Welcome to Unboxing Logistics. I'm your host, Lori Boyer of EasyPost. And today is going to be a really fun episode. So, grab a coffee, grab a tea, whatever your, your, your pick is, because we are going to be talking peak season, all of the fun things that happen during peak, the challenging things. And I have brought in just an incredible partner of EasyPost, Glenn Gooding from iDrive.

And he's going to share All the ins and outs of peak season. So, Glenn, will you introduce yourself to our community and tell them a little bit about you and about iDrive?

So Lori, thank you so much for the time. I'm really looking forward to our, our chat. again, my name is Glenn Gooding. I'm the president of iDrive Logistics.

I've been helping clients now for the last 17 plus years, put together best-in-class, small parcel supply chains. And I would tell you that, in short, what iDrive does is they help companies grow and be best in class throughout that life cycle. So I drive offers a suite of professional services, great technology, as well as, I think, just top-shelf fulfillment services, right?

So we can do the pick, pack and ship. We help clients from the shopping cart level all the way through execution and aligning with the right customer experience. And as brands grow, we have a very robust professional services division that can help them kind of stand on their own as well.

That is fantastic.

As you can all see, we're in good hands with Glenn today. He is going to be talking to us about everything you can expect during peak. He's been here all those years. You said it was 39, right?

39. Now I'd like to tell you, I started 10, but that'd be a lie.

I was going to say, you must've been about five years old.

Yeah, I wish.

So, wow. I mean, that's incredible. And the industry has changed so much in those 39 years. I mean,

It certainly has.

That's going to be exciting. So before we get started I would like to know, I've been asking all of our guests this season. What is your favorite go-to comfort food? So let's say that you're stressed out. Something crazy happened during peak, but what, what would make Glenn just get, feel you a little more comfortable.

Sure, sure. You know, in peak season, I equate a little cooler temperatures, so if I had to go to my go-to comfort food, it would be a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato basil soup.

Oh, you and my husband would get along. I think that is his go-to as well. Even the tomato soup with it. So, that does sound yummy. That is perfect.

Okay, so before we even start, I love to be able to have our guests, if they're listening, be able to kind of leave today's show with one or two thoughts that you want to make sure they do remember out of all the great things you're going to say. Do you have one or two kind of takeaways that you want people to remember around peak season?

Certainly. I would, I would say the first takeaway for peak season would be you can't plan enough. Right. And what I'm going to attempt to do for the audience today is maybe expand their thinking around what planning might look like.

So if we were to look back when I was an operator, you know, I, you could say planning is all around planning your operation. I think in today's world, where brands are reliant on third-party providers like fulfillment houses, like I'd write fulfillment. Or technology or their online presence. I think planning goes much, much deeper, much more comprehensive.

Interesting. So, okay. I am going to be interested to grill you a little bit about that. Anything else that you'd want them to remember?

Nope. I think I'm set there. If I can pass along any other nuggets. Great. The pun was not lost on me on grilling me and a grilled cheese sandwich.

I know exactly.

Yes.

I think that you've got my mind thinking about food already. So,

Yeah.

Okay, so let's kind of set the stage. Peak season, we know, huge time for everybody in this industry, whether you're e-com, whether you're fulfillment, you know, technology, SaaS, everything. How does peak season look for iDrive Logistics?

Give us a little bit of a background. Some companies have four peak seasons a year. Some, you know, what, what is peak season? How would you define it for you?

And you bet. So we have a very, let's say a very broad base of clients. And some of those have peak seasons that don't align with the traditional peak season.

However, I think for the purposes of what we're talking about here, we're talking about fourth quarter holiday shopping and shipping activity, right? The consumer, you know, peak season at iDrive is a real busy time for us. One is we want to make sure that we're doing being the very best partner. We can for each one of our brands that that we're servicing, whether it be demand forecasting, the desired client experience CX, as I would call it, ensuring that they're shopping carts and and what's being deposited in that shopping cart aligns with the desired CX. You'd be surprised how much misalignment is out there in space.

Interesting.

And then also really ensuring we have the right diverse shipping options for our clients out there, and making sure that we're, we're really on the same page with regard to what those business rules are and how we're going to execute on those things so that we, we have that done. And always being prepared for kind of the unexpected, Lori, you know, right now, what's kind of coming across are these on demand or these demand surcharges being announced by the carriers. And I think OnTrack just came out earlier this week and FedEx UPS led the way and we're waiting on the other carriers as well. And so that's very, very impactful as well to our clients.

So I'm really interested, you know, we talked about planning.

