Customer-Centric Deliveries: Redefining Logistics for the Digital Age

While “Customer is the king” has always been a popular adage among delivery businesses, it has gained even more impetus since the advent of the digital age. 

Plus, you’ve got e-commerce giants like Amazon that have set new benchmarks for exceptional delivery services. 

As a result, customers seek more control over deliveries than ever, from picking a preferred delivery option to tracking their up-to-the-moment delivery progress.

So, how do you manage these customer demands?

There’s a solution – building a customer-centric delivery framework.

At Upper, we see businesses failing to cope with the rising pressure of customers’ ever-evolving expectations and preferences. That’s why we developed an end-to-end delivery management software solution to help you create a customer-centric business.

This blog discusses the concept of a customer-centric delivery process, ways to implement it, and how our software, Upper, can help you achieve it with effective delivery route planning software.

What is a Customer-Centric Delivery?

A customer-centric delivery approach involves putting yourself in customers’ shoes to understand what they expect at each stage of their buying journey, from placing an order to receiving it. 

A custom-centric delivery helps you ensure:

• The order reaches the right address and doesn’t get misplaced or damaged
• The order reaches your customers on time or as per the requested delivery window
• The customer receives real-time delivery notifications and precise ETAs

For you as a business owner, it helps you:

• Meet customers’ expectations
• Minimize delivery conflicts 
• Increase repeat business from satisfied customers
• Attract new customers through good word-of-mouth and referrals

It gives your customers greater control over how and when they want to order products, track their real-time progress, and receive them.

Achieving a Customer-Centric Delivery with Upper

Customer-centric deliveries are a win-win for businesses and customers. 

So, here are the strategies to incorporate a customer-centric delivery culture in your business and how Upper Route Planner can help you implement them.

1. Provide multiple delivery options

Building a customer-centric delivery process requires you to provide multiple delivery options to your customers. 

For instance, you can offer your customers to choose from:

• Same-day delivery
• Next-day delivery
• Prescheduled delivery
• Contactless delivery 

These options give your customers more control over how they want their orders delivered, enhancing their delivery experience.

How can Upper help?

Upper allows you to offer multiple delivery options for local customers, including same-day delivery, by helping you create efficient routes. These routes help your drivers reach your customers’ addresses to deliver orders within a few hours of order placement. 

Moreover, Upper provides proof of delivery that lets your drivers capture photos of delivered packages and customers’ e-signatures to confirm deliveries. This option allows you to include the ‘no-contact’ delivery option, as it lets your drivers document successful deliveries digitally, eliminating extensive paperwork.

Let’s take a real-life example of EcoMedical, a leading medical supplier. It used Upper to achieve 100% digitization in its delivery process. Want to know how?

Click here to learn the full story behind EcoMedical and how it can help you replicate their level of success.

2. Manage incoming orders effectively

Entering order details, including delivery addresses, is time-consuming and prone to human errors like duplication or typing mistakes. So, you should automate uploading your customer details and creating routes to save time and fulfill orders quickly after placing them. 

Integrating an inventory management system helps manage stock levels and ensure that in-demand products are readily available. You should also centralize customer data from different sources or platforms, including CRM or ERP, to manage it better and more efficiently. 

How can Upper help?

Upper provides an easily integrable and customizable route planning API that helps meet your unique delivery requirements. Integrating this API into your existing systems, including CRM or inventory software, enables central management of order and customer information.

By integrating Upper’s route planner app for eCommerce platforms like Shopify, you can fetch and map the orders that customers place directly on the map and create optimal delivery routes.

Are you a Shopify store owner looking to integrate route planning? Click here to learn how Upper’s App for Shopify Users can help you.

3. Keep customers in the loop 

From the time your customers place an order until they receive it, you must ensure they stay informed about real-time order status updates. The key is to send delivery status notifications with dynamic ETAs.

When customers know when they can expect their order, they are available to receive it, reducing failed delivery attempts. Moreover, providing last-mile visibility into deliveries helps increase transparency and win their trust in your brand, paving the way to repeat sales. 

How can Upper help?

