger an alert: New Job Started, Task Accepted by Handler, Delivery En Route, Delivery Completed, and Delivery Cancelled. Choose all 5 or just one.
In sum, giving customers an accurate prediction of when their delivery will arrive is a must-have for delivery businesses, and SMS alerts a great way to do it. With GetSwift, you can customize those messages to your needs so that your customers are kept informed, at ease, and, most importantly, excited about your products and their delivery.
For a guide to setting up SMS alerts, head to our support page. To learn how GetSwift can help you conquer the chaos of delivery, get in touch.
by GetSwift | May 2, 2019 | Uncategorized
Delivery Biz Pro (DBP), a unit of GetSwift, Inc. (GetSwift) and global farm-to-table SaaS provider, which offers software to facilitate delivery between farms and providers of fresh produce to homes and businesses, is pleased to welcome New Zealand’s Eketahuna Country Meats to its platform.
Eketahuna Country Meats is a family-owned and operated online service specializing in sustainably-raised beef, lamb, and pork, along with fresh glass-bottled milk, to customers in New Zealand. This is the latest in a series of relationships DBP has developed recently and underscores its flexibility to help companies across the globe.
“We have been able to expand product volume while improving speed and range of delivery,” said Steve Olds, Founder of Eketahuna Country Meats. “For perishable items like fresh meat and milk, it’s critical to reach our customers in a timely, accurate fashion and DBP has simplified the process dramatically.”
While Eketahuna previously offered milk at some Wellington markets, DBP is helping the company bring back the tradition of fresh, full-cream milk delivered straight to home doorsteps in glass bottles.
Judd Payne, Vice President at GetSwift, added “It’s great to see a company like Eketahuna joining the local farm-to-table movement. Their commitment to quality and transparency in producing meats and dairy is absolutely refreshing…the words ‘commercialized’ and ‘processed’ are far removed from this farm.”
Eketahuna prides itself in offering meats and milk from animals raised entirely free of hormones, antibiotics, GMOs and farmed with minimal pesticide use. The company started eight years ago, initially selling beef and lamb from its own 300-acre farm and has since made partnerships with a small number of family farms.
About Delivery Biz Pro
Delivery Biz Pro (“DBP”), a unit of GetSwift, Inc., is a SaaS service division offering global customers a subscription-based cloud service for businesses with recurring product orders, particularly within the produce, meal kit, dairy, farm-to-table, water, home and commercial delivery sectors. The DBP platform brings together four key components that allow recurring delivery industry sectors to employ the best methodology for their logistics fulfillment. DBP’s system helps deliver over 2.5 million products, including local, organic food, to over 600,000 families on a monthly basis. For more information, please visit DBP here.
by GetSwift | May 2, 2019 | Uncategorized
GetSwift Limited (ASX: GSW) (‘GetSwift’ or the ‘Company’), a leading provider of SaaS logistics technology, today announced the appointment of Terrance White to the GetSwift Board of Directors. Mr. White brings over 40 years of experience directing, advising and investing in private and public companies from early-stage tech start-ups to the Fortune 250, with extensive experience in international business development, sales management, and marketing.
“I am excited to join GetSwift’s Board of Directors at this time of significant growth and expansion for the Company. GetSwift has built a world class senior executive team that from a leadership, strategy, product, technology, and operations standpoint that is second to none. Their recent acquisition of two complimentary SaaS platforms and their integration to meet customer needs in the last mile and workforce management demonstrates a unique ability to execute rapidly the lessons their business intelligence data is giving them,” Mr. White said. “I look forward to drawing on my experiences scaling organizations – particularly revenue teams – to help GetSwift scale while growing the top line.”
Bane Hunter, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director said, “Terry is an outstanding global executive with a wealth of experience particularly in the North American markets. His insight, advice, networks and experience will be most welcome. We are delighted to add such an accomplished director to the Board and to the Company. We look forward to working with him in the boardroom to create long-term shareholder value.”
Mr. White previously served for 30 years in successful leadership roles for NYSE publicly listed Genuine Parts Company (GPC). His last 11 years at Genuine Parts were as President of its Rayloc Division. He was previously GPC’s Vice President of Sales and Executive Vice President of NAPA, one of the world’s best-known brands. Over his career, he has been involved as an advisor, investor and/or board member for several technology firms including NanoLumens, Interpoint Partners, DIS, and Gauge Insights. Engaged in the Atlanta community through numerous memberships and affiliations, he serves on the Board of Trustees of Oglethorpe University and the Children’s Healthcare Research Trust and is an active member of the Atlanta Rotary Club.
