Top 11 Must-Have Features in Your Courier Dispatch Software

What is Courier Dispatch Software?

Courier dispatch software is primarily a specialized system built to optimize and streamline the operations of courier as well as delivery services. It’s synonymous to the computer brain that controls order entry, delivery confirmation and shipment tracking - it manages everything.

Courier management software increases productivity and beats out the competition. Not to forget, you can easily manage all your deliveries and simultaneously offer the best services to your customers. The beauty of courier dispatch software is its scalability. So, if you are taking baby steps, you don’t need to pay for enterprise-level features that you don’t require at the initial stage - just scale up, when you need to.

How Courier Complete Dispatch Software Helps Businesses Thrive?

Regardless of business nature and size – every company has some specific “pain points” that need to be addressed. Here’s a rundown of some common challenges for specific verticals and how courier dispatch software can help:

Food Delivery

Challenge 1:
In the food delivery market, couriers need to notify users with real-time notifications about their order delivery status, including the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival).
Challenge 2:
Did you know? The real handoff of food-to-customer - which averages 1 to 5 minutes - significantly impacts profit. Therefore, partner companies must expedite handoffs if they want to reap profits.
Solution:
The best courier dispatch software consists of real-time tracking information that customers can easily view from their mobile devices, ensuring customers are aware of their order status. And because the software notifies customers about their order deliveries, they’re prepared to meet the courier at their doorstep – that means quicker handoffs.

Pharmacy and Medical Supply Delivery

Challenge 1:
The delivery partners that deliver medicines and medical supplies must ensure sensitive products, like lab specimens or drugs that require refrigeration are transferred safely.
Challenge 2:
Deliveries of crucial medications must be delivered on time, as any minute delays can seriously affect customer health.
Challenge 3:
People getting controlled substances must sign for their medications, but in some scenarios they may be too ill to meet with a courier upon delivery.
Solution:
Courier dispatch software can seamlessly route any medical supplies that need refrigeration to climate-controlled vehicles. Here, real-time tracking information helps customers or their authorized representatives see that deliveries are meeting their ETA.
Therefore, couriers using a dispatch can collect a contactless signature upon delivery, meaning customers don’t require to meet the drivers physically.

Alcohol Delivery

Challenge:
The delivery partner must be able to validate a customer’s age upon delivery and also can document it.
Solution:
Couriers who are always in a chop chop might not always be diligent about verifying a customer’s identity, but courier dispatch software can easily make ID verification a must-needed step in the delivery process. Using a trusted courier dispatch solution, delivery partners can scan the barcode or use optical character recognition to verify the ID and attach it to the delivery record. This will create an audit-ready proof that the customer was of legal drinking age when they receive their alcohol delivery.

Cannabis Delivery

Challenge:
Courier companies should make sure they adhere to cannabis delivery laws, which often varies from countries and state to state.
Solution:
Your courier dispatch solution can notify you about compliance issues. For instance, in California the dollar value of cannabis product per delivery vehicle is limited, thus the software can easily keep a track of the total value of products assigned to each driver to meet delivery compliance.

Top 11 Key Features of Courier Management Software

Courier management software is like a control tower for delivery operations. It’s armored with numerous functionalities to help businesses manage various aspects of their operations. Let’s explore them one by one.

1Multi-carrier Integration

One of the stand-out features of courier dispatch software that curate it a must-have solution for businesses is its multi-carrier integration. This feature is pre-integrated that makes it a lot easier for brands to go live with any courier service in minimal time. All the delivery businesses you work with can be easily integrated with a reliable dispatch solution.
Whether you are an entrepreneur or an established business owner looking to multiple courier partners easily, going for a courier dispatch solution is your best bet. It centralizes all information on a single dashboard and simultaneously manages the entire process without any hassles. This also helps you keep track of moving stock which is crucial to inventory management.

2Smarter Delivery Allocation

Undoubtedly, every courier dispatch app comes with its own USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Although, some are amazing at express deliveries, while some are top choice for minimizing RTO% (Return-To-Origin). On the contrary, a handful of logistics partners are efficient in managing time-sensitive deliveries. A courier dispatch solution is the ideal mechanism for enhancing efficiency when it comes to delivery scheduling and maintaining on-time delivery prices.
This is why it’s crucial and advisable to opt for a courier delivery system that is efficient in managing specific shipments. However, you don’t need to stress and invest time to identify the best courier dispatch system for your deliveries. The smart courier allocation engine offered by these solutions makes the process a lot easier.
Plus, it offers a centralized dashboard, where you can easily define parameters and priorities. Considering that, it’ll extract the most suitable carrier so you easily fulfil the shipment in the best way and improve delivery efficiency.

3Automated Order Process

Dispatch order management is an art form and an inevitable aspect of courier management. Thus, when it comes to managing a behemoth amount of orders, the manual order-creation process would be a challenge. And, this would not just be time-consuming but also prone to errors. You may end up creating multiple shipping labels consisting of the same consignment numbers or putting the wrong information on the shipping labels.
Fortunately, courier dispatch software brings the entire ordering process like bulk shipping label generation, producing AWB numbers on autopilot. As an outcome, you can easily dispatch the orders and speed up the fulfillment journey, ensuring your courier operations run seamlessly - an added feather in the delivery management software.

