Late-night deliveries giving you nightmares? Photo proof of delivery can save the day
If you are ever out and about after dark, or in the early hours of the morning, you’ll know that the UK logistics network works around the clock, keeping items moving through the supply chain. Out of hours deliveries present particular challenges, especially if items are being left unattended. How do you track what’s been delivered where and how do you deal with customers querying deliveries?
Paper-based delivery processes
If you run a paper based process I’m sure you’ll be familiar with the flurry of customer calls and order discrepancies that have to be dealt with on a daily basis. Paper tickets only give you so much detail and they can often get lost or damaged on their way back to you. This makes dealing with incoming calls, and answering specific delivery questions difficult and time consuming.
Is there a better way?
In short yes! Imagine a world where you get real time notification of what deliveries have been made where, with date and location markers, and actual photographic evidence. A world where you have full visibility of delivery discrepancies and a clear picture of what’s happened during another night time delivery shift.
Functionality and benefits
All this and more can be yours if you make the move to a digital process. For example, if you are a Podfather customer making unattended deliveries, whether they be during the day or at night, you get a host of benefits designed to make the process as painless as possible, namely:
- Delivery tracking
- Digital time and location stamps at the point of delivery
- Real-time visibility of any discrepancies
- Photos of each and every completed delivery
electronic Proof of Delivery (ePOD)
This is all part of the process known as electronic proof of delivery, so a delivery process without the need for a paper ticket. It’s fast, reliable and efficient and it probably doesn’t cost as much as you think it might. Yes your drivers need a handheld device but the simplest and cheapest Android devices will normally suffice. Not all driver ePOD apps are the same, some have different functionality, for example ours also offers the ability to capture vehicle defect checks and issue customer notifications, but on the whole the feedback that we get from our drivers (and we have many many thousands of them) is that the app is intuitive and easy to use.
