What Logistics Can Teach Tech About The Customer Experience
In the world of tech, especially among SaaS companies, we love to tout automation, speed and time savings. But sometimes we get so caught up in the KPIs that we forget what matters: the customer experience.
AI is reshaping everything we do, and generic chatbot answers to our customers may create a customer experience that feels transactional, scripted and overall just disconnected. It's important to keep the human element in the equation and not forget to focus on relationships.
We could learn a thing or two from the logistics industry. My customers work in drayage, the sector of trucking companies that haul freight to and from our nation's seaports. Relationships and trust are the backbone of this industry. The drayage trucking companies need to ensure their retail or manufacturing customers trust them with their goods—the products that can make or break their business—and that level of trust isn't something AI can build.
In my role as chief customer officer of a software company, I find myself straddling two interesting worlds. One is technology-focused, using every tool in the kit to be as efficient as possible, and the other encourages taking the steps and time to build and maintain relationships.
I've learned a thing or two from my logistics customers about the customer experience that I believe the technology industry and beyond can adopt to make their own businesses thrive.
Tech is centered around systems and performance. Technology—and the problems it solves—is often approached as something to optimize. As a result, customer service can also be treated the same way: a process to streamline, rather than a human experience that requires empathy and thoughtful engagement.
Logistics is different. The industry is high-stakes, and things often go wrong when moving freight. One wrong instruction to a truck or a typo in a delivery address, and a delayed shipment could ripple to lost sales for the customer.
The market is also cyclical. There's a saying in supply chain that we're either in a shipper's market (meaning the retailers, manufacturers and cargo owners have the upper hand) or a carrier's market (meaning the market is favoring the trucking companies).
Many believe we're currently in a shipper's market, which means trucking and logistics companies have to work extra hard to win—and keep—customers' business. Strong relationships, communicating any delays and remedying any hiccups in transport can be the difference between losing that customer over one incident versus continuing to do business with them for the long term.
For these reasons, logistics puts customer service at the very heart of its business. Case in point: A recent Gartner survey (via Supply Chain Management Review) found that 83% of supply chain leaders are being asked to improve their customer experience as part of their organization's digital business strategy.
Three Things We Can Learn From Logistics
When a customer inquiry arrives, you have two choices: Respond quickly or respond thoughtfully. Ideally, you'll do both. It's the well-crafted responses that lay the foundation for strong relationships and a great customer experience.
Logistics professionals read between the lines and respond in a way that shows they deeply understand the customer's business. They listen closely and infer concerns customers might have about long lead times or fears about handling a fragile shipment. They're not just service providers; they're partners invested in their customers' success.
Tech and other industries can do the same, making sure we know each customer's unique needs, understand how our solutions can better serve them and can sense when something isn't quite right. Even the savviest AI can't replace emotional intelligence.
I've found the most breakthrough innovations at our company come from those quiet moments when I'm listening to a customer describe their frustration with a competitor's clunky legacy system interface. I hear their words and the exhaustion in their voice stemming from manually entering the same data for hours each day, sparking new ideas for AI agent tools.
In tech, it's common for technology to be sold, followed by 30- or 60-day check-ins—and then nothing until renewal time. Support models in tech are often reactive: The customer has a problem and the company troubleshoots.
Logistics leaders foresee potential pain points before they occur. A peak shopping season might be coming up that could congest the ports. A labor strike is a possibility that would bring all movement to a halt.
This level of anticipatory service builds trust, and it's a strategy we can all learn from. Have you ever been caught off guard when a customer decided to go with a different service? Would an intermediary check-in or an anticipation of needs before renewal time have solved an issue that ultimately led the customer to shop around?
I've taken this logistics CX strategy back to my own work by setting SMART goals with my customers. We hold strategy calls to understand business objectives and then drill down into specifics to set measurable goals. It helps me feel in the know with my customers every step of the way.
In logistics, the mission is crystal clear: Get goods from point A to point B safely and on time. Success hinges on not only making that haul but ensuring that customers understand that, if something goes wrong—from a traffic jam to a popped tire—the trucking fleet leaders will do everything in their power to make things right.
Many industries have a more nebulous mission than logistics, but if we take the overarching lesson of focusing on purpose and what customers need, we can reorient our businesses to put customer service at the center.
Customers are still people. They don't remember your industry-leading stats and cycle time figures. They remember how you made them feel and how your product and service made their lives easier.
Logistics knows this and lives by it—and I think it's high time those of us in other industries take a page from this playbook.
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