Giving all your product fulfillment and customer services to a 3PL (third-party logistics) company is the next big thing. To use the other similar services, it is important for you to manage these manufacturing processes and eliminate all errors and defects in order to achieve high-quality services at an affordable price.
Quality and productivity are measured in terms of products shipped, hours invested etc. When all these executed in a good manner, the following 8 ways will make your 3PL partnership, even more, stronger and cost-effective as a strategic planning.
Spirit of the Partnership
The contract you are going to establish will contain the requirements of your company, service and costs levels. While publishing the contract is important, the spirit of being a real partner is equally very important.
In the relationship between supplier and client, the word “partner” is most frequently used. Being a good partner has so many challenges which can go even further. It gives plenty of opportunities for businesses to discuss their future plans, requirements for the future, and strategy for further growth helps in establishing the true relationship. With this partnership you can you can easily take advantage of the latest technology, promotional approaches, and new programming languages for the new clients.
Here are the 8 ways to get more productivity out of your 3PL partner.
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Communicate Your Promotion Plans
Many Ecommerce and promotional businesses nowadays are promoting their brand in a good way. Seasonal and weekly peak promotions can occur in the same timeframe. Communicating about your promotional plans 90 days before will completely lock down your first 30 days. There are so many companies who are not getting good forecasting of both sales and order, thus leaving the 3PL partner to find the labor which can solve all your problems.
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Liquidating Overflow of Stocks
If you are not keeping your stocks lean, you will have to pay a lot for selling your product slowly at 3PL. Some people believe that some companies are better financially to mark down their merchandise when it becomes clear that your product is not selling, recovering costs, and earning more profit margin.
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Prepare Document About Company Policies and Procedures
You should specify all your policies related to customer services in writing, plus handling calls of various clients as well. Other areas which are covered include a presentation to the merchandise about outbound customer orders, quality control services assurance, vendor compliance, and return policies and inspection criteria, to name a few.
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Monitoring Customer Calls on a Regular Basis
If your 3PL client is handling the contact center of your business, you should take your time to listen to them on a regular basis to their representative sample calls. It is one of the best practices for merchandising and marketing and gets to know about what customers think about your products and services.
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Visiting Your 3PL Client Regularly
Our years of experience says that companies who regularly visit their 3PL clients have a better chance of having a strong relationship and better service. For example, to enhance the relationship with your existing clients even further, providing them the questionnaire to know about the service of your product is important to know what your customers are looking for in the future product releases. Moreover, being on site helps to grow the relationship between managers and owners even further.
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Communicating About Merchandise Changes
One of the main advantages of hiring 3PL client is that you will be able to concentrate more on merchandising and marketing, leaving the heavy logistics execution to them. This can be huge for increased productivity and creativity, leading to more sales and response rates.
Sometimes big brands also need to tweak their business operations for the fulfillment of their sales target. Moreover, these changes also affect contract service training requirements.
Conclusion
When you will implement these 7 practices in the best way for your organization for gaining productivity and quality, both in short term and long term. If you have any query, please contact ProQC: we are one of the leading third party inspection company.