Confirmed Delivery; Challenging from Down Under
At Nutshell we pride ourselves on giving the best possible service; it is one of the primary reasons our customers maintain their loyalty. What we say we deliver we do our best to deliver.
And if it doesn't work out nobody is more disappointed than us.
Because of our 'distance to market' our options when it comes to choosing delivery systems are limited - and primarily based on cost effectiveness. For over 15 years we have watched as market options have appeared, vanished into the ebb and flow of the tidal global commerce systems, and risen once again. Often that revival is accompanied by a more cost effective approach too.
Sometimes the reason to reject a shipping option is based on our customer feedback.
Like the time we used a shipping service that took our export deliveries in a bundle up into Singapore and then distributed them to all parts of the globe.
Nothing too unusual in that you would think. Except for the complaints we started getting from our more elderly customers in the United States and elsewhere . They claimed we were not making our products in New Zealand. And they remembered the Pacific war! All because the intermediary Singapore step resulted in our packages getting an added Asian stamp!
Transportation is one of those factors that can weigh heavy on any exporter, along with the changeable currency rates, and the service we use needs to be the best possible to make our customers feel as comfortable as possible.
Within the blink of an eye that Singapore service was terminated; there really is nothing worse for a marketer than waking up to dozens of angry notes from customer threatening to never again darken our doorway, all because they have the wrong end of the stick..
Recently, however, that proved to not be the case. Over a year ago we were approached by a reputable shipping company and offered the ability to provide added security for our shipment, with the option of a signature required service. Unfortunately for us, we were told, and assumed, that this service would be accompanied by a tracking scheme that would let customers go hunt for their individual tracking information by trawling the world's shipping and tracking services. Usually these are maintained by individual postal services and the scanning process is pretty much a necessary formality in this day and age of advanced wariness about trans-border freight and security.
That's what you would think. But often reality is stranger than fiction.
The reality is that the service we elected to engage to make sure that our deliveries were by hand delivered and required a signature to finalize, were not always scanned as they passed from the local 'down-under;' postal delivery system. We have pressed for answers; most times delivery can be tracked, but only if the product is crossing the border into the United States, where it often gets scanned at the gate. But that's not always the case. While our local Postal service cannot offer us this signature-required registered-mail service we get from that third party supplier, they do not scan the item as it leaves the country. Why? Darned if I know, and I have asked.
That's why we now offer a new Hand Delivery Option; we know and you know you are going to get your nutshell and that it will be delivered by a person who will ask that a signature is provided before the shipment is handed over. What we cannot, at this time, assure you is that you will be able to track it door to door.
It's not an enviable position to find ourselves in, and we are very disappointed that it seems some organisations do not play well together.
Rest assured we are working to find a solution that combines the best of all worlds to make it affordable to offer our customers' a fail-safe and affordable shipping service that delivered on time, every time and let each deliver be tracked, door to door.
Happy Christmas 2014
