expect, but especially if they’ve ordered a complex or expensive item. Take shipment scheduling. White- glove service used to mean that carriers would contact the consumer one or two days ahead of delivery, and plan to arrive any time between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. “The customer had to take a full day off from work to wait for a delivery, and sometimes the driver wouldn’t show up,” notes Carson Krieg, head of last mile industry solutions and strategy at project44, a visibility platform headquartered in Chicago. Now, consumers who purchase white- glove service gravitate toward self-service appointment scheduling with a narrow— think: two hour—delivery window. By keeping consumers up to date on shipment status, tracking technology reduces confusion and speeds delivery time. “The technology eliminates the need for the buyer to answer a call from a carrier they aren’t familiar with,” says Krieg.
at a wide range of prices could offer a white-glove delivery option alongside free delivery at checkout, and let the consumer decide which one they want. Just ve years ago, communication in the last mile would typically have involved a phone call between the consumer and the delivery driver. Today, shoppers expect automated updates, push noti cations, and text messages. “The best way to communicate with a consumer used to involve picking up the phone,” says Lance Dearborn, vice president of white-glove courier Need It Now Delivers, in Flushing, New York. “Now, if they get a call from a phone number they don’t recognize, they’re more likely to ignore it. Consumers don’t want to talk to us.” Instead, Dearborn explains, shoppers have grown accustomed to the “Amazon mold”, where they receive auto- generated updates that offer visibility into every shipping milestone. It’s something that consumers at all levels are coming to
Depending on the item being delivered, different levels of service might be required once a shipment reaches the front door. Baseline white-glove assistance typically involves entering the consumer’s home, placing items in the room of choice, unpacking, and hauling away debris. More recently, white glove has expanded to include product assembly, installation, or even providing a brief tutorial that explains how to use a new purchase—known as the “ nal inch” of delivery. This could involve, for example, wall-mounting a TV or installing home exercise equipment. For certain retailers, these offerings are baked into the delivery process. But white-glove service can also be an upsell opportunity. “It’s easy to think that you won’t need white-glove service if you order a bed online,” says Shailu Satish, co-founder and chief operating of cer of DispatchTrack, a last-mile optimization platform based in San Jose, California. “That is, until the bed arrives in one box outside your house, it’s too heavy to move inside, and your bedroom is on the second oor.” WHITE GLOVE ON THE SPOT In situations like those, it behooves companies to have an option to add white-glove service on the spot, Satish explains. DispatchTrack’s customer communication software includes a eld that lets drivers upgrade a delivery on-site. From there, DispatchTrack automatically updates the provider’s ETA and charges the customer. “This is a win for everybody,” says Satish. “Customers receive the service they need, and it’s additional revenue for the retailer and pay for the driver.” The trick is to offer optionality at different stages of a sale. For example, a high-end furniture manufacturer selling a $15,000 dining room set might automatically include a delivery upgrade, which would be in line with the consumer’s expectations. On the other hand, a home improvement retailer who offers products
The final mile may be the most visible part of white-glove delivery, but retailers and manufacturers can take steps prior to it to ensure a successful end result. A primary consideration: avoiding damage in the middle mile. One way to cut down on accidents is to minimize how often shipments are handled. For that reason, avoid sending palletized freight through a hub-and-spoke network or using an LTL carrier, recommends Carson Krieg, head of last-mile industry solutions and strategy at project44. There’s too much propensity for damage when items have to be moved or reorganized. “Forklifts could drive through the side of a couch," he says. "Situations like that create a lot of damage in a hand o from carrier A to carrier B.” Instead, shippers with enough density may benefit from booking dedicated truckload capacity and floor loading their freight. Once products arrive at the destination market, retailers could hand them o to a final-mile-only provider, or even choose to handle the last mile in-house. “It’s an opportunity to resolve issues in the last mile," Krieg says. "Retailers are going upstream, and controlling their own destiny there.” MEETING IN THE MIDDLE
August 2022 • Inbound Logistics 41
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