A clean warehouse is as important to a business that ships out their product as a clean kitchen is to a restaurant. How your company and employees treat the space where you do your most important work speaks volumes about how they and you treat your business overall. When cosmetic entrepreneur Jason Wong joined ShipBob for a tour of their Fulfillment Centre warehouse, he found a workplace in perfect flow and harmony, where problems were anticipated by design, and errors were corrected before they could even happen. Redundancies are important for the continued function of any suitably complex system, and your business is not immune to the failures a few safeties and extra steps can help you avoid. Here are Jason's top three take-aways from Shipbob's own facilities.
- Double check. The most basic but important practice you or any business can undertake to solve or reduce errors is to simply check the paperwork. Making a sale? Check the paperwork to make sure you're sending it to the right customer. Receiving a shipment? Check the paperwork to make sure it's the products you ordered, in the quantity you ordered. Simply taking a few moments to double check the details of an order can save you untold hours wasted trying to fix problems that never had to exist in the first place. Regardless of the size of the company, taking the time to check the details will lead to saving wasted tie and money.
- Happy workers make for happy work. Employees who care about the company they work for, and feel like they are cared about by, will put in the extra effort that can take your service to the top of your industry. A happy and fulfilled workforce is magnitudes more efficient, effective and overall profitable. Listen to their requests, acknowledge and accept their viewpoints, and integrate solutions that make them feel not only supported, but listened to.
- Talk to your customer. Proactive communication is key to a healthy and dynamic business-customer relationship, capable of weathering any unexpected market storms, such as shipping delays due to international traffic gridlock, or product delays due to industries shutting down for much of the last year and a half. As the front line experience your consumer will have, the power is in your hands to be open and frank with them about any issues and thus retain a customer who trust your honesty, or loss them when they disappointment and frustration over delays and errors turns into anger. Taking the time to just talk to them can make a customer for life.
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