Photo Credit: Techpoint.ng

With new e-commerce startups sprouting up everyday, competitive advantage in the urban African context will boil down to their quality of delivery and logistics managment. Given the lack of infrastructure such as home addresses, post codes with embedded information, or  as is the case in India – the last mile of delivery in the form of the village postman – the responsibility for ensuring customer satisfaction lies squarely on the shoulders of the online businesses themselves.

Online stores in more developed operating environments can focus on the aesthetics of their web presence, the design of an order form, or building a loyal community of users. Their business models emphasize the way they will distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace and build brand awareness to gain a critical mass of customers.

But for the slew of  startups in emerging markets such as Nigeria’s or in the Cote d’Ivoire, it will be their distribution strategy and logistics management in the last mile that will differentiate the winners from the losers. Does the business plan have a viable solution for addressing this challenge?

New players are emerging who see this distribution need as an opportunity space, one such is ACE in Nigeria, whose last mile solution has been documented in detail by Techpoint.ng today. Others eyeing this lucrative space include the global courier behemoth DHL, whose forecasts are rubbing their hands with glee. Big or small, their ability to serve their customers’ needs will have impact on the entire value chain, both online and in the real world.

A matter of strategy: In house delivery or third party support?

With so much dependent on the quality of the customer experience at the moment of fulfilment – timely delivery, ease of payment, courteous service, receiving the correct order, etc – the decision to invest in building in house operations, like the well-funded Kongas and Jumias, or to outsource to third parties becomes a critical component of corporate strategy.

• Which approach will allow you the opportunity to offer the best customer experience for your brand’s needs?
• What happens when the still nascent market matures enough for potential conflict of interest with competing brands being delivered by the same service?
• How important is your branding in the real world as compared to the virtual experience?

These are all the questions and more besides that startups will need to ask themselves, before their potential investors ask it of them. Word of mouth travels as fast the smartphones that are fuelling the internet boom and no amount of PR will help with ensuring quality of service that will make customers return for more.