Picking the Wrong Fulfillment Partner Is Easy — Here Is How to Avoid It
There were twelve companies on the spreadsheet. The founder of the brand had spent two weekends researching fulfilment options, after finally accepting that managing orders in-house was no longer viable. She had pricing from multiple vendors, notes from sales calls, and a quick comparison of services. In theory, the choice should have been easy. But the more she looked, the more the choices all blurred together. In their description, each company used the same language: reliable, scalable, technology-driven, customer-focused. None of the websites explained what happens if an order arrives with a problem. No one talked about their error rate and what it looked like, or how they handled a missed shipment in peak season.” She whittled that down to four. References requested. Asked tougher questions. And ultimately learned that the most important variable — how a fulfilment partner actually performs under pressure — was nearly impossible to gauge from the outside, until you were insi...