MetaTrack enhances customer service offering

Harrod Horticultural was formed in 2002, and in the last ten years progress has been relentless. Believing one of the key factors to their success is their extensive range of superior innovative products, many of which are manufactured in house and their organic growing ethos, Harrod Horticultural has established one of the widest and highest quality ranges to encourage every green fingered gardener.

The Challenge

Moving on from Syspro & Elucid, Harrod Horticultural purchased the MNP order management and warehouse software. While being fully integrated into UK Mail’s own carrier system, they produced documentation for Royal Mail, Tuffnells and their own fleet separately. Obvious issues were manual entry, time constraints and incorrect carrier selection, but the main concern was providing tracking for their customers. The current provision was somewhat disjointed; tracking statuses for all UK Mail despatches could be found through their carrier management system, but for all other deliveries the team would have to source the details through MNP to find out what method the goods were sent out on and then contact the carrier to find out the status and update the customer accordingly. When asked to explain the tracking facility prior to MetaPack, ‘devastating’ was the answer from Duncan Harrod, IT Systems Manager. So with customer service at the forefront of everything they do, Harrod Horticultural wanted to address this to ensure they offered the best, most streamlined service possible.

The Solution

MNP are just one of many ecommerce solution providers integrated with MetaPack. With both systems working in conjunction, Harrod Horticultural have seen a massive reduction in incorrect carrier selections as all their carriers are now automated through the one delivery management system, resulting in a 5% cost saving as well as a better use of resources. But most significantly, was the introduction of MetaTrack. MetaTrack allows customers to access tracking information provided by the carriers in ‘real time’ as well as historical data. It can be used in three ways: as a company branded ‘skin’ on the website for their customers to self-track, behind the scenes for customer services staff to utilize and through automated email to the customer on despatch. Harrod Horticultural has opted to use both behind the scenes feeding into their MNP software through the black-box MetaPack integration and the automated email on despatch. Now, with just a few clicks their tracking information is in one place, irrelevant of carrier. Providing their customers with up to date information is important to Harrod Horticultural and they’re not alone. The industry has seen a dramatic shift towards the use of premium services in the last 3 years, thus reducing levels of fraud through tracking and POD’s (proof of delivery).

"Everything we do is geared 100% towards our customers. With the MetaPack software this has allowed us the option to select different carriers when appropriate and be assured we can provide consistent tracking updates from a single screen"

Duncan Harrod, IT Systems Manager