5 Holiday Season Fulfillment Tips

It’s time to start planning for your fulfillment this holiday season. There are many things to consider when a large number of orders are expected for the holidays. As always it will be a chaotic time, but with the right planning you can keep your customers happy this holiday season. After all, you want them to continue to buy from you even when the holidays are over.

Check out these top 5 holiday fulfillment tips:

1. Inventory – Make sure that your inventory is fully stocked. With supply chain issues that can be a problem, so get that inventory up now. You can always have a sale in January if you need to shed extra inventory, but you can’t ship and item that you don’t have in stock when someone places an order.
2. Supplies – You need to stock up on cartons, dunnage, bubble wrap, tape and any other supplies you need. You can’t run out of these supplies or you won’t be able to ship out your orders. Last year we saw a huge deficit in cartons, so stock up now before you find out that you can’t get any when you need them.
3. Customer service – You need to provide great customer service. This means that you are clearly communicating with customers about their order status and sending tracking numbers as soon as their items ship. If there is a problem be out in front of it and let your customers know how you can help fix it.
4. Shipping Deadlines – Make sure you know and provide to your customers the final deadlines for holiday shipping. As long as you communicate this before someone purchases, they will have realistic expectations on their orders.
5. Returns – Make your return process easy by providing return labels with your outgoing shipments. This will make it less time consuming to generate a return label after a complaint call.

By preparing for holiday fulfillment ahead of time you will save yourself some headaches down the line. You should also check your website and make sure that everything is functioning properly before the holiday rush. If some customer orders are delayed due to weather or other issues, make sure to let the customers know right away. The better you are at communicating the more satisfied your customers will be.

If you know you will have more orders than you can handle, there are two options. The first is to hire some temporary help to get you through peak periods. The second is to outsource your fulfillment to a fulfillment center like Eye/Comm. We can help you get all your shipments out on time and correctly. Ready to get started? Contact us today! We are glad to help!