Upper empowers you to send delivery notifications at every delivery stage. For example, you can create messages like ‘Out for Delivery’, ‘Driver is On Your Way’, or ‘Order Delivered Successfully’. You can personalize these email or SMS notifications to align with your branding. 

Upper also lets you send a tracking link in messages so drivers can view their real-time movements and stay assured they’ll receive their orders as scheduled. If a driver starts their journey late or is stuck mid-journey, you can send a bulk SMS to all the customers along that route to convey the specific reason for the delay, ensuring your accountability towards customers and increased transparency.

Here’s what one of Upper’s customers, Maxwell Sterling, owner of Northern Clearways Inc., has to say about delivery notifications.

Our clients have expressed how much they value these real-time notifications. It’s not just about informing them; it’s about giving them peace of mind during the hectic winter.”, says

Click here to read the full success story

4. Prioritize accurate and timely deliveries 

Your orders must reach the intended recipients without delays. Therefore, it is imperative to plan routes that factor in multiple factors, including customers’ delivery windows, drivers’ working hours, vehicle type, and capacity constraints.

Another crucial aspect is real-time route adjustments. You must be able to edit your routes even when they are in transit to accommodate last-minute orders, cancellations, or unforeseen situations like vehicle breakdowns, inclement weather, or drivers’ sickness. This helps prevent disruptions in your ongoing delivery operations and achieve timely deliveries.

How can Upper help?

Upper equips you with AI-powered route optimization algorithms that let you account for multiple constraints, such as delivery windows, priority, drives’ hours of service or preferences, and vehicle capacity specifics.

Further, our software offers dynamic routing capabilities that let you reoptimize your sequence of stops in ongoing routes based on real-time traffic patterns, road closures, or priority changes. You can also reassign pending stops along a route to another available driver if a driver calls in sick or faces a vehicle breakdown. 

5. Establish yourself as eco-conscious

Customers are increasingly looking for businesses that focus on environmental sustainability. 

Hence, implementing eco-friendly practices in your delivery operations is the need of the hour.

You can start by switching to eco-friendly and bio-degradable packaging. 

Another aspect is creating routes that reduce delivery distances and prevent unwanted miles on the road, which is essential to reducing fuel consumption and, hence, carbon emissions. Further, Upper provides digital delivery documentation to reduce paperwork, strengthening your commitment to sustainability goals. 

How can Upper help?

Upper allows you to create the shortest and most fuel-efficient routes, reducing your delivery distances and, thus, your carbon footprint. 

Upper lets you define capacity constraints for each stop, including the maximum weight, number of items, and permissible volume. Thus, it allows you to plan routes that maximize vehicle capacity utilization and enhance operational efficiency.

Implementing Customer-Centric Deliveries with Upper

Upper’s route optimization software is designed to help businesses implement a customer-centric delivery approach effectively by allowing you to:

• Offer multiple delivery options by optimizing routes that can deliver items in the shortest time.
• Import stops quickly from an Excel/CSV spreadsheet or e-commerce store while preventing duplication or incorrect addresses through smart address validation.
• Notify your customers of real-time delivery status updates and delays to build trust and transparency among your customers.
• Meet delivery timelines by optimizing routes and making edits to in-transit routes to handle unforeseen events, including emergencies, accidents, or mechanical issues.
• Project your business as eco-friendly by reducing carbon emissions through reduced delivery distances and eliminating paperwork through digital proof of delivery.

Upper – Key to Building a Customer-Centric Delivery that Costs Little 

Building a customer-centric delivery system doesn’t mean you must please customers by all means, even if it costs zero return on investment. It rather means transforming your delivery operations to make them engage customers and attract repeat sales and revenue.

Upper enables building a customer-centric delivery business without requiring a significant investment. Our software’s pricing plans start at as low as $40 per user per month on an annual billing cycle. It helps accelerate and streamline your routing, tracking drivers, sending status updates to customers, documenting digital deliveries, and reducing carbon emissions.

So, if you are ready to create a customer-centric delivery framework, you can implement Upper. If you want to know more about its features and how they can help you, you can book a 7 days free trial.