So first of all, your takeaway, you can't plan enough. Can you give me kind of an overview? What does planning look like for you? And what has it looked like throughout your career? You know, what, what did you do at UPS? What, how is planning, what recommendations do you have?

I have to really give a nod to UPS and their legacy culture that really kind of built a foundation for me.

One of the things that really stuck with me as a young man was one of my mentors at the time said, you know, a failure to plan is a plan to fail. And I would tell you that one of UPS's operational strengths was always just phenomenal planning purposes and running contingencies. So, so it was built early in me.

Today, what does planning look like? It really involves, I think, great communication with each one of our brands. I think you have to be communicating with them. And then secondarily, but not less important, is you have to understand what our clients are looking for, what their needs are, and we have to be very proactive in our communication with our service partners, you know, our trusted carriers out there and ensure that we have the right type of operational alignment and that we work real hard to align with the carrier networks and their concerns around a peak season environment.

Can we advance volume on a weekend? You know, can we do things to make the load a little lighter for them, so that we can ensure we get the right type of service or customer experience for the end consumer?

Okay. So what I'm hearing from you, which I think is really critical. So wherever you are in the industry, cause I know some of you watching are in, you know, e-comm and some of you are at 3PLs and so, you know, we have the gamut, but communication, what I'm hearing from you, Glenn, correct me, across stakeholders.

Absolutely.

So, whether that's with your customers, whether that's with your suppliers, those doors of communication to their needs need to be open. Do you have recommendations? You know, how often are you in communication? How early before peak are you in communication? What, what are kind of the practical tips for running that communication?

That's an excellent question as well, Lori. I would, I think what we have to look at this and we have to kind of look at it. Technology roadmap, and then we also have to look at an operational roadmap. Every client I talk with has constraints when it comes to technology and resources. So when you talk about a planning roadmap for peak season, really from a technology standpoint, you need to start looking at that in January, February of the year.

You have to align the right resources, the right milestones, you have to ensure that there's the right technology execution plan to ensure that the technology is in place for peak season. And you just can't start early enough on that.

You know, the second is the operational side, demand forecasting. And my goodness, demand forecasting in today's market is extra hard, you know, with, with what's going on in a macroeconomic environment and consumer buying being down. And at the same time, the ecommerce channels becoming a more and more pronounced percentage or chunk of the total retail sales in the U.S.

And so it's, it's a weird quagmire of of things to do, but each brand is going to have their own demand forecasting expectations. And and then maybe some contingencies around that. So that let's, let's say they get their demand forecasting wrong. What, what are the options? What's plan B? What is done in those scenarios there? I would really say that demand forecasting has to be done before you're, you're, you're placing orders and booking ocean freight to come across in the summertime. So that's got to be a Q2 activity for sure.

Yep, for sure and and a lot of that freight was early this year even you know I saw all those reports of the we're having it early So yeah Q1 to Q2 you got to be getting that demand forecasting. And i'm hoping I'm, hoping your demand if you were off it was because everybody wanted so much more than what you were selling.

So that, that's my hope for you. Your plan B though should address whether you're, you're off by too much or too little.

That knife cuts both ways too, Lori. You know the easiest time to lose a customer is through a poor experience in Q4.

Absolutely. Okay. Say it one more time because that is really good.

The easiest time to lose a customer is a poor performance in Q4.

I mean, that is brilliant. And that is so true. The statistics show that not only do you have a crazy amount of extra complexity during peak season, but unfortunately, consumers have higher expectations and demands during the craziest time of your life.

So you cannot plan enough. You know, nugget of wisdom from Glenn.

Yeah. Well, I think everybody listening to this fully understands the cost of acquiring a customer, right? Tremendous expense and getting them to your website, getting them to your shopping cart. My goodness, you've, you've got to make that a, just as, as a delightful experience as possible, knowing you're reliant on service providers to execute on that so that you can get them returning in January, February, March, right there.

So as we are coming up on Q4, I, you know, while we talk technology as Q1, for instance, keeping an eye on where maybe your technology is not doing as well as you should during peak so that in Q1, you can make some pivots.

So Q2, operation, demand forecasting, anything else in terms of planning there that we should go over?

Yeah, then I think the demand forecasting rolls into how do you execute operationally. Staffing, automation is a big one, right? Automation can definitely improve efficiencies in a, in a network, right?

And there's a, there's a lot of critical phases on the technology side, right? Stability. Of the platform label, label print speed, right? Those are, those are critical. So the operational side, make sure you understand what your staffing requirements are, have a plan in place, have relationships with good, reliable temp agencies. And then operationally, if you're bringing new folks in the door every day, you need to minimize the amount of knowledge units, what I would say, are required with those entry level jobs.

