What if your shipment is suddenly expedited?
At a very high level - how do we get a shipping cost? While taking a dive in time, it seems that in the beginning there were predefined routes with fixed costs from origin to destination. But with growing needs of the customer things have changed. For example, some do not need the cargo as quick as others but would like a cost incentive, while there might be a segment that does not care about the cost but need a quick delivery. There are people who need a stretched time to bring in the shipment which in-turn needs a stretched cut-off period. There are numerous such needs which the shipping industry has beautifully catered to keep up with the "just in time" theme.
However we humans have no limits and so does the competition. I was thinking what else could be done in current situation where the requirement driven services are almost exhausted. Going by the basic human psychology that any reward, gift or opportunity that we get unexpected out of the blue gives us immense pleasure - makes me think the following:
There are always back to back ships touching at least some common destinations in its journey. For example two ships ABC and DEF might depart from Los Angles for Kaohsiung, Taiwan and Yokohama, Japan touching Singapore in their voyage. Now we know that the cut-off for a departing ship to accept new containers ends way before the ship actually departs. Practically there are some slots in the departing ships that do not fill up due to some reason, such as the shipper was not able to bring the shipment in time.
For sake of understanding let us assume the ship departs from Los Angles. Now if there is any shipment that is received in Los Angles for Kaohsiung for a future ship DEF and this departing ship ABC actually touches Singapore in its journey - then this container might be accommodated in ABC itself. This subsequently means that the shipment will reach the destination earlier than expected. The customer might be given a choice to improve his shipment delivery date. This might work as an incentive that will strengthen the customer feel-good factor. The point is this will make one equally happy just as a person with economy ticket suddenly getting a seat in Business class becomes elated.
Implementing this might have below challenges:
1. Developing an intelligent automatic system to identify candidate slots. The system has to be highly accurate as the service associated is completely proactive.
2. Developing a tight process work flow to take care of the below-
a. Downstream system changes that will be required due to change in schedule.
b. Legal issues needs to identified and addressed.
c. Consignee side impact needs to be identified and addressed.
3. Considering the narrow time window the notification - approval is best suited by mobile applications. Hence it calls for a far advanced security.
4. Media and advertising focus to highlight the incentive
5. As any other strategy it is also not expected to have 100% acceptance. Hence an additional "customer representative" module needs to introduce for customers who tend to opt out. The objective is to keep away the non-participating customers for future notifications so as to prevent any negative impression.
Having weighed the challenges this fictitious idea, if properly shaped into reality, will definitely help to create an impact on a large customer base. What do you say?
