How To Improve Your Delivery ETA

Why are Delivery ETAs Inaccurate?

When we enter an address into GoogleMaps, we might feel like the arrival ETA is accurate - but is it? Not really - between finding suitable parking, walking from the vehicle to the destination, and small deviations in travel speed, with constant tweaks and updates to the estimate time of arrive the actual ETA from the start could be off easily by a minute or two. Big deal, right? Maybe not in the consumer space, but what about in delivery businesses?

A delivery company faces all of these challenges and more - GoogleMaps isn’t going to take into account things like finding a good parking spot, locating the correct parcel in the van, finding the building entrance, waiting for goods hand over and so on. That one or two minute inaccuracy might grow even more. Multiply that by 80 to 120 deliveries a day and all of a sudden the whole route is off by one or two hours.

What Impact Does this Have on a Delivery Company’s Bottom Line?

Why is this crucial to delivery companies? Delivery companies can ensure they are maximising their daily delivery capacity to drive down costs as much as possible without affecting drivers’ pay. Between 45% to 55% of delivery costs occur in the final mile - so it’s really important we get it right. So, if we have bad ETAs, what impact does that have on the business?

• Inefficiency - Various routing problems means drivers can’t deliver as much in a day as they might be able to, leading to decreased gross profit margins
• Poor customer experience - Customers rely on ETAs to plan their day. Poor ETA estimations can easily lead to failed deliveries and cost you more to deliver the goods again and which decreases customer satisfaction whlist also cause more support cases to be opened
• Driver dissatisfaction - It won’t just be the customers who suffer - delivery drivers can also feel overwhelmed or unfairly compensated. This can lead to high driver churn, which is a massive business cost bringing new talent in and getting them up to speed with your process

Improving Delivery ETAs

Now that we understand why ETAs are so important to get right we need to look at how to improve them.

Naurt provides parking and building entrance data for delivery address, right down to the individual unit. While other geocoders might try and direct drivers to the build’s roof centre, Naurt is directing them to where they actually need to go. Naurt also provides you with the distance between that parking spot and building entrance. Using all of this together, the ETA system can produce a much better estimate in that last hundred metres. Not to mention the other benefit - since drivers will be directed to where they actually need to go, the final hundred metres will be a much smoother and faster experience. The route planning tool can also benefit more generally - by knowing where drivers can park and building entrances you can optimise routes by having drivers park one and complete multiple deliveries.

In summary, ETAs are tricky to get right in the delivery space, but inaccurate ETAs can have a very detrimental impact on profits and customer experience. By levergaging Naurt’s unique ability to provide optimal parking spots and building entrances these ETA systems can be radically improved. Want to get started - sign up now on our dashboard, it’s totally free.