In online business, there are many factors you must cater to to be successful. This includes how well your company services are reliable and transparent. Reliability consists of points such as quality of the product, the quantity of the products, usability of the product and timely delivery whereas transparency constitutes on how well the platform can be trusted based on its prices, reviews, ratings, customer service, etcetera. While the whole world is going up and about for speedy and fast track deliveries on online shopping or on-demand services, there is one main part that stands out in the light. You guessed it right. It is the “Delivery”! Delivering the purchased products on time can save in a lot of reputation for the online enterprise and gain more customers on the go.
While the punctual and speedy delivery is in, the major factor that constitutes a good fleet performance is the drivers that work on to prompt deliveries. In this article, we will be discussing the few ways on how to improve fleet performance with driver incentives. Since the quality of service that the fleet offers to contribute to the overall customer experience, it is high time businesses come up with new ideas and innovations to motivate and provide faster deliveries.
As in for every system etiquette, punctuality is key in the last mile delivery system as well. Whether you have ordered a piece of apparel, a new electronic gadget or just a pizza, we all want them to be delivered as soon as possible. There has been a lot of study and innovations coming up on the field of delivery management with eCommerce giants like Amazon providing single day delivery options which makes such systems require a precise tracking mechanism to deliver the right products to the customers.
Before jumping into the topic right away, let’s think of how encouraging it is when you are appreciated and/ or rewarded for the hard and smart work you do at work. This can be via a direct conversation, an email or even a reward program. Such reward programs have always been working on the brighter side of the employee becoming more productive. Thus at an overall context, such rewarding systems inculcate a better productive working environment for the employee which is directly proportional to the company’s revenue to also add up.
Any business that purely relies on a fleet of delivery vehicles for their final stage of operations entirely depends on how well the drivers perform. When your driver performs well, it will eventually help in improving your business simultaneously. The fleet business works in many layers that have to be taken care of such as driver retention, shipment security, driver rewards and incentives and efficient quality pieces of equipment used.
While evaluating your driver’s performance, here are a few points that you can take into account for.
- Practising Safe Driving Behaviour: As definitive as it is, drivers driving safely complying to the norms and regulations of the road and transport authority of the location is likely to be rewarded, else warned.
- Organizing Deliveries: Maximizing productivity or managing to complete more deliveries in an area by managing the routes is a remarkable work
- Customer Satisfaction: Customer-friendly and punctual drivers are always to be recognized and appreciated.
- Proactive and Responsive: The delivery person can fix issues and resolve them when it arises from the customer or shipment pickup warehouses.
- Fuel Efficiency: Reducing the idle time can bring down unwanted fuel consumption.
- Avoid Unauthorised Vehicle Usage
Here are a few possible ways on how your company can reward your drivers for improving the fleet performance.
Tipping the Delivery Persons
Tipping has been the most traditional and widely used method of rewarding service. In theory, the better the service brings in a better amount of tips. Each type of delivery can have tipping given based on a different experience. Like in, for example, you have a food delivery and you deliver for the experience or tip an on-demand service provider with an extra tip over the main charges just because of how well they served you. Taking this into consideration, there can be contradictory situations in where the delivery person may not be tipped well enough due to a delay in the delivery which might be because of a delay in shipment or climatic conditions.
Nonetheless, takings its fair share of pros and cons tipping the delivery persons is one great way to motivate a delivery person for punctual, customer-friendly and responsive to the customers’ queries and requirements.
On-Time and Faster Delivery Incentives
Just as discussed previously, punctuality is one fair shot for satisfied customers. Hence, it can be very motivating for fleet service providers to reward their drivers with incentives on their basic salaries for on-time and faster deliveries. The one thing to keep in mind, this does not encourage faster deliveries to be mistaken as overspeeding delivery personnel. Drivers can make use of the GPS technology to track out faster and easier routes to reach to the customers easily. This will help fleet providers to efficiently manage their time and avoid unexpected delays in future delivery packages.
Incentives on Reaching Targets
This is another method of rewarding delivery persons by setting out targets on the number of deliveries to be done a day. Drivers that complete the set target number of orders will result in a financial bonus or reward. This can be made possible in an inner region or a relatively smaller geographical zone but can become tedious for drivers working at longer distances or work for service-oriented tasks. This rewarding method is among the best to provide last-mile delivery persons to ensure they do not lag between drop-offs.
Incentives on Customer Satisfaction
Customer experience tops the list on the requirements of a successful business. This can be an ideal factor to consider in delivery services as well. Adding features where customers can provide a rating for the delivery service or driver such as you do for the Uber drivers can motivate drivers to be on time for deliveries or pickups and even be customer friendly at the same time. There are many quite a situation when there is a switch in the drivers, customers ask for the former person that can be due to his good service offered. Such analysis can be easily done and the drivers can be rewarded with small gifts, vouchers, coupons or even financial bonuses for their forthcoming pay.
The Employee of the Month/ Year Privileges
Yes, you saw that right! As there are Sales representatives and best performers of the month at white-collar office jobs, this can be practised amongst the delivery persons as well. They can be awarded an employee of the month or employee of the year for their efficient service, the high number of attendance, high customer ratings, achieving targets and timely deliveries. They can be given a cash prize with a certificate or memento of honour that can be highly motivating for the other drivers to amp up their services too.
Team Outings
Team outings, team lunches, team dinners, team parties, you name it is all possible. Participating in the final stage of order these drivers are the persons who make direct contact with the customers and hence require to be pleasant and motivated without being stressed at the same time. There are at times during festive seasons or special offers days that the number of orders can go up unexpectantly high that the drivers can feel pressurized. Such situations can be easily tackled if they have a good day to wait for at the end of the season or the day.
Extra Day Offs
Who doesn’t like to have a day off after a lot of work? Adding extra paid day-offs for best-performing employees can be rewarded for their impeccable performance in delivering the products/ services on time.
Such measures are ideal to be taken for driver retention that is mostly a major issue with many of the fleet service providers. Drivers also prefer to be appreciated and recognized for their work and in turn, makes sure they perform better for your firm.
Apart from the rewards program, installing driver safety measures will inculcate better driver retention as there are measures from the management side towards maintaining their security. Speedy alert notifications every time there is an overspeeding incident, and speeding reports regularly can be used to evaluate and improve the driver performance
Adopting real-time tracking systems for the delivery for both the customers and the crowdsourced drivers can be highly beneficial for the fleet service providers. This will facilitate easy tracking and time management. Such digital solutions being applied in your system will help in analysing with a large quantity of data that will help you in analysing the areas to work upon and to show lesser priority.