Emerging trends in the courier service industry
Every industry has all sorts of crazy things happening these days – from technological advances to the total re-thinking of entire services that they currently offer. And truth be told, our industry is no different.
Today, we’re going to talk about a few of the trends and tech that are emerging in the courier service world and how you’ll be able to take advantage of them in the not-too-distant future! Let’s jump right in!
Sustainable logistics systems
Sustainable fleets are becoming a real thing in today’s world. Everyone’s thinking about how they can reduce their impact on the environment and of course, we’re no different. Sustainable logistics consumes less energy and saves us a lot of money in terms of the cost to operate our fleet. We’re seeing an overall increase in the use of electric vehicles, bikes and scooters for individual parcels.
Real-time visibility
Many courier companies now offer their customers the ability to keep an eye on their packages in real-time. Using GPS, customers can see precisely where their package is at and when – almost to the minute – their package will be delivered. Especially when it comes to high-priority deliveries, this gives customers a great deal of peace of mind.
Last-mile transparency
The last mile is obviously the final step in the delivery process. Whenever you talk to a distributor or retailer – they’re usually the most nervous about the last mile of the trip – making sure the package gets to the correct person, the correct address and the like. Now courier companies are helping them solve those concerns by providing logistics, cross docking and other, efficient management software that ensures that there aren’t mistakes in the delivery process.
Drone delivery
Drone delivery is nuts. We usually don’t get that casual around here, but it’s some pretty wild technology. Courier companies used to struggle to deliver goods to remote locations and city outskirts, meaning that their customer base would miss out on potential sales by not being able to deliver goods to those customers. Now with drones, all that is becoming possible and companies like Amazon are already testing models. Be on the look out for a drone delivery near you!
Delivery on-demand
In today’s ‘give me what I want now’ world – courier services are expanding past same-day delivery and are now moving to full-on hot shot, on-demand edelivery. This way, customers can be served almost instantly and things can get to where they need to go as quickly as possible.
Courier companies are rapidly changing to meet the increasing demands of the global economy. Look for many of the things we discussed today to dominate the retail delivery industry in the years.