3PL - PTL - Last-mile

We start by understanding the closest touchpoint before an order is delivered ie last-mile.

Benefit of using 3rd party couriers (3PL, TPL, LSP, etc.) is that their infrastructure is already in place and works decently well. All you, the client, has to do is take a call on what needs to be done.

Last mile escalations are provided to clients in 2 ways:

1. NDR (Non-Delivery Report)

2. Individual case escalations by logistics service provider (referred to as LSP henceforth) or customers as well

If you want to solve last-mile for your logistics, focus on analyzing NDR and parallelly solving individual escalations raised to your team.

I will be sharing following aspects:

1. What is NDR and how to utilize it

2. Team structure and stakeholder alignments required to work on NDR

3. NDR tracker structure to derive actionable insights

4. Process improvements

NDR Report: it is a list of orders / AWB / LRN which the LSP shares with it’s client where delivery attempts have failed. This means that according to the LSP delivery was attempted but failed. You will also get a reason against the order why the delivery failed. It is ideal to get this report at least once a day depending on your nature of business. If any of this is not being provided by your LSP, you should demand for it as it is critical to align deliveries of your orders.

Working on your NDR report: following alignments are needed ensure you are successfully utilizing the NDR report and reducing delivery failures:

1. Allocate a resource to call customers and identify the actual reason for failed attempts. The RCA must be specific—“Customer not available” is useful, but “Customer denied” is not. This role needs strong communication and reasoning skills.

2. Maintain a tracker for all NDR orders with RCAs from both the LSP and your team. Build a summary view to spot patterns and ensure your team standardizes RCAs into analyzable buckets like “Unavailable,” “Not reachable,” or “Payment mode issue.”

3. Stakeholder alignment is also needed for cases your team cannot close. For example, escalate unreachable customers to outbound sales, or coordinate with finance and the LSP when payment mode changes are required. A senior resource should own these escalations and loop closures.

4. Finally, align internal and external policies based on recurring case types. This reduces NDR volume over time and should be driven by an assistant manager or above who can design long-term fixes with stakeholders.

Sample Case: If the customer wishes to pay through UPI for a COD delivery.

1. Your Last mile executive will identify this use case by calling the customer and understanding the cause of delivery failure.

2. Your TL/Sr. Executive will coordinate with the customer, finance team and LSP to get the online amount paid and adjusted against the order so that next delivery attempt is successful

3. Your AM/Manager will see if this issue is recurring at a higher frequency. If yes, he will have following options

   1. unlock online payment collection through the LSP or,

   2. raise a BRD for the product team to get a API/ product signal that when Customer pays into the company account, the collectible amount reflected to the LSP will be adjusted accordingly or,

   3. have policy alignment with internal stakeholders where customers will have multiple options to pay while booking the order. (the alignments will be unique basis your requirements)

(Whenever I am given a problem or want to understand a process, I try to derive data out of it, this helps to quantify the problem statement and provide a trajectory towards solution. Hence, trackers will be critical part of this blog)

NDR Tracker: Agenda to build this tracker – record cases and their RCA on a daily basis, record actionable for stakeholders, summarize the data to quantify the problem of delivery failures at last mile.

1. Raw Data – some of the data points included in this tracker will be Date of NDR case, Last delivery attempt date, Number of delivery attempts (to prioritize cases), RCA provided by LSP, RCA provided by your team, RCA provided by your team, Shortened RCA of your team (for analysis), Actionable for internal stakeholder, Actionable for LSP (Re-attempt, RTO, Hold), SPOC from your team

2. Summary View –

   1. Additional data points which can be used for analysis – Customer name, Sales channel / person, Order value, Item Ordered

   2. As for the NDR reasons, they will be unique to your operating model. But they will likely fall into broad domains like – fake attempt, payment issues, delayed delivery, incorrect address, so on and so forth.

Regarding last-mile escalations:

1. This will be hustle most of the time where your team (TL/AM) should be

   focused on solving the issue and getting the order delivered.

2. You can have a tracker here too, it will have following details: Date of

   escalation, Escalation from (LSP, internal stakeholder, etc.), Use-case,

   Current Status of escalation, Closure date of escalation, SPOC from your

   team. The use-cases here will be similar to NDR since the stakeholders

   involved in last-mile are same, agenda of LSP and your team is also

   the same.

3. Analysis which can be built out: which type of use-cases are escalated

   the most, how long it takes to resolve these use cases, which SPOC

   performs best in handling escalations (closure TAT and delivery%).

Process Improvements:

1. Analysis to be done – Overall orders in NDR, Quantum of NDR Reasons in a

   stipulated time period, RTO % for each NDR reason, you can identify ODA

   (out of delivery area / far flung locations from last mile delivery centres) locations,

   3rd party centres of LSPs, weather conditions, capacity of a particular center to carry your shipments, analysis using additional data points.

2. Possible improvements – policy alignment or LSP alignment basis NDR reasons.

   Increase in frequency of NDR from once a day to real-time. Have incentives for your team members to increase delivery % of cases allocated to them.

3. The data points / analysis from here will help you in a broader analysis where you can align internal stakeholders on the operational limitation / ease of certain locations, help you decide on what should be the strengths of any new LSP you plan to onboard, assign orders to particular LSPs basis where one of the criteria will be last-mile performance. More on these later.