James and James, formerly named Six Works Ltd, is an eCommerce and order fulfilment warehouse offering accurate and fast same day despatch of online orders. They warehouse, pick, pack and despatch goods to customers on behalf of retailers who are able to track their progress in real-time online. Orders are automatically retrieved by a multi-channel eCommerce fulfilment system via secure cloud servers.
Today they discuss how 3rd Party Fulfilment could make life easy for eBay Top Rated Sellers:
The New Fulfilment Requirements for eBay Top-rated Seller Status
No doubt all you top rated sellers are fully aware of the imminent new eBay standards.
New eBay TRS Standards
• A minimum returns period of 14 calendar days, using the new way of specifying your returns policy.
• 1-day or same-day dispatch.
• An express delivery option – offering delivery within 1 day.
• A free postage option.
With an option to participate in a trial to offer:
• International tracked postage service for eBay
The best fulfilment houses can help you comply straight away with no effort on your part.
The rewards from eBay for meeting these standards
From autumn 2013, if your individual listings meet these new requirements, they’ll be eligible for the following benefits:
• Improved visibility in Best Match search results.
• The new eBay Top-rated seller badge on the item page.
• 15% discount on final value fees on eBay.co.uk.
Worth a try outsourcing then?
Returns
Inevitably, some customers want to send back their purchases. Skilfully handling returns is an art. A good fulfilment house will understand the true cost of handling returns: postage costs, complementary products, customer support and rework. That is why if you are considering outsourcing its important to use a fulfilment house that put a huge amount of effort into getting orders right first time, every time.
Poorly handling returns can cost you time and money, so it is important they are dealt with efficiently and quickly. The better fulfilment houses will make returns simple: clients should be able to specify a standard procedure, This can include inspection and restocking, forwarding to the clients offices or photographing damage. Every order should have a unique order id and barcode, so if it requires specific treatment, it can be identified immediately and the return manage accordingly.
Understanding the difficulties in making sure products are returned correctly is key. If the customer is disappointed the last thing they need is complex returns procedures.The best fulfilment companies should help clients with a simple to use reverse logistics process, allowing customers to return unwanted orders quickly and easily.
1 day or same day dispatch
This really should be no problem for a modern 3PL. Choose a service that uses live order feeds and automated systems rather than batch loading of orders which can cause delays and backlogs. Consumers don’t want to wait for their orders and you should not have to wait for them to be picked and packed, The best fulfilment houses ship the same day for next day deliveries, standard and economy services.
Live order retrieval provides sight of an upsurge and prevents backlogs of orders. If the company’s software is web based additional workstations can be brought online within minutes. Staff can be can be taken from other areas with less time critical tasks to help pick and pack. Importantly a good fulfilment software system should become more efficient the more similar orders it receives due to wave picking where multiple orders are picked at the same time. Therefore the more orders for a single type of product are placed the faster the picking and packing becomes on average.
Express delivery offering one day delivery
Running down to the post office, queuing up to get there before the cut off everyday? What are you doing? you’re a seller, SELL! Buy yourself an easier life with third party fulfilment. Let them take care of picking, packing and shipping. Let the carriers come to them and pick up the parcels. Save money on storage space, packing materials, postage and courier charges and most importantly of all time.
Guess what? Consumers are demanding! Fulfilment warehouses should offer a range of domestic and worldwide delivery services to meet the needs of the most impatient customer and budget option for those who are happy to wait. When time really matters service providers should be able to have orders placed as late as 2.30pm UK time delivered to New York by 9am the next morning.
Free Postage
OK no fulfilment house is going to offer that, But there is still a bright side. A fulfilment house will always be able to gain better postage rates from carriers as they will be much larger accounts. Economy services will not be free but they will certainly be inexpensive.
Tracked international service coming soon???
• Fast and fully tracked services
• Within and outside the EU
• Competitive price
You can register your interest to take part in the first tests in the UK.
Or …….
Rather than waiting why not get the jump on other sellers and offer this service will all the features now. A third party fulfilment house will offer you competitive prices as they are better place to negotiate a better rate from the carrier.
3 Responses
3rd Party fulfillment is the way to go, but then I would say that wouldn’t I. It’s what we do all day everyday. Although, or maybe because, we are only a small company, we are able to deal with ecommerce customers with a hint of that old fashioned thing called personal service. It’s amazing how much can be solved in this world still by just picking up the phone and talking to customers. Not all sellers feel comfortable doing that, or like a couple of our clients, live on the other side of the planet. I say let sellers sell and get them to outsource the routine day to day admin. Winners all round.
Any chance you could share your web site details please Carol. Maybe just the service I need. Thanks
Should have plugged myself by saying: Find us at
http://www.McGregordispatch.co.uk