Package theft can be a serious problem for small businesses. While you might have legal protection that ensures you don’t legally have to replace stolen packages, you can be sure that customers who routinely have a problem with porch pirates will likely move their business to a competitor. What can you do to minimize package theft for your customers? Here are some ideas.
Do You Need to Focus on Stopping Package Theft in the First Place?
Before you move forward with these methods, take a second to ensure that this will actually benefit your business. You don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on methods to avoid porch pirates if you’re not dealing with the issue in the first place, after all.
Although it’s good to be proactive and avoid porch pirate concerns before they occur, certain types of companies typically need more protection from porch pirates. Make moves toward minimizing package theft if your company sells extremely expensive items, if you’re delivering anything without shipping labels, or if you’re delivering in areas that tend to have higher rates of porch pirates.
3 Simple Steps for Minimizing Package Theft
What can your company concretely do to minimize package theft? Here are three of the best steps your company can take to ensure that you avoid package theft before it happens.
- Focus on Customer Feedback
You should always be focusing on customer feedback whenever possible. This is true when it comes to delivery and when it comes to other problems. Customer feedback is a crucial element of making sure you know that you’re doing your job right. Consider reaching out to your last few hundred customers and requesting an answer to a survey that can help you understand whether customers themselves are worried about package theft. You can also ask questions about why your customers like or dislike certain delivery services.
- Utilize More Than One Solution
There are plenty of potential solutions that you can utilize to avoid package theft. It’s a good idea not to rely just on one solution, but instead to consider multiple solutions. Here are a few of the ideas you might want to consider:
- Don’t use packaging that reveals the contents of the package.
- Offer the option for customers to pick up their packages from a more secure location in the area.
- Use GPS tracking for certain shipments, especially high-cost ones.
- Offer insurance coverage as an add-on.
Whether you choose any of these ideas or you brainstorm your own, redundancy is typically a positive when it comes to avoiding theft.
- Run Pilot Tests Before Implementing Solutions
Don’t just choose a solution and implement it across the board. Some solutions may look great on paper but play out less optimally than you would like. Instead, run pilot tests. Implement certain solutions for a small number of customers, then ask for their response regarding those solutions. If they love it and it reduces your risk, you can move forward with implementing the solutions across your entire business.
Conclusion
Package theft may be a huge problem for small businesses, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re able to put some security measures into play, you can substantially reduce the number of theft incidents you’re met with. Use these ideas to move forward with your package safety and security measures, no matter what you’re delivering.
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