The on-demand food delivery app industry is bursting at the seams with startups and competitors all trying to own a piece of what experts have predicted will be a $16.6B industry by 2023. GrubHub, UberEATS and DoorDash represent the leaders in the culinary realm of the new Delivery Economy.
Thanks in no small part to the popularity of apps like these, customers have come to expect low-cost, fast and highly transparent delivery of goods across all of their purchasing experiences — what we call the Delivery Economy. As our recent research discovered, it’s the marketing executives inside companies that are most highly aware of the new customer expectations brought on by the Delivery Economy: 76% of marketing executives said that on-demand delivery apps are influencing how customers want purchases delivered.
Smart marketing executives with their ears to the ground understand that they need to be their companies’ advocates for delivering on evolving customer experiences, ranging from real-time tracking to aerial drones tasked with delivering anything under the sun to Walgreens’s customers. Here are three steps they can take today to ensure their brands thrive in the new Delivery Economy.
Step One: Identify Key Delivery Stakeholders
When their product is lost, late or damaged, most customers don’t differentiate between the responsibilities of the delivery company, the shipping department, or the brand at large, they just want their stuff. But when one actor in the delivery process comes up short, customers develop a negative opinion of the entire brand; a problem that the marketing department will need to address. Marketers cite delivery companies (56%) and shipping departments (47%) among the top three stakeholders — either inside or outside the company — to deliver the best customer experience.
According to our research, and a clear example of why marketers need to work closely with their delivery partners, only 20% of marketing executives believe customers want real-time tracking compared to the 31% of consumers who said it’s important. As just one example among the dozens of factors that make a great delivery experience, marketing executives will need access to insights from delivery and shipping departments to learn how to achieve better minute-to-minute visibility for customers.
Step Two: Become the Company’s Delivery Champion
Eighty-five percent of marketers say that delivery is moderately to very important to their company’s overall brand and customer experience — they need to inject that wisdom into every aspect of the company’s operations. Marketers can become advocates for the tenets of the new Delivery Economy within their organizations by:
- Demonstrating the customer demand for high-quality delivery experiences
- Show the damage caused to the brand when delivery expectations are not met (50% of survey respondents said they would never buy from a brand again if it responded poorly to their complaint of bad customer service or other issues)
- Prove ROI of a great delivery experience
Step Three: Build a Roadmap for Success
To ensure their brands are keeping up with rapidly shifting customer expectations, marketers need to partner with logistics, shipping, transportation and delivery providers to address delivery on a unified front.
Striking partnerships with stakeholders across the delivery process can result in big perks for both the customer’s experience and the business’s bottom line. Marketers can leverage their shared investment in delivering a quality experience with their logistics department, for example, to drive down overall costs.
To learn more about how the Delivery Economy is impacting your brand, and what you can do to stay ahead of it, read the full report.