Freight transportation and management cover a diverse array of services and procedures. Keeping up with performance and customer relations with shippers is critical to ensuring continued growth and success. Toward that end, a customer service scorecard is a vital tool.
Sometimes strategy adjustments are needed to ensure optimal services and performances happen daily. Relying on data-driven KPIs helps management maintain a laser focus on which shippers are right for your services. Also, data-driven customer service initiatives tend to lead to 60% more profitable businesses, according to Forbes.
What Is a Customer Service Scorecard?
The customer scorecard provides a real-time glimpse of shipper performance. The scorecard is a tool to help LSPs identify which shippers are qualified for a shipper-of-choice designation.
These innovative reports measure the shipper’s performance on many critical delivery performance KPIs, including the readiness of freight for pickup, ease of getting in and out of the yard, and more. They provide crucial data that carriers can use to understand which shippers are the most collaborative and how to use that information to plan future freight transportation partnerships accordingly.
How a Scorecard Tracks Delivery Performance KPIs
- Metric Rates – performance tracking rates over short and long periods to know whether shippers are improving or falling behind.
- Delivery Mode – level of experience with planning for certain transportation modes and carrier requirements.
- Customer Inquiries – are common questions addressed and issues resolved by your in-house team prior to a driver’s arrival?
- Outcomes – does the shipper have everything ready and in tip-top shape, and if not, what is the freight claim rate by the end-users?
- Compliance – can shippers coordinate with your drivers and expectations to meet legal requirements and laws?
The Benefits of a Customer Service Scorecard.
The customer scorecard can help carriers compare valuable data and insights effectively. You can improve smart transportation performance by using an innovative cloud TMS system and freight management partnership to enhance customer service across the board. This approach yields key benefits specifically for carriers:
- Increased accountability. Utilizing company- and industry-specific insights make it easier to maintain an up-to-date customer scorecard. This, in turn, helps carriers understand where issues arise, why processes fail, and where responsibility and accountability lie.
- Improved collaborations. Carriers who understand end-to-end processes and overall shipment lifecycles can better plan and execute delivery services. With a shareable and up-to-date scorecard, carriers can more confidently negotiate and plan accordingly.
- Better pay follow through. Because shippers are evaluated on overall performance and long-term data, the customer service scorecard becomes a valuable tool for securing optimal payment rates. Carriers can easily see who pays on time and who requires collections efforts.
- Enhance planning processes. Scorecards and delivery performance KPIs measure success in predictive planning and enhance future endeavors. This level of insight helps carriers identify potential shipper weaknesses and allows for ongoing improvement among all team members and partners.
Using innovative and automated cloud TMS system platforms makes it easier for carriers to monitor progress, track loads, and deliver more loads on time and in full. With data-backed customer service scorecards in hand, it becomes easier to identify patterns and trends that need close monitoring. This leads to enhanced logistics collaboration based on practical delivery performance KPI about the ease of working with shippers of different types and industries.
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Boost Customer Service Scorecard Use With MercuryGate
MercuryGate uses such scorecards to continuously help your team recognize what’s going right and wrong in your shipper interactions. You can learn more about them and other core TMS functions by requesting a MercuryGate demo today.
