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Modernising the shopping experience: Hybrid Shipping Solutions

In modern-day online shopping, it would be nearly impossible to find a retail business that does not have a web presence. To accommodate the public’s insatiable desire for speed and efficiency, retail establishments have added a web purchasing component to their sales mix to create a ‘best of both worlds’ offer that meets customers’ insatiable need to shop on and offline. This desire for both a hands-on and digital shopping experience has resulted in the creation of hybrid shopping solutions.

Click-and-collect

One popular hybrid offering is click-and-collect. This service enables customers to order online for in-store pick-up. Retailers around the globe are now offering customers this option as it extends greater convenience to customers by providing them with the choice to collect their parcel at a time and store location that best suits them. By driving traffic to a retail location via click-and-collect, the customer is likely to take the time to browse around the store and make additional purchases, increasing store traffic for higher revenue potential.

Pick-Up, Drop-Off (PUDO) delivery

Any type of store, such as grocery stores, convenience stores, or mom-and-pop shops can be transformed into a PUDO point for increased customer delivery, collection, and return convenience. By offering a PUDO point as a delivery and shipping option for customers, you will improve the customer experience, increase brand recognition, and cut costs by consolidating shipments to a centralised location.

Automated parcel locker solutions

While retailers around the globe are offering more hybrid delivery options to their customers, many brick-and-mortar locations are having increased difficulties meeting their day-to-day demands. This is attributed to the increasing parcel volumes arriving each day. Because many stores are utilising outdated and costly manual delivery processes while simultaneously offering new modern hybrid services, they are struggling to keep up with the online and in-store parcel demands.

Parcel lockers respond directly to modern retail challenges from increasing shipping demand by creating a robust and automated collection and return parcel process. With a parcel locker, retailers will free-up staff and employee time to refocus on in-store customer engagement and other essential responsibilities, such as backroom audits. In addition, parcel lockers can create more foot traffic to the store, generating more revenue as customers come to pick-up their item, but stay to browse.

Read the Fnac case study here.

Learn more

To find out more on how a parcel locker could benefit you, contact us today.

Download a complimentary copy of our new white paper “The Shipping Revolution” to learn more.