Consistent with the Company’s focus on revenues and scaling the business to meet global demand, the Company intends to shortly appoint a new Independent Non-Executive Chair with strong growth and governance experience. Importantly, once all appointments take effect, the Board will continue to have a majority of independent directors.
by Joel Macdonald | Apr 23, 2019 | Uncategorized
Joel MacDonald is GetSwift’s president and co-founder.
When I led Liquorun, a delivery startup I co-founded in Melbourne in 2013, my team and I started out every day with a series of questions: “What was the weather going to be like? Any sporting events? How many drivers do we have? What did business look like on this day last year?” Using this data, we planned our day.
But it didn’t always work out as planned—a common problem in this line of business. Some days we got slammed by unexpected problems, causing all of us who would normally work the phones to hit the road ourselves in cars, bikes, and scooters. Here’s the story of one of those days, how we got through it, why we added another question to our daily repertoire, and the steps we took to make our delivery operation much more efficient and effective—steps that you and your team can take too.
Here’s what happened…
One day, most of our drivers called in sick. It was bizarre, we had no idea why it was happening, and we were scrambling. Only later did we figure that India was playing in a big cricket match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and many of our drivers at the time were of Indian descent. Not only did we have to deal with the traffic that comes with a major sports event, but we didn’t have enough handlers to work a busy day of deliveries (some of which were probably fans ordering a beer to watch the match).
It was chaos. I was on the road and our staff that normally handles calls was too. It was painful.
The first lesson: include more data in your model
The cricket match taught us lots of lessons. First, we had been excluding some small yet critical data: sporting events. We started entering that into our models we used to determine how large of a fleet we’d need that day, and when and where to deploy drivers.
Second, we developed a crucial strategy: let’s keep a contingency fleet—a group of drivers who would get a bonus if they were ever called up—at the ready. These days, we see this model in the form of the more sophisticated surge pricing from companies like Uber and other urban logistics platforms.
How’d we determine if the backup fleet was needed? We took a look at the historical data, asking how often orders were placed in our different delivery zones (this was very manual still). If the demand was much higher than the supply of drivers, we knew we needed to have the reinforcements in that zone. That evolved into a program running in the background that would advise drivers to stay in a certain area because deliveries would be coming and dramatically helped planning the roster each shift (a program that, with others, would eventually evolve into Version 1 of GetSwift).
The next step: make a list of your challenges
A shortage of drivers is just one issue your delivery operation may face. Your next step is to break them all down, one by one. Some examples could be:
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driver supply
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long trip times
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long trip distances
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traffic
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high peaks and low troughs of demand
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unreliable drivers
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dispatching decision-making
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customers not knowing where their delivery is
Let’s take a look at the average time of the trip. If you export all your trip times into an excel sheet with some other basic information like destination, starting zone, time of day, distance, the number of drivers in your fleet, you can start to learn a few things. Look for outliers—any trips that took a really long time—and eliminate them. See how much it affects the average. If the result is a much lower average delivery time, you might consider doing what we did at Liquorun, consolidate your delivery zones.
Although eliminating one or two zones means losing some potential customers, you will likely gain something much more important, the customers who are delighted regulars and buy more, which outweighs the cost of a lost customer that you might have originally wanted to service. A similar analysis could remove one low-performance driver from your data. If that significantly improves your delivery time, maybe it’s time to have a hard conversation with that driver.
In sum, think of your operation as an organism and look at it from a macro standpoint. Every single data point impacts every other data point within the organism. To keep the organism healthy, sometimes you need to pull out or add a couple of data points. And folks, this optimization never ever ends! You have to keep testing and refining to keep getting better.
Test, test, test. Then test.
Finally, real-world testing, aka trial-and-error, is the key to improvement. That’s the only way you can learn if your theory, based on data, helps your business. You can test literally anything—from what might happen if you eliminated two delivery zones to what if you doubled your fleet size.
Your tests can go beyond driver management into marketing and e-commerce. For Liquorun, it was as simple as changing the button color on the home landing page from green to blue. Once we did, we were surprised at the outcome. We started getting 30% more visitor entries to our menu page. Be curious. What else can you improve? It’s really fun and you can find profound results. Test against your bias and let the data tell you the story.
Where to go from here
Being a delivery operator is a day-to-day grind. But there are concrete steps you can take—even beyond calling platforms like GetSwift and Delivery BIZ Pro, a platform we recently acquired—to solve a lot of your pain. Starting today, you can dig into the data and test it out on the road. In doing so, you’ll not only be making immediate improvements but also laying the roadmap for your future success, so you can conquer the chaos of delivery and start loving your last mile.
Interested in conquering the chaos? GetSwift can help you start improving your delivery operation in hours. Launch Your Free 30-Day Trial.
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