For e-tailers, the challenge is enormous! So how can they best prepare for peak season, while still offering the best possible customer service? Find out in this article!
The peak season refers to a time of year when e-tailers face an unprecedented increase in orders. This period generally falls between November and December, two months strongly marked by promotional operations: Halloween, Singles Days, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and, of course, Christmas.
What is the Peak Season?
The Peak Season is a time of year when retailers, both online and physical, experience a surge in sales. This includes key moments such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holiday season.
During this season, customers are actively looking for discounted products, which requires careful planning in terms of marketing, logistics and delivery to meet the growing demand. Savvy retailers use specific strategies to maximize their profits throughout the year.
Peak Season definition
Take a behind-the-scenes look at Peak Season! Every year, this peak period is crucial for both online and physical retailers. Customers flock online and in stores to take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers.
The Peak Season is a real challenge for logistics and delivery, as products need to move quickly to meet demand. Retailers who successfully navigate this peak period can enjoy significant sales growth and customer loyalty.
Tip 1: Anticipate inventory and potential order volume
This is, of course, the first thing to bear in mind. Because no inventory means no sales. And in the case of an increase in business, you can quickly overestimate your stock, which means losing money, or underestimate it, which means missing out on sales. So it’s essential to prepare ahead of time. In concrete terms, this may involve :
- Study your statistics from previous years to try and identify trends. In this way, you’ll be able to forecast a quantity of products that would be ideal to have in stock.
- As far in advance as possible, work with your Merchandising teams to set up an inventory of products to meet peak-season demand.
During Peak Season, fortunately, good logistics technology will enable you to manage your inventory simply: real-time updates on all sales channels, receipts, restocking, replenishments, parcel returns… whatever the number of warehouses and sales channels used.
Tip 2: Prepare your teams
Obviously, your teams will need to be well prepared beforehand. Even if logistics technology saves them time, productivity and well-being, the final customer experience still depends on them. So don’t hesitate to communicate with your team, sharing with them the major objectives of peak season, and remembering to mention or clarify each person’s role and missions if necessary.
So think ahead about hiring and, above all, training new recruits if necessary! It may also be appropriate to modify working hours to absorb the peak. The workload is not linear during peak season.
Tip 3: Optimize picking paths and warehouse organization
To do this, you can :
- Opt for a classification and arrangement of references: “ABC method” or “Pareto method”.
- Make the most frequently ordered items accessible to optimize movement (e.g., next to the packing station).
- Set up preparation circuits: when picking, the order picker(s) must not pass through the same place several times.
Tip 4: Match the right preparation process to the right orders
There are many different picking methods available today. However, this does not mean that they are all optimal for the same type of order (single-product or multi-product orders, for example). For example, we recommend pick and print for single-product orders. On the other hand, we’d advise you to use beehive splitting for multi-product orders (consisting of several products).
Tip 5: Think personalization!
A 2019 FEVAD study reveals that over 50% of consumers abandon their shopping baskets if the delivery offers on offer don’t meet their expectations… Delivery charges too expensive, delivery methods too restricted, single carrier with whom the consumer has already had a bad experience… There are many examples of shopping basket abandonment directly linked to the delivery services on offer. So it’s best to offer your customers flexibility and give yourself every chance of ensuring their satisfaction. So don’t hesitate to offer several carriers with different delivery methods (home delivery, point relais, in-store delivery, with or without signature…) and delivery times (24/48h, 72h…).
Tip no. 6: Think satisfaction
To face the peak season, it is essential that you can offer your customers a unique and qualitative customer service:
- Keep your delivery promises. There’s nothing worse than a disappointed consumer!
- Offer consumers extremely accurate and reliable order tracking via SMS and/or e-mail, because if customers order more, they are also more demanding when it comes to their delivery experience.
- Take care of your packaging, and if possible, integrate the environmental aspect into your packaging! Consumers are increasingly sensitive to the efforts of brands that adopt environmentally-friendly packaging!
- Make returns easier for consumers.
Peak season: Choose the Shippingbo solution
With peak season accounting for up to 50% of annual sales for some companies, mastery of logistics is essential. Without this, it’s impossible to keep the promise of fast, high-quality delivery to the consumer, and thus to build loyalty over the longer term. In this context, we understand that people and technology are complementary key success factors:
- The workforce, rapidly trained and operational, will be able to cope with peaks in activity thanks to its know-how and experience,
- Technology, for its part, will offer working comfort, time savings, and automation of tedious and sometimes repetitive logistics processes.
Looking for a robust solution to peak season? Our experts take the time to understand your needs, so we can meet your objectives.
