Cyber Monday to Christmas Morning: The Delivery Race is On!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are widely considered the kickoff to the holiday shopping season. For the e-commerce world, it’s a race to process orders and deliveries efficiently and accurately to satisfy the key customer expectation: on-time deliveries before Christmas Day or earlier.

This goal will be even more challenging this year, as the window between Cyber Monday — which falls on Dec. 2 this year — and Christmas Day is shorter than previous years. Add in potential supply chain disruptions from geopolitical strife, and this holiday season is sure to be a challenge. There are two main ways retailers can succeed: drawing on pandemic learnings and honing communication with customers.

Dust Off the Pandemic Playbook

Supply chain disruption has become the norm rather than the exception. In 2020 it was the pandemic, now it’s conflicts like the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The silver lining is businesses are learning to adapt. Research shows that companies are reaping the benefits of the strategies they implemented over the past three years.

Many retailers have learned painful yet valuable lessons about inventory strategy and won’t fall into the trap of relying too heavily on overstocking inventory to manage disruptions. The reality is that more and more retailers have limited inventory in stores anyway and are pointing customers online to find their item instead. In that respect, the pandemic set stores up for success.

When it comes to package fulfillment times this holiday season, it’s going to be 2021 all over again. With the influx of e-commerce products being purchased in a shorter period of time, systems will be pressed to the limit to do more processing in less time, which will likely result in backlogs and delays. Shipping delays can make it difficult for retailers to plan their inventory and forecast demand, and as a result they might overstock and end up paying for inventory storage — a nightmare for those retailers dealing with big and bulky freight. On the other end of the spectrum, they could under-forecast customer demand and sell out too quickly.

Retailers ought to continue reassessing their inventory approach and identify the best strategies (and technologies) to help monitor these levels in real time. This will also help when the returns rush inevitably starts.

Manage the Customer

The other component of navigating this holiday season isn’t about supply chain logistics directly, it’s about communicating and marketing to customers. Customer expectations have never been higher for e-commerce deliveries, with over 90 percent of consumers now expecting two- or three-day shipping to be standard. But ultimately, consumers aren’t going to change their shopping lists and behaviors just because they have less time to shop this year.

Retailers and logistics professionals can only control what they can control — at least until there’s a more widespread adoption of technology in the industry to make shipping more efficient. That said, it’s critical they communicate with their customers early and often. For example, retailers should plan on marketing earlier than normal to try to defray the volume during the shortened time between the post-Thanksgiving shopping peak and Christmas. We’re already seeing larger retailers like Walmart do this.

Additionally, retailers should more effectively communicate about delivery dates. Etsy, for example, is doing this exceptionally well and will be able to offer holiday shoppers more accurate delivery dates with a new machine learning algorithm it introduced in May.

Ultimately retailers can’t change the reality of the shortened holiday shopping window, but they can do their best to set expectations and communicate with customers.

Jami Caruso is the vice president of customer operations and home delivery at uShip, the world's largest and most trusted online transportation marketplace.