More customers are asking for same-day deliveries — sometimes in as little as two hours — but not all small and midsize businesses are set up to meet this demand. Limited staff and vehicles and manual dispatching can all interfere with your company’s ability to deliver on demand.
For help, more businesses are turning to crowdsourcing, which provides an always-on option for store-to-door local delivery in as little as a few hours. Taking that concept a step further, Roadie can batch orders headed in the same direction and send them on routes with a single driver.
Batch delivery allows small and midsize businesses to leverage crowdsourcing’s economies of scale, consolidate the sorting and staging process, and minimize the cost of sending multiple deliveries daily.
In this article, we’ll explain how using Roadie batch delivery can help your business compete as online ordering grows and customer expectations for fast arrivals increase.
Meeting customer demand for store-to-door local delivery
Your customers want same-day local delivery, and you want to protect your bottom line. With Roadie batch delivery, you can do both. Case in point, here’s how batching process pays off for businesses across different industries:
- The meal delivery service can deliver multiple same-day orders located in the same geographic area more affordably and efficiently.
- The electrical distributor can consistently meet the last-minute needs of the various contractor job sites it keeps stocked with supplies and parts.
- The local florist can ensure multiple customer orders are dispatched and delivered based on the timelines requested when customers placed the orders.
By batching orders based on timing and location, you can meet customer demand while saving money, improving efficiency and enhancing productivity.
Even better, combined with Roadie’s crowdsourced delivery platform, this all happens without additional staffing or vehicles, saving you money on fuel and labor.
Win your company’s piece of the e-commerce pie
With U.S. retail e-commerce sales expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2022, delivery volumes and fulfillment expectations are growing exponentially. Small and midsize businesses need an array of fast, flexible and convenient local delivery options to help them capture market share.
To do that, they’re experimenting with new delivery models that focus on expediting deliveries, adding efficiencies to handle increased order volumes and, most importantly, finding ways to make customers happy.
By enabling batched delivery and bulk upload of up to 200 deliveries at once, Roadie's crowdsourcing platform helps businesses deliver higher volumes with less effort. Plus, the efficiency creates real cost savings. With Roadie, Companies sending more than five daily deliveries save a minimum of 25% on delivery costs when they batch their orders.
Sending multiple orders with a single crowdsourced delivery driver saves small businesses time and hassle. It also improves customer service levels by getting multiple orders out the door and delivered quickly. Here’s how it works:
- Submit orders to Roadie’s platform, either manually, through bulk upload via CSV, or automatically via the API.
- Roadie’s platform creates efficient batches based on factors including direction and delivery deadline.
- Drivers are assigned a batch ID that identifies which orders to take, speeding up the handoff and ensuring drivers take the right orders.
- Orders can be tracked individually, allowing you and your customers to see delivery progress in real time.
- You can view your orders by driver and track the batch as a whole or as individual deliveries.
Batched delivery is a time-saver for small businesses that want to use crowdsourcing but don’t want the operational complexity of managing and tracking individual orders across multiple drivers. A single crowdsourced driver can pick up multiple orders and — based on parameters such as timing and delivery location — deliver them all efficiently.
Tips for success with batch delivery
Getting started with batch delivery is easy. Here are a few steps you’ll want to take:
- Set standard pickup times for your orders. Doing so will give your team time to put the orders together and avoid time wasted waiting for drivers.
- Make sure the order is picked before you post it to Roadie. The goal is to have orders ready to go before the driver arrives, and ensure you aren’t delayed by out-of-stock inventory.
- Ensure orders are clearly labeled and placed in your facility where drivers and staff have easy access. Doing so helps drivers pick up the right order and get back on the road quickly.
- Educate your team about what to expect when working with crowdsourced drivers. For example, drivers that use Roadie:
- Are equipped to get the order quickly and safely from your store or facility to the customer. (Be ready, so you don’t slow them down.)
- Have been vetted.
- Will not be wearing a uniform or arriving in a marked vehicle.
- Might be new to your store or facility. (Make sure access and pickup points are clearly labeled.)
- Will be using a passenger vehicle. (Loading docks may be difficult to access.)
- Share detailed instructions for order pickup and drop-off with the driver using Roadie’s driver notes app.
Batch delivery helps businesses meet customer demand year-round while focusing their energy on managing and growing their operation. With batching, Roadie gives your company maximum flexibility, helps you meet customer demand and saves you money.
Ready to learn more? Download our same-day delivery guide to discover how to make the most of crowdsourcing for fast, flexible and convenient store-to-door delivery. And check out our estimator tool to determine how much you can save by batching with Roadie.