So the more you can use technology to plug and play, get a, get a human being in there pulling in order correctly the better off you're going to be. If there's a heavy training curve, you're setting yourself up for disaster. And that, that worst case scenario, not a delightful experience for the consumer.

Exactly on key, as I would only expect from you. Minimize the knowledge level that needs to come out. I mean, you never know. And some horrible flu is going to hit your staff when you know, that labor challenges are so difficult. So. automating but also making sure your processes aren't too complex.

I, I talked to somebody recently who said that they even just have some little videos they shoot, nothing professional, but on their phone where going over processes so people can learn from each other cross training, any other ideas you have around trying to make that kind of onboarding for temporary employees easier?

You bet, cross training. It could be kind of a shadowing experience at first. You know, I think I think if you plan it properly, don't don't bring the folks in on day one of your heaviest time period, plan a runway for them to get on board, see them show up again, make the first couple days as enjoyable as possible, get them to potentially make or get a relationship.

Yeah.

Have a, have a mentor, have a sponsor, have a big brother or big sister or however you want to name it. Right?

That's a fun idea. I love that idea of connecting them with a mentor and, you know, creating those relationships. This industry is big on relationships, and that goes all the way from our carrier relationships all the way down to relationships within our own company.

So smart. Okay. So what do you feel like are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in your career? Either iDrive over your career during peak season that you can share with us?

I'd say that the biggest challenges are always things that you really haven't planned for. Right? Demand forecasting is, is off.

You were planning on 30,000 units going out and my goodness, there's a 60,000 piece demand, right? And now you're backlogged. Those can be epic disasters, right? Again, it goes back to a less than delightful experience and the snowball will begin to roll at that point. So those, those are the memory. Those are the things that burn into my memory.

So what do you do if you were planning for 30,000 and 60,000 comes in?

Man, it's time for everybody on that brand to roll up their sleeves and get out there and chip in, and you have to have a quarterback as well. Too many chefs can spoil the soup, right? So if you get a bunch of folks like me with their lofty titles out there, each one of us wants to tell people to do it.

If we're not reading off the same sheet of music, you're going to create more chaos. Right? So it's a time to really kind of start prioritizing if you can do things ahead of time, like maybe batch printing or other things to, to minimize the load on the technology, right, to get stuff in place, identify the fastest moving SKUs and move them into a location real near that things just to add to efficiencies mobile storage to get stuff off the warehouse floor and have it in a secure location in the parking lot, something like that.

Those are the types of things and. It's just a lot of sweat equity. You just got to get in there, roll your sleeves up and kind of power through and get back ahead of it if you can. Oftentimes that might mean some long days on the weekends.

And so I would guess setting that kind of expectation with your, your team planning in a way for these emergency situations to come up. Do you designate beforehand who should be the quarterback?

You absolutely should. In a best case scenario, you should have a master operating plan put together. And as part of that master operating plan, you should lay out some worst case scenarios.

Hey, scenario one. We blew our demand forecasting. We have twice the amount. What's the game plan? What do we do? Who does what? Where do they go? How do we manage this?

Scenario two might be, oh my goodness the northeast got hit with an early nor'easter. Okay. Or suddenly an ice storm hit Memphis. What do we do? What do we pivot to? Right?

So if you, I think if you have planned to lay out some of these doomsday worst case scenarios and then map out what is the best course of action communication plan to your customers. Right? Messaging on the website. How do you handle from your client success managers out there that are going to be taking phone calls, right?

What are your pivot points as far as potentially pivoting to a carrier B or a carrier C from your primary, right? If you map those out ahead of time, again, failure to plan is a plan to fail. And so would you rather be dealing with it in the heat of the moment, or would you like to have some sort of a playbook to fall back on and say, yeah, we, we thought about this, darn it, we're in it, but here it is, here's what we're going to do.

Yeah, and how do you keep, so let's say that, you know, unfortunately, things always happen during peak. When things happen, how do you keep morale up, kind of, with the team? When you are talking about rolling your sleeves up, we could have some long days, long hours. Do you have any tips for keeping the labor happy?

You've got to be smiling. You've got to embrace it. You have to build them up for this challenge and you have to maybe set some, some cool team goals, right? Pizzas for lunch, right? If it's really cold, hot soup, whatever, you know go the extra mile to take care of your people, make them feel wanted and appreciated.

And if you can walk them into some sort of a team goal, number of number of pieces picked and put out the door per hour or, a number of safety days or a variety of things where you can put some tangible team goals where they get a, a nice spiff or a gift card or a celebratory holiday banquet, something, you know, those, I think those go a long way.

