How Smart Lockers Optimize E-commerce Order Fulfillment

Many HVAC customers love the speed, convenience, and control of digital ordering, whether that’s through a distributor’s mobile app, website or by text. And distributors are adopting new technologies at rapid speed to increase efficiencies for both external and internal stakeholders. It’s no wonder e-commerce is expected to grow to 24% of all U.S. B2B sales by 2027. After all, customers have discovered it’s easy, efficient, and saves time.

But do those same customers enjoy picking up their order from the customer service desk? Sure, the employees are friendly and are great at providing technical support or solving unique problems. But if the counter has a line, it slows customers down.

Sometimes, it’s not possible for the customer to get there during regular business hours. Maybe they worked late and need to get an early start in the morning. Sometimes, the product they need is too big or too valuable to hide outside for after-hours pickup, or the branch is unable to stay open for a late or early pickup.

A fast pickup alternative

Those are just a few of the reasons why many leading distributors now use smart order pickup lockers and smart pickup cages for order pickup. The simplicity of just scanning or entering a code when they arrive to retrieve an order has made these solutions widely popular across many industries.

Johnstone Supply NJ uses smart pickup lockers to reduce lines at the service counter and help customers save time. Branch Manager Kevin Tilton said, “We think it’s great to be able to put the order outside and leave it in the locker. The customer can come pick up their items and be in and out of the parking lot in 90 seconds and then be on their way.”

Smart lockers and cages are a logical extension of the technologies leading wholesale distributors already use to manage orders. They provide real-time visibility of order fulfillment processes and invaluable data for understanding the operation as well as metrics for continuous improvement. When installed outside or in an accessible vestibule or secure area of their building, it also extends operational hours from the common “8:30 – 4:00” to 24/7/365 without the labor usually required.

Completing the digital chain of custody

By replacing manual order fulfilment processes with automation, smart pickup solutions generate new data that helps businesses fill in the data blind spots that occur when an order is simply picked up at the service desk.

The lockers and cages can easily be integrated with a company’s existing ERP/CRM software, e-commerce site, communication platform, or mobile app. This connection creates a seamless “chain of custody” for digital orders, allowing them to be tracked at various points in the order fulfillment process: from the time the customer places the order, to when the associate delivers it to the locker or cage, and to the end of the fulfillment processes when the customer or courier picks it up.

As e-commerce orders grow, understanding the cost to manage them becomes even more important. With smart pickup lockers, businesses gain new operational data they can use to measure the efficiency of their order fulfillment processes, including:

• What time the order came in

• When it was placed in the locker

• How long the order was in the locker (its dwell time)

• What time the order was picked up

Together, these data points can provide valuable insights and point to opportunities to optimize workflows, improve locker utilization, provide additional employee training, and more.

A win for customers, too

Remember, some of the most valuable customers are also the busiest, and they appreciate when distributors introduce ways to help them save time. Their hours don’t always match the store’s. And when they need certain items urgently, an option to “scan and go” for the order pickup saves time.

When busy customers need technical or other support, they appreciate a faster experience due to less crowding and wait time at the counter. And when they discover that picking up from a smart locker or cage is easy, reliable, and saves them time, they’ll choose it again the next time.