Over the course of the past 20 years, Furniture Village has grown from a small retailer to one of the largest furniture sellers in the UK, operating more than 50 stores across the country. Furniture Village pride themselves on being a family company, with a strong commitment to “doing it right” in all aspects of their business.
The Challenge:
When it came to managing deliveries to end customers, Furniture Village saw that “doing it right” had to mean providing a great experience based on trust, visibility, and transparency. Their existing routing solution didn’t give them the ability to easily provide proactive communication and real-time visibility on delivery status to their customers. They needed to upgrade their capabilities to ensure that they could send delivery updates and ETAs to customers while providing them with real-time delivery tracking from the comfort of their own devices.
The Solution:
By partnering with DispatchTrack to replace their existing routing software, Furniture Village was empowered to transform the delivery experience for their customers. The DispatchTrack solution enabled:
- Delivery notifications at every stage of the process, from schedule confirmations before the day of delivery to AI-powered ETA estimates.
- Automated “route start” notifications when drivers begin their route
- Live customer order tracking via a branded portal that showed delivery status, truck location, ETA, and other useful data
- Proof of delivery via the driver mobile application enabled pictures, signatures, and notes captured by drivers, as well as automated delivery confirmations once complete.
By offering a suite of customer communication and last mile visibility tools, DispatchTrack has given Furniture Village the capabilities they needed to provide a delivery experience for customers that lives up to their lofty standards—one that inspires trust and confidence by giving customers full transparency into how their orders are being fulfilled.
The Results:
By upgrading their customer communications and providing real-time visibility, Furniture Village was able to offer both in-store shoppers and online buyers transparency into their deliveries and an experience that inspires trust and customer loyalty.
Post delivery care, driver support, and photographic proof are particularly important for big and bulky deliveries such as furniture and Furniture Village have found the data captured at the point of delivery by drivers is invaluable for the post delivery care team. Drivers report any issues through a driver care line, enabling the team to proactively contact customers where an item arrived damaged to help resolve the matter before it has the chance to escalate. The photographic proof of the delivered item in situ has also helped provide clarity in customer disputes by showing whether the damage was there when delivered or happened subsequently.
By uplifting their delivery management in this way, Furniture Village has improved their customer service and reliability, with 98% of deliveries arriving at the estimated ETA.
