By Jim Franco, CEO, Autologue
There is no way that these freight companies can have parts in the hands of the professional technician, or anyone who can throw the box away in 30 to 45minutes.Freight companies take two to five days to get merchandise delivered. Then what happens when it does not fit or is the wrong part?
Freight is very time-consuming and a very expensive process. Amazon reported a drop in earnings because of a large increase in freight expense.
The new trend is, if you receive a piece of merchandise from one of the large web retailers and it is the wrong one, defective, or you don’t like it, most of the time they will tell you to just keep it and they will send you another one or they will credit your account. How is this a good business model? And how long can they keep doing this just to save on freight?
Ladies and gentleman, if you are in the parts distribution business, you are in the delivery business! The good news is, we were in the delivery business before large web retailers came to fruition. So, let’s not allow them to be a disruptor in our parts business.
The service center owner says, “I have six bays and I need to get 22 cars fixed by 5 p.m. today. I can’t afford to wait for parts.” What some service centers owners and many others like him say is that they have the confidence that if something goes wrong (i.e. wrong part, defective part etc.) they know that within less than an hour the problem will be resolved. They also know there are real people on the other end of the phone or computer screen. They feel safe knowing the experienced professional counter person is there to help and has the desire and means it fix the problem.
So, what’s the answer? All we can say is that we have many successful parts distributors that recognize the opportunity to keep their existing customers and gain new ones by doing the following:
- Saturate a 15-20 mile radius with face-to-face visits, print ads and digital marketing.
- Let everyone know who they are, where they are and what they have to offer.
- Have a delivery fleet equipped with GPS tracking and signature capture.
- Provide their entire staff with the ability to take care of customers no matter what it takes.
Please take a few minutes to visit our booth No. 3071 at AAPEX in Las Vegas and view an interactive demonstration on Autologue’s eDelivery product.