4Optimized Delivery Routes

Have you ever thought about how some businesses successfully managed deliveries on time? Well, this is where automatic route planning comes in. In essence, this route optimization feature analyzes historical data, GPS tracking, advanced algorithms like machine learning and predictive analytics to provide optimized delivery routes.
It understands real-time variables for delivery vehicles like traffic, weather, and road closures through real time driver tracking. Considering these aspects, it identifies the most optimal delivery routes for enhancing the driver performance. In nutshell, optimized routes make sure timely deliveries to the final stakeholder while saving on fuel costs.

5Heightened Order Tracking

Couriers real time tracking is a key metric to measure the efficacy of delivery performance across your business operations. These delivery management software helps in managing the end-to-end shipping journey. Also, it provides a unified portal where you get real-time tracking delivery statuses of the shipments - regardless of the number of delivery partners you’re working with and orders managed.
This further removes the tedious process of juggling delivery portals to get shipment updates. Rather, it saves you time and helps you keep track of all the parcels on the go. Besides, you can also provide shoppers with a white-labeled tracking portal, to monitor orders on their own.

6Customer Notifications

Many times, these courier delivery management systems offer push APIs that send up-to-the-minute updates every time a shipment passes through a destination. Plus, you can use this data to notify about real-time tracking to shoppers. Indeed, these tools also adopt a multichannel strategy to notify the users about their order.
You are also offered the flexibility to customize these notifications with your brand details and customers' local languages to get their attention.

7Alerts for Delivery Delays and SLA Breach

There is no bigger turn off than a slow delivery service. But delivery delays are manageable, as external factors like bad weather and high traffic affect delivery times.

The proven resort to address this situation is to provide delayed delivery alerts before the actual problem arises. You must be wondering how? All thanks to these courier management tools, as they leverage predictive analytics to identify potential bottlenecks, like SLA breaches and shipping delays.

Next, it shares automated delayed notifications to them, getting them ready for the situation. This further improves their trust in the brand and crafts your brand to stand out in the crowd.

8Dedicated Driver Panel

Many times, delivery management platforms encompass driver management panels or an app. As a result, they can easily coordinate with the drivers and track their operations. Driver performance can be tracked on a real-time basis.
For example, it provides a centralized portal to enhance driver communications. It can optimize delivery routes, automate delivery schedules based on driver availability and demands, and sends automated notifications to update about new tasks.

9Enhanced Proof Of Delivery

Those days are a thing of the past when delivery agents used to manually take customer signatures for delivery confirmation. This manual proof of delivery process was not tedious and time-consuming but difficult to track, leading to mismanaged records.
To resolve this issue at the earliest, delivery dispatch software provides an automated proof of delivery feature. With electronic delivery confirmation, courier partners can take electronic signatures, GPS location and photos as POD (Proof Of Delivery) - all through the mobile device. Delivery proofs help assure both you and your customers of the operational efficiency.

10Seamless Management of Returns

Returns are every business nightmare. Why? Because it paves way to increased operational costs, and on the other hand, it leaves a negative impact among shoppers. While, we understand returns can’t be avoided, but they can be managed in a more streamlined manner.
Therefore, collaborating with the right courier dispatch software allows you to maintain customer trust by offering efficient reverse logistics. The right courier delivery software can ensure a flawless returns management process, and a time tested courier dispatch software is all you need to achieve this. A trusted platform offers returns management to manage the process.

11Reporting & Analytics

If you are picking a modern courier dispatch software, you’ll be offered in-depth insights into every aspect of the delivery journey, consisting:

• Delivery time analytics
• Customer notification analysis
• NDR case reports
• Performance analytics

And, here’s more!
These well-defined analytics help you identify potential red flags in the process and strategize the logistics journey in a better way. Once again, courier dispatch software comes into the picture as it focuses on data driven decisions, making analytics a core part of delivery operations.

Here’s How Quickworks Simplifies Courier Management Like Never Before

While you’ll have an endless choice of courier dispatch software with a simple google search, there are a handful of solutions like Quickworks that actually delivers what they promise.

Quickworks is an AI-enabled platform that aims to be the ultimate choice for courier dispatch software. With Quickworks, you can significantly improve your logistics operations and simultaneously boost customer’s delivery experience. Again, thinking how?

Finally…

In today’s fiercely competitive landscape, where brands are vying for customer attention, having top-notch courier management software is no longer optional—it’s essential. With Quickworks, you gain access to powerful features designed to streamline your operations and elevate the customer experience. From simplifying logistics to enhancing delivery precision, it’s a tool built to empower businesses and delight shoppers.
When choosing a courier management system, take the time to evaluate its features, scalability, and affordability. Find the solution that aligns perfectly with your goals and leaves a lasting impression on your customers. Quickworks can be that game-changer for your business.

Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs)