RETAILRETHINK [ INSIGHT ]
by Ziv Fas Co-Founder and CEO, Package AI ziv@package.ai | +972-58-670-1528
Big and Bulky Needs an Overhaul Beyond Logistics
The Mount Everest of delivery is the high-risk, high-reward segment known as big and bulky, where retailers can make more money if they get it right and leave their reputation in tatters and coffers empty with a few missteps.
business—that between logistics and customer success, which ensures the same issues for customers while simply originating from AI. Often, it’s because there are two distinct solutions, one for optimizing everything about logistics and another for customer success where the history, preferences, and feedback are viewed. Connecting the two allows consumers to have direct access to logistics insights and the corresponding exibility they enable, for example the ability to reschedule a delivery without talking to multiple people. Only then can processes be streamlined, and big issues such as failed deliveries, can be solved. Gone are the days when a routing algorithm that instructs delivery drivers to make right turns will be a game changer. But despite the prevalence of single-day delivery delights becoming near standard, big and bulky customers suffer vast time window estimations, failed deliveries, and plenty of complexity. Those unsolved issues allow retailers to break down the barriers between customer success and logistics in the of ce and ensure that their AI add-ons do the same. With failed deliveries resulting in high abandonment rates, retailers that get it right will carve out a competitive advantage for years to come. n
linked, but when it comes to how nearly every retailer and most tech solutions are structured, those teams are distinctly separate. That separation creates a barrier for the customer and results in negative consequences for the business. If a customer wants to know something as simple as the status of their package and adjust something, it’s a disjointed multi-team event. Likewise, any cross-sell, upsell, or even customer review is linked to an experience and history that requires those two distinct teams to merge. Any comprehensive solution must make logistics data available to customer success without any extra steps. THE AI CONNECTION AI can be a game changer, both positive and negative. While AI can save time, free up team members, and optimize logistics and customer service issues in big and bulky, it must be deployed in the right way. For most companies, their AI strategy simply mirrors the same divide present in their
The potential big payoff has led to a mountain of online material on how to get it right but nearly every guide pays only lip service to aspects beyond logistics. To really solve big and bulky problems, retailers must embrace tech solutions that tackle logistics, but they must also think beyond them. One of the biggest issues in big and bulky is failed deliveries because multiple teams and technicians need to be coordinated, and the customer needs to be home; it’s a meticulously choreographed dance. But simply improving routing ef ciency on its own is futile, especially when encountering a challenge as dif cult as a customer hitting traf c on the way home. With no way to reschedule, the delivery fails, and with no way to track the delivery and plan accordingly or adjust the product when a mistake is realized, negative reviews will abound. Logistics is always connected to customer success, yet in most companies, they remain in separate silos. Customer experience and logistics are
76 Inbound Logistics • January 2025
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