Okay. So plan ahead for what kind of rewards, incentives, games, objectives you may play or have your team do. I love, though, that you led with, you need to be cheerful, you know, that attitude that you want, you're going to be stressed out as whatever executive level you may be in this, you know, watching here today.

You can't let that, that becomes contagious. If you're stressed out and freaking out and cranky, that's going to spread to everybody in the company. So step number one, preparing, prepare how to be happy and cheerful and excited, even when you might not feel it, right?

Yeah, and the great, the great news is from an executive level, you should embrace this.

It's you know, these ecommerce companies, Q4 makes or breaks them on the balance sheet, right? You, you, you want to blow that demand forecasting in a, in a positive, healthy way that doesn't you know, push the wheels off the bus, right? You want to, you want to kill it. You want to have the most delightful client experience possible. So you have more return customers throughout the next year. That's a, that's a home run.

Yeah. And I love that. That's looking at it as an opportunity for some major success. I mean, this is every challenge is also on the flip side, just an opportunity. So I, that is super smart. Let's talk about successes. You know, what successes have you seen in peak season? Yeah, I would just love to hear how you've enjoyed peak season.

Oh, for sure. You know it's, it's so much fun when you execute the plan, you know, and You leave every day and there's nothing, no work left behind, you know, there's a number of situations.

One time we had a customer that was really reliant on one regional carrier on the West Coast that required a feed into Reno for the specific service footprint. And so they were reliant, these loans were moving on Donner Pass and Donner Pass was just getting record amounts of snowfall.

Of course.

Delays, delays.

And to add insult to injury, this is cold chain stuff. It had to be delivered in a certain time frame. So you have to have a, you have to have a plan. You have to have a plan B. How do you pivot from that and do that efficiently and effectively? And we were able to help that customer quickly go to another, another carrier.

It wasn't perfect, but boy, we staved off like an uncontrollable issue. It's no fault of the regional carrier. It's just those force majeure issues out there. Other great success, you know, last year was super successful at iDrive Fulfillment. Our tech team did a lot of work to stabilize our TMS platform.

And we never, we had zero shutdowns last peak season. And so that was, that was a massive win. Massive win. It built up great confidence with our operators as well, and it just equates to a very successful execution.

It just reminds me, Glenn, it's, every hero story has challenges. Nobody's interested in a story where, oh, we did great, but there were no problems or challenges or hiccups.

There was no massive snowstorm over Donner's Pass. All of the stories that are fun and interesting and that you want to share with others and go back in time, all managed to have some of these challenges, and that's kind of what peak season is. And you can overcome that and come out as the hero.

For sure. For sure. Yeah.

So I think that to me, there's always three key areas. People, technology, and processes. I would love if you have any kind of practical tips around each one of those. You know, we've gone through some already. Setting things up with your people. Making sure you're leading out.

But are there anything we're missing with maybe preparing your processes or preparing your technology that you would have practical tips around people or processes or technology?

I love the process aspect because I think it touches the other two very much. When I think of a process, I'm not thinking just of the process of pick to ship.

I'm thinking of client navigates to the, to the website. They select the product. They go to the shopping cart. What is the shopping cart telling them? What options do they have?

Yes.

What kind of experience occurs after the order is placed, advanced shipping notices or communications through the life cycle of that order. So the client knows exactly where it's at that process, right?

Now you can equate that process also to the orders placed. Now what internally, how do we execute? What is the SLA for that particular client? How quickly do we have to get that product shipped based off our commitment to our client, their desire?

What is the desired all in from order from click to deliver? What's, what's the, what's the total time in transit commitment that you've made? Do we have the right type of carrier mix and services and business rules to accommodate that, right?

And then from a process perspective, when things do go wrong and they will, right? A system produces what a system produces. The best carriers out there have service failures, or they damage a product, or something goes lost or misdelivered. How do you delight that customer when something goes wrong? What process do you put around that? Do you immediately ship a new product and do you expedite that shipment?

Do you give them a discount off their next order, right? Do you follow up with a phone call to ensure they got it and that they're delighted, right? Invariably for me as a consumer, my most meaningful I would say loyalty experiences I have is when I've, I've ordered something, it hasn't gone right, but I've been so impressed with how the company handled

Yes.

The problem, right?

It's great when you order and things show up intact when you want it, but the ones that really mean something to me is when. Darn it, it got lost. Now what's going to happen, right? Oh, quick apology. We're reshipping. It's coming out to be out tomorrow, right? Via overnight delivery and, and those mean a lot to me. Those are the companies I go back to. And I think I'm not unusual there on that.

