Fire Your Fulfillment Center Now!

Fulfillment Center

Sometimes relationships just don’t work. That’s true in business as well in our personal lives. In business, though, you cannot afford sentimentality when it comes to critical issues such as building and maintaining customer relationships. So if your fulfillment center isn’t getting the job done in a way that consistently exceeds your customers’ expectations, it’s time to cut the cord.

Fire your fulfillment center, and do it now.

How can you be sure it’s time?

One of the most common indications that things aren’t going well is returns. If you’re getting a lot of returns, or too many post-order customer service calls for “fixes,” you’re losing both money and brand reputation. Obviously, orders are not being fulfilled properly. Failures can happen with pick and pack, they can happen with shipping, they can happen at the point of delivery.

Maybe the people are sloppy or they’re poorly trained, but the results are toxic when it comes to fulfillment. Whatever the cause, orders that are wrong or slow to show up don’t just annoy customers, they can send them packing. It’s bad enough that your fulfillment house dropped the ball during the holidays, but excessive returns and problems are a sure sign they aren’t impressing your customers (positively) the rest of the year, either.

Assess Your Current Fulfillment Center Now

Your fulfillment center should impress you, too

There’s another common problem that your customers never see, but which is equally insidious: poor quality reporting. Your fulfillment partner doesn’t operate in a vacuum, their performance affects your ability to forecast and plan, across the board. But are you getting the performance reports you need – sent to everyone who needs them – in a timely manner? We’re talking real-time access to data, not monthly reports that are as useful as stale bread.

You can’t build any business on old news, especially in retail. Your competitors will leave you in the dust.

If your current fulfillment center isn’t delivering right-now information, custom-tailored to your company’s specific metrics, you’re operating with one hand tied behind your back.

It’s time to fire them

Instead, treat yourself to a comprehensive fulfillment partner – one that will treat your customers as if each of them is a precious asset. Because that’s exactly what they are – the gold that keeps your brand shining and your bottom line growing. It’s not easy to find a high-touch partner like that, but it is possible. In fact, if you give us a call here at USA Fulfillment, we’ll tell how we do it.

Firing your fulfillment company could be the best move you make this year.