4 Tips for Avoiding Another ‘Shipageddon’ This Holiday Season

Remember last year’s “Shipageddon,” when many delivery providers struggled to meet demand in the lead-up to the holidays? Well, like a sequel to a movie that no one enjoyed the first time around, Shipageddon 2 could be coming soon. But the good news for retailers is that if you play it smart, you can avoid being front row, center.

The last-mile delivery challenges that retailers faced during the 2020 peak season weren’t just a one-off. Retail delivery volumes have remained high throughout 2021 — including during what used to be quiet seasons — and now the industry is again entering the Q4 danger zone.

The pandemic not only accelerated the trend towards online shopping; it’s now permanently changed consumer behavior so that in-person retail foot traffic will likely never return to pre-pandemic levels. Significantly, consumers 65 and older are now the fastest-growing category of online shoppers, including for holiday gifts!

Reliable, cost-effective shipping solutions have become an absolute necessity for retailers big and small — year-round, but especially during peak season. So, here are four tips to help you skip joining the cast of Shipageddon 2 this holiday season:

1. Create optionality.

The major lesson from last year’s peak season is that smart retailers create a menu of delivery methods with lots of optionality.

That means going all-in on omnichannel: delivery at various speeds through various methods, curbside pickup, BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store), and more. You just don’t want to put all your delivery eggs in one basket, particularly if that basket struggled to carry your eggs last year. When it comes to shipping, if you only have one provider and it falls victim to supply chain slowdowns or imposes peak season volume limits and surcharges, you’ve got nowhere else to offload your orders.

Having multiple shipping options also allows you to meet modern consumers’ demand for what they want, when and how they want it. For example, they might be happy to pay extra for same-day delivery of a last-minute gift on Christmas Eve, but choose cheaper-but-slower shipping for a gift that’s ordered well in advance (or that’s for someone they don’t much like!).

2. Look for scalability and flexibility.

Your delivery mix should include an easily scalable solution that flexes dynamically to meet spikes in demand, both expected and unexpected. The solution should be cost effective during busy periods and not require you to pay unnecessary on-costs during quieter periods, extending the benefits of your investment throughout the year. Crowdsourced delivery — an on-demand network of independent drivers — ticks all the boxes for scalability and flexibility as well as affordability. That’s why it’s become a go-to solution for same-day, scheduled and urgent deliveries. It’s being used by national retailers like Best Buy and The Home Depot as well as small business retailers in your local neighborhood.

When you choose a combination of crowdsourced and more traditional carriers, you can match every order with the right shipper. Just make sure that you look for providers that offer enough flexibility. This includes the flexibility to reach your customers wherever they are — across town or across the country, including rural areas. Another consideration is whether you need a solution with the flexibility to deliver big, bulky and oversized items, ideally without slapping you with a surcharge. During the holidays, it’s also a good idea for your shipping menu to include a solution that offers the flexibility of no delivery cut-off dates. That way, your customers can shop right up till Christmas Eve, unless you decide to apply your own cut-offs at some point and leave the rest of the deliveries to Santa!

3. Monitor on-time delivery performance.

Your customers will always be more satisfied when you deliver on time, and that’s especially true for holiday gifts and supplies. If, to create optionality, you’re working with multiple delivery providers, there are various ways to monitor their on-time performance to help inform your choice of which provider(s) to use for upcoming deliveries.

You can monitor on-time performance by paying attention to a provider’s real-time tracking feature (if available) and, of course, any positive or negative feedback that you receive from customers. As we get deeper into the holiday season, try to keep up with media reports (including from Total Retail!) about which delivery providers are (or aren’t) coping well with higher volumes. You can also review data from platforms like Convey and Shipmatrix, which report on carriers’ on-time performance. Sometimes the data might surprise you; not all providers are created equal when it comes to keeping delivery promises during peak season.

4. Onboard quickly if you didn’t plan early.

If you haven’t already gotten the right mix of delivery solutions in place to handle higher delivery volumes, it’s not too late to add on. Some leading providers will be able to onboard your business quickly — in days, not weeks. That way, you’ll still have a little time to familiarize yourself with their solution and to start experimenting with it in the quieter calm before the peak season storm.

Valerie Metzker is head of partnerships and enterprise sales at Roadie, an on-demand delivery provider with more than 200,000 drivers covering 90 percent of U.S. addresses.