Page 13 - EngineerIT AugustSeptember Issue 2026

LOGISTICS

2. What the customer sees after
dispatch
Late parcels don’t automatically
lose customers, but silence can.
A shopper who cannot see their
order assumes the worst and
messages you. Each assumption
puts your weekend success and
reputation at risk. Your focus should
be on tracking exceptions, non-
delivery reports (an NDR is logged
when a courier cannot complete
a delivery), return-to-origin rates,
repeat attempts, and “where is my
order" messages piling up.

Many failed deliveries are caused
by a wrong or incomplete address,
and each one comes with costs:
a redelivery, the time cost of a
support call, and sometimes
the sale itself. Proactive tracking
systems that keep customers up
to date answer most of those
questions before they are asked.

Testing lets you quantify the value 4. Every step that still needs a person
3. Courier performance on your
you are getting from each courier Question every manual process: courier
own routes
and plan for contingencies. Relying allocation, waybill generation, address
Most merchants set their courier
on a single courier means your only correction, customer notifications, status
rules once and never look at them
backup plan is hope. The stress of updates. When you are small, doing
again, and many take advertised
managing multiple delivery providers, some of these by hand is manageable;
transit times at face value rather
however, pulls your attention away for a business that is scaling, this quickly
than as a claim to test. Testing
from your customer. Platforms that becomes unsustainable.
these systems and asking critical
let you choose from multiple couriers
questions of your courier partner
enable stability even when systems Note every point where someone had
is the key to getting ahead of any
are under pressure. to step in to complete a routine task
problems.
and treat each one as something to
automate or rewrite. The right setup
takes that work off your team entirely: a
single integrated platform that turns a
sale into a waybill, multi-courier routing
that reroutes in seconds, and tracking
that keeps customers informed before
they need to ask.

Read the data the week after the holiday,
fix your three biggest weaknesses by the
end of September, and confirm the fixes
hold before the freeze. Do that and the
calm forty-order weekend and the frantic
four-hundred-order one should feel the
same to your team. Leave the diagnosis
until Black Friday, and you will learn the
same lessons at a far higher price.

13 | EngineerIT August/September 2026