Tips To Stay On Top Of Your Order Management Process
“I will take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty.”
Samuel Goldwyn — Film producer
The order management process is a crucial piece of the logistics puzzle. Modern e-commerce businesses rely on several pillars. These are — users, access, discovery, conversion, logistics, and data. If any of these crumble, the organisation grows lopsided. Maintaining the balance between these pillars is essential to keep the business running smoothly.
What Is The Order Management Process & How Does It Work?
Simply put, it is the process of keeping track of customers’ orders and handling the steps of fulfilling them. This may sound easy peasy lemon squeezy to a layman, but it is challenging when it comes to ecommerce fulfillment.
Here’s the flow for a typical order process -
- Customer places an order
- Order details are sent to the inventory
- Order is picked, packed and shipped
- Customer receives or returns the order
Most orders management processes in ecommerce can typically be divided into three stages -
- Receiving the customer’s orders
When a customer places an order, a unique identification number is assigned to the order, and the customer is sent a confirmation email along with other details. The purchase details are sent to the warehouse so the fulfillment team can start preparing the order for shipment.
- Fulfilling the customer’s orders
In this stage, the orders are picked from the warehouse and appropriately packed; labels are marked and sent for shipment. The order is marked shipped on the backend, and the customer is sent a confirmation email along with the tracking details.
- Handling the post-purchase process
After the order is delivered, businesses follow up with their customers to receive feedback or to manage product returns and refunds if they are not. This is the last step of the order management process.
Common Challenges In The Order Management Process
Customer Error
When placing an order, the customer might enter the wrong information. It may be the wrong product, quantity, incomplete address, incorrect phone number or billing information. These errors can cause problems in the system or later on in the shipping & delivery process.
Fulfillment Error
When fulfilling purchase orders, ‘pick, pack, ship’ is the go-to phrase. A lot can go wrong. The warehouse may not have their inventory synced, leading to unavailability of the ordered product, incorrectly marked SKUs can be picked up, or the product can be defective.
Shipping Error
Choosing the wrong shipping mode (surface or air), the wrong priority (standard or express) and the wrong shipping carrier can cause woes. These problems can result in delivery of the wrong product, delivery delays, delivery of damaged products or non-delivery of products to the customer.
Post-Purchase Service
Customers will want to return the order if the product doesn’t keep up to their expectations. Warehouses must be ready to facilitate and accommodate product replacements and returns. Businesses must offer a stellar exchange policy and have a clear return policy to compensate for the bleak customer experience.
Tips To Improve The Order Management Process
Identify The Problem
You need to find and locate the pain points of your business and optimise that process. Whether it is a problem in the inventory or customer support, there needs to be a finger on the pulse. Analyse the data, talk to your employees, take customer feedback, hire a consultant, and do what you need to locate and fix your problem in order management.
Automate, Automate, Automate
The future is coming. Sooner than you think. Quoting ‘The Adam Project’ is the last thing we want to do on this blog. But it’s true. The future of ecommerce is nothing but automation. From discovery to conversion, fulfillment to customer experience, everything is getting automated. Embracing automation is the only way. Adopting automation will be the best decision for your business, let alone your order management process. Invest in an Order Management System, automate and optimise your processes and let your business reap the rewards.
Educate Your Team
Education is the mother of leadership. Educating your team will contribute towards your business’s success. When employees are well trained, they are more likely to perform better, show more engagement in the workplace and stay longer in the organisation. In the longer run, you end up creating a skilled & efficient workforce that knows the ins and outs of the business, helping boost productivity.
Improve Process Visibility
Sync your customer order system to your inventory, make the ordering process easy for the customer, and involve the customer in the ordering process. Provide contact information of the sales team to buyers, and provide detailed reports to the customer. In short, increase the process visibility of your ecommerce business to allow customers to trust your brand and equity.
Optimise Your Returns Management
Nobody likes returning products. Neither your customer nor the person in charge of business order processing. Nevertheless, it is an unavoidable and crucial part of the order management process. Make sure your business has a clear returns and refunds policy. If not, draw up a solution that provides end-to-end returns management. That means covering everything from exchanges to reverse pickups of the products to restocking the returned products in your inventory. It doesn’t end there. The customer’s refund (if any) must be processed at the earliest to avoid any further inconvenience.
In The End
The order management process is the bread and butter of your ecommerce business. You may have the best sales team in the world, but without a functional order processing system, your ecommerce business will make zilch. There will be challenges in the process. Be it inventory management, fulfillment, shipping or customer service. As an ecommerce business, you will have to overcome the challenges and optimise the process. Following the above tips will help you overcome the stickiest situations and master tackling some not-so-happy customers.
