Is that one worth driving to?
A customer rings from the next village. It is a small order. Do you deliver there? Last week someone said yes, last month someone said only over a certain amount, and the website says you deliver to anyone within a few miles, measured from who knows where. You say yes because you do not want to lose them. The driver is gone for forty minutes, three other orders wait, and the fee you charged was the same as for the street round the corner.
At the door, another customer disputes the delivery charge because the person on the phone said it was free. Your website says one thing, the leaflet says another, and the staff say a third.
Why delivery rules end up improvised
Delivery rules for your own drivers were probably set once, as a radius and a flat fee, when you had one driver and a smaller area. Over time you started delivering further, added minimum orders for some places, changed fees on busy nights. None of that was written down in one place. It lives in the heads of the people who answer the phone, and in whatever setting the website builder offered, which is usually a simple radius that ignores roads, rivers and the dual carriageway that makes a nearby estate a long drive.
Because the rules are not written down, they cannot be applied consistently, and they cannot be measured. You do not know whether the far zone makes or loses money.
The cost of improvised delivery rules
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Same fee for near and far | Long drops subsidised by short ones |
| Minimums decided on the phone | Inconsistent answers and arguments at the door |
| Simple radius on the website | Orders accepted from places that are slow to reach |
| No zone in the data | No way to see which areas are worth serving |
| Same times quoted everywhere | Far customers told times the driver cannot meet |
Delivery zones drawn on a map
- We draw your delivery zones with you on a map, following real roads and boundaries rather than a circle, using postcodes or drawn shapes.
- Each zone has its own delivery fee, minimum order, extra delivery time and hours, for example a far zone that only runs until nine.
- Your website checks the customer's address as they start ordering and applies the zone's rules, or tells them politely you do not deliver there and offers collection.
- Phone orders use the same lookup, so the counter sees the fee, minimum and time the moment the address is entered, rather than deciding on the spot.
- Driver tickets and the dispatch screen show the zone, so far drops can be grouped together.
- A report shows orders, sales and delivery time by zone, so you can decide whether to keep, reprice or drop a zone.
Delivery app orders delivered by the app's riders follow the app's own rules, which you set in their portals. This is for the deliveries you make yourself.
A normal night with zones in place
The caller from the next village is found in the outer zone. The screen shows the minimum order and the fee, and the counter reads them out. The customer adds a side to reach the minimum. The website tells an out-of-area customer at the start, not after they have filled a basket. At the end of the month you can see that one zone is barely used and costs a lot of driver time, and you decide what to do about it with facts in front of you.
- Fees and minimums applied the same way on every order
- No arguments about what someone promised on the phone
- Realistic times for far customers
- Zone figures to decide where delivery is worth it
Is your delivery area set like this?
- Staff decide delivery fees or minimums on the phone.
- Your website uses a simple distance radius.
- Customers dispute delivery charges at the door.
- Drivers spend a long time on low-value far-away drops.
- You do not know which areas your delivery orders come from.