If you run a business that deals in physical goods, you will need to partner with a freight company. People often confuse freight companies with couriers. However, while they do similar things, they are very different. Freight companies often deliver goods to couriers, so they can then ship them to customers. If you are interested in working with a freight company, there are a few factors you need to consider. This is so that you can ensure you get the best possible deal. This post will explore this topic in more detail and tell you what you need to think about before hiring a freight company.
Table of Contents
Level of Experience
The first factor you need to consider is experience. When you are hiring a freight company, you need to make sure you hire the most experienced one you can find. A freight company’s level of experience can have a massive impact on what it’s like working with them. The experts from one of the leading freight companies in Brisbane make clear on their site that their expertise makes it possible for them to deal with a range of distribution services and urgent deliveries, not to mention problems that might come up. Finding an experienced freight company shouldn’t be a difficult thing for you to do. Try to avoid organizations that have just started, because their employees won’t have as much collective experience as a heritage organization’s employees would.
Customer Service
Customer service is the next factor for you to consider. A lot of people overlook the importance of customer service when they are looking for companies to partner with. When it comes to freight shipping, you need to make sure that the company you ultimately choose to work with has high quality, responsive customer support. You’ll be getting in touch with your chosen freight company’s customer support team on a regular basis, so they need to be professional and easy to communicate with. They also need to get back to clients in a timely manner and resolve their issues. One of the best ways to determine what a company’s customer support team is like to work with is to take a look at their reviews. If a company has poor customer support, this will be reflected in online reviews. Bad customer support can be infuriating, so avoid it.
Shipping Speed
Shipping speed is a very important factor for you to consider as well. Don’t make the mistake of overlooking it when you are searching for freight companies to work with. When you are sending goods to clients, they need to arrive quickly. If they do not, your reputation will suffer. Nobody’s going to want to do business with you if your products take a long time to arrive. This is especially true today when people are accustomed to fast deliveries. A good way to find out how quick a freight company’s deliveries are is to look at what people are saying about them online or on their website. Some freight companies post real-time data to support their claims that they offer fast deliveries. Make sure you do some kind of research before blindly accepting a freight shipper’s claims that they deliver goods fast because they all say the same thing.
Online Reviews
Reviews are another consideration worth making. A lot of people overlook them when they are making purchases or partnerships. You need to make sure that you look at your chosen freight company’s reviews before you do any business with them. Their reviews will help you to decide whether they are right or wrong for your company. Make sure that when you are reading reviews, you read ones posted on independent websites, i.e., Google Review or Trustpilot. Try to avoid reviews that have been posted by the freight company itself. Reviews that have been verified and vetted by businesses tend more often than not to be heavily biased. No business owner is going to willingly allow negative reviews to be posted on their own website, are they? Business owners don’t have any control over reviews posted on independent sites, however. This means they can’t influence them.
Service Costs
Service costs are something else that you need to think about. When you are looking for a freight company to partner with, you need to bear in mind that you are going to have to pay them, they are not going to ship things for you for free. Unfortunately, a lot of people overlook costs when they are searching for freight companies and end up making blind partnerships, meaning they enter into agreements with freight companies without finding out how much they are going to charge them first. To find out how much a freight company is charging, ask for a shipping quote. You should be able to get a discounted rate if you enter into a formal partnership with a shipping company and agree to send each and every shipment through them. Reach out to your chosen company and ask them whether or not they can do this for you before you hire them.
Document Handling
Expertise is very important. If the freight company you ultimately choose to work with is inexperienced, they are not going to be as effective at handling and managing documents as you need them to be. The company you choose to work with needs to have a lot of experience filling out documents, like customs forms, for example. If they do not know what they are doing when it comes to the handling and management of documents, you could end up having to deal with delays. A good way to gauge a company’s level of experience is to take a look at the number of years they have been operating. The longer the company has been active, the more experienced they will be. Make sure that the company you hire also has good reviews and a high star rating. A company’s star rating is a measurement of how highly customers rate it.
Hiring a freight company can be challenging if you have never had to before. With the guidance given here, it does not need to be. Give each point made in this post consideration so that you can find the best freight company for your business.