Raising the Bar on Customer Service in the Supply Chain

Trucking is a high-touch business. Your customers up and down the supply chain must know where their shipments are and when they will arrive or be picked up, among other critical data points along the way.

Keeping your customers informed when they want to be and how they want to be requires answering — even anticipating — their queries quickly and efficiently, whether with email, text, various high-tech avenues, and even the good old telephone.

A study by DDC Freight Process Outsourcing, a provider of front- and back-office solutions to trucking and logistics firms, recently delved into customer service in the supply chain. The Evergreen, Colorado-based company surveyed key stakeholders, including shippers, carriers, third-party logistics providers, freight brokers, and other players on their approach to customer service.

As the study’s authors put it, your customer service team is your “primary touchpoint.” Customers are “looking for quick answers, responsive agents, omnichannel support, and convenient hours across the board.” And what customers experience will color their overall impression of your organization.

The study found that the ongoing shortage of customer service workers is a significant concern to companies that need to scale up.

“Customer support expectations were already rising before 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this shift,” the study report. What’s more, these expectations meant customer service teams had to raise the bar for customer care. “Providing excellent customer service is vital to a positive brand reputation and customer retention.”

Survey Finds Areas for Improving Customer Service in Logistics

Eye-opening is the finding that most companies provide only two primary support channels: phone and email. That’s despite the growing popularity of live chat, chatbots, self-service portals, and other high-tech methods. Some 88% of the respondent firms provide phone support and about 90% email support. Only about 22% and 7% offer live chat and chatbots, respectively.

Because many modern supply chains are global, “seamless support [is required] across continents, time zones, languages, and regulatory frameworks. This can be a hurdle for companies whose customer care teams are on the small side, especially if they’re centralized in one location.”

The survey found that “customer expectations” is the most common customer service issue, with 55% of respondents regarding it as a challenge. That makes sense given that factors such as response time, available support channels, and time to resolution can result in failing to meet customer expectations.

You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure

Yet there’s another shocker: Some companies aren’t even tracking key performance indicators — including those they deem important, such as customer retention, first-contact resolution, and cost per resolution.

“One significant customer-care gap uncovered by this survey pertains to measuring support performance,” the authors point out. “Thirty-five percent of respondents said their companies don’t track the quality of their customer support.”

When asked why, responses from carriers include examples such as:

• Technology has not been instituted to measure this area yet.
• We just don’t have anything set up to do that.
• Unsure on how to best measure.
• We handle any situation as it occurs.

And size matters. The survey showed that the average number of support channels tends to increase as the size of the customer support staff increases. While the overall average number of channels is about three, teams of over 75 agents offer an average of 4.5 channels.

In the same vein, larger customer support teams are more likely to offer 24/7 support. About 58% of teams with more than 75 agents provide 24/7 support, compared to 29% for those with 1-25 agents. Still, about 57% of teams do not offer 24/7 support.

The report recommends strategies to improve customer experience:

• Track/analyze customer-support KPIs
• Offer more customer-support channels
• Provide 24/7 multilingual support
• Incorporate automation and AI
• Consider outsourcing for scale.
• Improve transparency/visibility.
• Regularly train staff.