Convey was founded in 2013 because we were working in transportation, and it felt like our industry had been relatively unchanged during a time of great digital evolution. The Information Age has brought much of the world’s knowledge to our fingertips and made it very easy to find the perfect solution to almost every problem. However, every physical purchase still has to make a journey that frequently crosses the globe. For whatever reason, the last part of that journey is usually the most expensive and full of errors. So we set out to change that.

Our mission has been to take that information revolution that has changed so much of the world and enable businesses to make customer deliveries amazing through better data, better collaboration and communication, and better tools. In 2018, we made more progress than ever in our mission. Here is a quick recap.

Better Data That’s Easier to Find

One of the big challenges of the last mile is that a lot of the important data lives in many different places in many different formats: Order Management Systems, Transportation Management Systems, ERP Software, CRM System, and more that resides in various shipper, partner, 3PL, cloud, or carrier networks.

This makes it very difficult to quickly and effectively answer customer questions when they inevitably arise. This year we worked very hard to improve everything about our data.

• We added 28 new carrier integrations to collect their shipment data
• We increased the frequency at which we collect data updates
• We put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into data quality and reliability - greatly helped by having far more data points than ever before as we now collect more fields from more carrier and shipper systems and normalize the data across them all.
• We improved the performance and flexibility of our search engine so you can find any order instantly using almost any part of any identifier.

Automating Excellent Customer Experience

Branded tracking pages that provide a consistent experience for every order are just the beginning.  Convey monitored over 116M shipments this year, and customers checked the tracking pages 3.4 times each on average. Customers want more information all the time, so we made it easier to get them information by automating subscriptions from existing customer preferences. We also added local language support for everything, accessibility features, more flexible marketing or educational content spaces, and the ability to add Proof of Delivery photos to show delivery when customers can’t answer the door.

We also provided ways to for customers to control their delivery experience - like our Delivery Appointment Scheduling.

Communicate and Collaborate Like Never Before

Both shippers and carriers spend a lot of time in spreadsheets and email.  Convey has moved all the necessary data out of spreadsheets into our platform, and our next step is to take all the communication and combine it in the same place.  It’s now easy to leave a message for your teammates, contact a carrier, or alert a customer - and the message is captured in Convey as part of the Shipment history as well as transmitted via the preferred email, text or other channel.

We also added the ability to communicate more richly in email - if that is the preferred method with your carrier.  Convey now sends emails from our platforms to the correct carrier that automatically includes all the relevant shipment information and makes it easy to select a reason and add notes in a few seconds.  You can also add and display any attachments. All email responses are captured in Convey as well.

Much more coming on this in a minute...

Insights to Accelerate

With over 150 million shipments tracked this year across nearly 120 different carriers, Convey has built a library of delivery performance benchmarks like nowhere else in the industry. This year we started to work with our largest customers to apply these insights to bigger problems around network design and operational efficiency.  We’ve logged tremendous savings in shipping costs, call center activity reduction, issue resolution time, while also improving delivery performance.

We have worked with some of the world’s top retailers to analyze their last mile shipping lanes by service level to make decisions around inventory localization. We have worked with others around transit day and On Time Rate benchmarks across 10 or more carriers to help understand the differences in reporting and establish standards and SLAs. We have worked with Carrier partners to build automated delivery scheduling interfaces to remove a lot of the tedious and error prone work that can actually slow deliveries down.

Proactively Tackling Exceptions

In 2018, Convey customers resolved 3.5x more exceptions than ever before - largely for freight shipments. What’s even better is that a large number of these exceptions were resolved during the shipment  - minimizing the customer impact.  For example, with Convey tools, a Carrier can raise an exception for a damaged item or incorrect address when they receive a shipment.  This automatically shows up in the view of the Logistics team at the shipper - who can take action to address the issue by issuing a reship, looking up the correct address in their CRM system, or reaching out to the customer for their opinion.

Proactively resolving exceptions saves money for both carriers and shippers because it reduces delivery attempts, returns, and results in happier customers. Grove Collaborative was able to save $65 per damaged shipment it could resolve before it was delivered.  It really is a win-win-win and we want to keep this happening.

Joining Forces with Other Leaders

The last mile is the most complex part of a product’s journey, and it is getting more complicated as customers add more ways to access their products - pop-up shops, marketplaces, dropshipping and more. In order to solve more problems, we launched our Partner program and joined forces with other teams that are changing the industry. This allows us to extend visibility into Fulfillment activities, inventory management, pricing, and beyond.

Partners so far:

What’s Next?

In 2019, we have even bigger goals.  This year will be about leveling up the last mile ecosystem so every customer can gain access to the best possible delivery experience and create that Amazon-like delivery every time.  

First, we are bringing a lot more partners into our efforts in major ways:

• More shipment data and more partner integrations
• More carriers using Convey to collaborate on exception resolution in real time in one place
• Automating experiences around shipment issues like Home Delivery Appointment Scheduling

Second, we will be focused on creating a collaborative environment that uses modern tools and communications to communicate, resolve, and track issues faster and proactively. We are bringing best-in-class workflow optimization capabilities you are used to in software like Zendesk to Deliveries.  This not only improves efficiencies in response and resolution times, but it also is the first time carriers and shippers will be able to track the amount of effort that goes into exception resolution in a proactive way so they can use that data to improve operations. 

Last, but not least, we will be spending a lot of time building insights and analytics.  We have over 1 billion shipment events in our platform, and we have learned a lot about what the best last mile networks look like.  We are excited to share those lessons with our customers and help them improve and establish their competitive advantage in delivery experience.