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The Changing Delivery Landscape During The Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in social distancing regulations, decreased margins, customer behaviour changes, and evolved delivery practices, among other business disruptions. While the world is recuperating from the pandemic, the growing consumer demands, better customer transparency, customer behaviour changes, and the need to sell online will persist after the pandemic.

Even when the economy was flourishing before the pandemic, eCommerce brands and retailers were trying their best to keep up with the changing business needs and customer demands. With the pandemic, now everyone can see the vulnerabilities of such businesses. The extent is such where continuous supply chain sustenance and delivery operations are significant challenges.

The extent of these challenges is that many established delivery service providers had filed for bankruptcy during the pandemic. But according to the National Retail Federation’s 2020 forecast, the sales in 2021 would rise from 3.5% to 4.1% despite the dark clouds of the COVID-19 pandemic overhead. 

The changing delivery landscape

The only way out of this uncertain period is to adopt and adapt to these changes. The businesses need to analyse the current market situation, changes in the buying patterns and manage their inventory according to them.

The eCommerce industry saw a 670% rise in demand for disposable gloves with a 64% drop in apparel demand. A report by Reuters showed that 51% of shipping services felt “a lack of clarity on customer demand” to be a significant supply chain bottleneck due to the pandemic. Such small but significant niggles direct us towards rapidly evolving customer behaviour.

With the pandemic, everyone is again noticing how businesses can meet customer demands. The customers are asking questions like: Is it possible to deliver essentials within a day? Is your staff maintaining hygienic working conditions? Do you specialise in contactless deliveries? Do you have online payment options? Can your final-mile operations adjust some last-minute customer demands? The way a business deals and answers these customer queries directly impacts customer loyalty and, thus, how much revenue you earn. But even though customers are demanding at the moment, they do understand some delays due to the ongoing pandemic. 

Repercussions of customer demands

The changing customer demands and the delivery ways aren’t the only things changing the delivery landscape. There is much more going on; Businesses reevaluating their carrier strategy is one such instance. After this, retailers had to negotiate costs with carriers since their operations margin is much tighter now. Others might consider looking for a different carrier depending upon their current supply and service status.

The ongoing trend of providing services and products online will continue and grow in the future. It will put traditional brick-and-mortar stores out of business, and the owners will have to adapt so customers can still access their stores. 

Concluding note

The changing landscape of delivery during the pandemic will shape the future. As more and more businesses shift their services to online platforms, the delivery mechanism is steadily catching up with the demands. The current situation is also attracting online cyber threats that hamper businesses and their operations. One way for these businesses to prevent cyber attacks and continue their operations is to install cybersecurity measures like identity verification. Companies like iDenfy offer such ID verification solutions that help enterprises ascertain their customer’s ID. You can find out more details on www.idenfy.com.

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