Contactless Delivery, Its Importance, and Benefits for Enterprises

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has irrevocably altered how businesses are run, particularly enterprises that rely on physical proximity for their services. With social distancing and limited physical contact becoming the new form, there’s been a noticeable rise in the popularity of contactless delivery. Why is contactless delivery important for businesses? and, what are the benefits of contactless delivery? Let’s find out.

The Need For Contactless Deliveries

Despite many approved vaccines being produced around the world, there are new COVID-19 variants cropping up regularly, making people mindful of how they interact with others. This continued presence of the virus makes contactless deliveries the way forward since people can get things delivered to their space without having to come in contact with delivery partners. Contactless deliveries are required even more in countries with a big population and a growing appetite for on-demand businesses. Also, with massive unpredictability in terms of upcoming waves of infection, people are expected to depend on e-commerce for their needs.

Key Components Of Contactless Delivery Software

• Pickups: A successful contactless delivery starts from the pickup process. Some ways that pickups have become contactless include curbside pickups, retail stores turned fulfilment centers, and dark stores. Almost every step of the pickup process including label generation, delivery executive assignment, packing has been digitised to reduce human intervention.
• Temperature Checks: Customers want to be reassured that the delivery partner arriving at their doorstep or gate is healthy. One way to assuage their doubts is by displaying the delivery executive’s temperature on the order tracking screen. Temperature tracking is particularly important for food and grocery delivery businesses and an absolute must-have.
• Payments: Another crucial component of contactless delivery software is payments. Since customers won’t come face-to-face with the delivery executives, cash on delivery or card on delivery are no longer available. Customers should then have the option to either prepay for the order or receive a link or a QR code they can use to make payment once the delivery is complete.
• Proof of Delivery: In a contactless world, how do delivery executives collect proof of delivery? To begin with, they can click a picture of the delivered goods and share it with the customer via the booking app. Another option for digital proof of delivery is an OTP-based option.

Benefits of Contactless Deliveries

• Customer Goodwill: In the long run, there’s nothing quite as important as winning customer goodwill and ensuring they return to engage with your brand again and again. In stressful times like these, it’s imperative that businesses are mindful of customer needs. Businesses that offer a hassle-free delivery experience during these times automatically enter the customers’ good books since they’re showing concern for the customers’ well-being.
• Digital Ready: Everything’s going to be digital in a couple of years and by integrating contactless delivery systems in your business, you can prepare for the digital wave that’s bound to come.
• Delivery Executive Safety: More than the customers, it’s the delivery executives who are out and about risking their lives to deliver goods. By making contactless delivery the norm, businesses can protect their delivery fleet from coming in direct contact with an infected person.
• Survival: At the end of the day, businesses need to adapt to survive the changing market scenario. Contactless delivery is the ‘it’ thing now and for a business to survive in the long run, it needs to offer contactless delivery as an option to customers.

Importance of contactless delivery

When it’s all said and done, what really matters is employee and customer safety. The virus is still amongst us and delivery and e-commerce businesses need to ensure they operate keeping this fact in mind. Outside of all its other benefits including profitability and convenience to customers, at its core, contactless delivery helps stop the spread of the virus. Since delivery executives don’t have to come in direct contact with delivery partners anymore, the chances of the virus spreading drop considerably. If not for any other reason, businesses need to offer contactless delivery to do their part in finally bringing the virus to an end.

Quick tips for businesses to ensure seamless contactless delivery

• Keep the customers aware of the fact that the delivery will be contactless. This will ensure they don’t raise a complaint when the order isn’t delivered to their hands.
• Training delivery executives in proper contactless delivery behaviour is crucial to a smooth experience. From where to place the order to how to send pictures to the customers, delivery executives need to know all the steps in the process.
• Since the package is not being handed directly to the customer, the packaging needs to be more durable than before to avoid any damages.
• If there’s no visible place to keep the packages, delivery executives should contact the customer and inform them of the fact and ask for a place where they can keep the order.

How to execute contactless delivery?

The key to implementing contactless delivery is finding the right tools. With Tookan’s delivery management solutions, you can make contactless delivery a part of your offering without any hassle. We offer custom delivery management software for a variety of on-demand businesses including food, laundry, grocery, and more. With advanced features like digital proof of delivery, multiple payment options, customer alerts and notifications to customers, and much more, you can easily set up your contactless delivery operations without having to engage the services of a third-party vendor.

Conclusion

Contactless delivery is here to stay, long after the pandemic is gone. Get with the times and make your delivery business customer’s go-to choice by offering them contactless delivery. Get in touch with the expert team at Tookan to learn more about our offerings and how we can help you achieve the perfect delivery experience.