4 Questions To Ask A Courier Before Hiring Them

Customer satisfaction can make or break a business. No matter how good your products are, you’re going to fail if you don’t treat your customers right. When you’re running an online business, shipping is your biggest concern. There’s so much competition out there so all it takes is one late delivery or damaged product and that customer is going to go elsewhere. You can handle deliveries yourself but it’s going to be expensive and time consuming. The best thing to do is outsource it to a courier company. The thing is, your company is now in their hands. If they mess up, you lose customers. That’s why you’ve got to choose carefully. Here are four questions you should ask them before hiring them.

How Fast Can They Do It?

This is the first thing to ask. If they can only offer a minimum of three days delivery, that’s not great. If you really want to impress customers you should ideally find somebody that does same day delivery, or at the very least, next day. Beyond that, you should see whether they offer packaging solutions or if they just do deliveries. Finding a company that handles both makes things a little easier because you’ve only got to deal with one company instead of two.

Are They Legit?

There are a lot of freelance delivery drivers about, and lots of smaller companies as well. Some of these aren’t going to be doing things above board and if they get caught out, you could be implicated as well. You’ve got to make sure that they’ve got the right lorry Insurance and that all of their drivers have correct licenses that are up to date. If they aren’t insured and they crash with all of your products in the back, you aren’t going to get any money back. You could try to get it from the company but chances are, if they’re driving without insurance they’re not going to be bothered about paying you.

Do They Offer Tracking?

We’ve all been in that situation where we’ve ordered something and you get an email to say that your package will arrive tomorrow, sometime between 9am and 5pm. Most people don’t have time to sit around all day waiting for you to arrive, they’ve got lives to lead. That’s why companies that can offer a much smaller window really stand out to customers. If you go with a courier company that offer a good tracking service, you can let customers know exactly when their products are going to arrive. It also gives you the opportunity to see how the courier service is performing.

How Much Does It Cost?

This is obvious, but it should always come last. Don’t judge by cost alone and go with the cheapest one. You won’t be saving money when you lose all of your customers because their packages were all late. Find the company that offers everything you need, if the price is too high then go elsewhere, but always try to negotiate them down first.

Getting the right courier service is half the battle when you’re trying to establish a new online company.