Our client Alex Tan runs an e-commerce business selling small accessories such as gemstone rings and necklaces. He streams daily every 7 p.m. on Facebook and Instagram Live and garners a view count of 50 – 100 viewers on his livestreams and has around 10,000 followers on Facebook alone. As more and more people start to indulge themselves in livestreams to shop for items and release stress, Alex’s business also boomed with more sales over time.
Running a small online business with the help of his family members, Alex decided to cut costs by using the family truck to do deliveries, instead of outsourcing to third-party logistics companies. Alex would spend 1 hour planning his deliveries daily after picking and packing the items from the warehouse and communicating via WhatsApp to inform his recipients of incoming deliveries each time.
Deliveries on the road in the city
We spoke to Alex who now uses uRoute to create delivery schedules and plan routes for more than a hundred customers who frequent his livestream.
Now with uRoute, I can upload the excel sheet that I use to record customers’ delivery details directly into the system, and all my jobs will be optimized to generate a route based on delivery time and distance.”
He explained that he previously only relied on manually planning out his route by writing down his delivery details on a notepad and manually keying each address into his Google Maps app, which led to time wasted on planning. He also often ended up going in circles to complete his deliveries.
uRoute helps Alex to make each delivery drop off as quick as possible, by intelligently clustering nearby delivery points which leads to substantial time savings. Moreover, the in-app messaging function lets Alex send auto-generated WhatsApp delivery messages to his customers whilst optimizing his route. Choosing uRoute was the right choice, Alex remarks.
No additional overheads to get optimized routes
At first, Alex was hesitant to try out the software, but his delivery volume was getting too much to handle, and he needed a way to organize his time and create a cost-effective delivery process. Our sales team reached out to his enquiry and onboarded him without a hitch. With a virtually free forever plan on uRoute, Alex could freely make use of all the essential functionalities he needed in our software without any additional overheads to his business.
With concerns on incurring additional costs out of the way, Alex explained that he signed up for uRoute in hopes of implementing a delivery system that could potentially facilitate the scaling of his business in the future. At an affordable rate of $20 per driver per month, Alex would be able to upgrade to a Growth plan from his current free plan when he decides to expand his team.
Delivery efficiency and volume increased
The ultimate benefit to using uRoute for Alex was the delivery tracking function. After he uploads the customer details into the uRoute system, it creates a digital delivery order where his customers would be able to receive real-time email updates. After implementing uRoute, his customers were delighted to find a tracking link for each of their orders, and this increased his customer satisfaction by 75%.
I realized that I also started receiving less inquiries from customers about where their delivery is or when it would be delivered, which was my favourite part of using uRoute.”
Thanks to uRoute, Alex can now efficiently manage his delivery jobs and routes – and his sales have since shot up with more happy customers. While their delivery volume increased, the increase in efficiency with the route optimizer increased their capacity, allowing them to deliver faster.
Looking for a route optimizer to improve your fleet efficiency? Try uRoute today!
