Diwali this year is expected to be nothing like what we have seen before. As per a recent report, the first week of the festive sale saw a 55% y-o-y sales growth, with $4.1 billion worth of goods sold across eCommerce platforms, as compared to $2.7 billion last year. This 52% increase makes the surge in online consumer demand quite evident. However, retailers need to be prepared to handle this surge. FarEye has been working with leading retailers to roll out significant new features and enhancements to its platform to handle the festive surge and enable retailers to meet the demand. The platform will help retailers:
• Offer more flexibility to customers- Self-service delivery slot booking, multiple payment options, deliveries at drop-off points.
• Quickly onboard new carriers to meet surge demand.
• Achieve app-based onboarding and training of freelance drivers to fulfil orders.
• Improve contactless delivery capabilities- including temperature tracking of drivers, integrations with national & international compliance apps.
• Improve order-level visibility to customers- Instant track & trace, messaging drivers, 1-click calling.
• Improve personalization and customer lifetime value- showcasing more products based on customer behaviour & preferences.
• Achieve comprehensive end-to-end visibility into the logistics operations and real-time customer feedback to take corrective action.
“From the time we launched FarEye SERVE back in March to help retailers deliver essential goods, we have not just successfully helped retailers handle scalability challenges but also have made major breakthroughs in advanced contactless capabilities. These include driver temperature tracking, compliance apps integrations & more. Retailers can now focus on customer experience while they can worry less from scalability and orchestration woes, which the platform can handle for them.” said Gaurav Srivastava, CTO & Co-Founder, FarEye.
“Customers are increasingly shifting towards an omnichannel model. They want to engage with brands that understand their preferences and are able to establish a deeper connection with them – delivery expectations, payment preferences, and lifestyle choices. In this scenario, brand experience is largely defined by its logistics journey. In an online-first world, logistics is the only actual touchpoint between the brand and its customer.” said Kushal Nahata, CEO and Co-Founder, FarEye.
Commenting on the same, Manoj Madhavan, CIO, Blue Dart said, “With the festive season in full swing, and as consumer demand rises, Blue Dart is optimistic about the foreseeable future. To ensure a safe pickup and delivery process, we pioneered the contactless delivery feature, enabling 14 digital wallets,UPI Interface (BHIM), Netbanking, Credit & Debit cards, and QR code, keeping our customers’ health and safety in mind right from the start of the pandemic enforced lockdown.
Blue Dart believes in ‘Delivering Joy’ and takes concerted efforts towards ensuring safe, reliable, and on-time deliveries always. Our partnership with FarEye and the use of its platform has helped us digitally enable many innovative processes like replacing the mobile number of customers’ incoming calls with the AWB details, digital Payment collection, live monitoring of frontline as well as providing real-time order status tracking for customers. This has brought a boost in the productivity of our people while also ensuring a superior delivery experience for the end-consumers.”
“We are already experiencing a surge in demand owing to the upcoming festive season, starting with Diwali. The volume of online shopping this year will be 2x more than 2019 and more so because CaratLane is now present in 7 metro cities. We are scaling our delivery operations to ensure we can easily manage 1000+ transactions every day in coming months. FarEye’s platform will play an important role this festive season, especially when it comes to shrinking delivery turn-around-time and enhancing customer experience,” said Raj Bala N, Supply Chain Manager, CaratLane.
Vaishali Thakkar, GM– Customer Service and Operations, Home Town, said, “As many families have started spending more time home, have transitioned to working from home and remote learning, home improvement seems to have taken the customer’s attention. We anticipate a surge in this festive season with new product lines, suppliers, and logistics partners. FarEye has helped us scale up our product delivery and post-sale processes with new distribution models and logistics partners smoothly to ensure a consistent customer experience.
Mr. Dharmin Ved, CEO, 6th Street (Apparel Group), added, “With the upcoming festival season, we expect orders to triple until the beginning of the year. This festive season will surpass the previous festival season of 2019, as most purchases by customers shifted from store to online platforms. The most important part of online shopping is not only the shopping platform but also the logistics methods that are provided to consumers. FarEye has helped us go above and beyond to deliver safely to our customers and have also enabled us to offer next day deliveries”.