Yeah, I think that's so smart and I love that everyone listening today, if you don't have a plan, obviously Glenn's our have a plan guy. If you don't have a plan around how you're going to manage that customer relationship, I mean. I think that's one of the top things that you should be doing right now. Sit down, figure out how you're going to manage that customer relationship, 'cause as Glenn said, you know, that lifetime value of a customer, the value of keeping that customer and making them come back and become an advocate for you and your company is so critical. So I think that's brilliant.

Glenn Gooding 27:01

Yeah, I'm hoping these comments age well, Lori. We'll see.

I know, we'll see, huh?

I would say that from a peak season experience this year, I think you're going to have more capacity in the carrier networks than we've seen in the more recent peak seasons. We're coming off of a COVID hangover course, right? We also have a real downturn in macroeconomic events that's driving consumer behavior.

So I think, I think from a carrier reliability perspective, I think we're going to have a, just a fantastic peak season. Now, the counter to that is I also think it's gonna be the most expensive peak season ever. So all of these carriers are they're looking for volume, they're looking for business, they're short on revenue projections with the investing community.

So what I'm seeing out there is, you know, changing fuel surcharges, imposing demand surcharges in a more unique fashion, now, that affect everyone going out the door. And so I, I think, I think it's going to be a real challenge for brands to look at their subsidized shipping programs they have today and ensure that they stay profitable throughout peak season as a lot of these things get infused in there.

Lori Boyer 28:47

Right, with the macroeconomics going on. So do you have any tips then for keeping costs as low as possible if it does end up being an expensive season?

Yeah. So the brands out there should be leaning into their providers. Now, when I say providers, it could be one of two things. It could be a 3PL. It could be an iDrive fulfillment.

IDrive Fulfillment, if they're your, your client, they should be providing you great forecasting. They should be providing you great counsel as to how to mitigate or how to provide the most desirable customer experience. At the cheapest available price and more than likely in today's world, it's not a single carrier solution.

Some carriers still want to be all things to all people, but it's very hard for them to do that. And so in today's environment, there's a lot of choices. And a good, robust, A 3PL operator will have a number of choices, and so I think it's important as a brand, as a, as a client, that you task your 3PL provider with, what does that look like, and how are we going to mitigate these things?

Now, if you're working directly with the carriers, that's a bit of a different discussion. One, you need to be a good partner to them. You need to be sharing your demand forecasting with them. You need to collaborate with their operations and planning teams. You need to find ways to more efficiently align with their networks and get them volume and timeframes that don't strain their systems, such as potentially advancing volume.

Maybe you run a Sunday or a Saturday Sunday operation at advanced volume to be their startup operating volume on a Monday. You know, to get that stuff moved through. If you do those things, one is you're going to have greater reliability from that carrier, but number two, it may open the door for you to talk about things about mitigating some of these things that are pushed into the marketplace.

Hey, we're really working with you carrier A or carrier B. Is there a way to mitigate these demand surcharges based on the fact that we're really planning with you and, and trying to forecast. So that's, that's really. The way it's going to have to be done.

Yeah, absolutely. The communication piece and yes, exactly ties back to what you said earlier, that communication is so, so, so critical. Keeping, you know, I always like to say error on the side of over communicating rather than under communicating.

Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more.

So those people, those relationships, get that communication going, processes, look for the hiccups throughout your processes. And I would say that kind of communication piece again, talk to people who are experiencing it, who is seeing those hiccups and of course technology.

I love that you predict again, that we're going to have kind of a solid season. We do have a lot of carrier capacity. I, that's fantastic. But yeah, if, if prices get high, keep that communication open. That's critical. So. Thank you so much. We're just about out of time, but we have had about, I think I tallied 9,642 Nuggets of Wisdom from Glenn today.

Wow.

So, yeah, I'm pretty sure that was accurate.

You, you, our community can let me know if they had more than that. But take one or two. I always say, pick one or two items, implement those. And then take another item or two, and hopefully we'll all have a fantastic peak season. Glenn, any final words for our viewers?

Hey, Lori, I can't thank you enough for this time and this chat. Also, I can't thank EasyPost enough for being just a fantastic partner of iDrive.

Yeah, we love working with you.

And I'd welcome any listener, if they want to catch more of me, I put out my own podcast called Parcel Perspectives. I'd love to see you out there. And thanks again, Lori. Really appreciate it.

And anywhere else I can connect with you, Glenn, are you on LinkedIn, or if they want to learn about iDrive, what

Certainly, I have an active LinkedIn presence.

You can also go to iDriveLogistics. com and we have a great website out there. So, Parcel Perspectives, my LinkedIn platform, Glenn Gooding, of course, as well as our website would be fantastic. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks so much, and everyone have a great day.

Yep, bye.