Delivery promises have, up until now, been one of the main battlegrounds for ecommerce – fast, free and flexible fulfilment have all been the competitive differentiators where conversions, sales and even loyalty were either won or lost. 

But that dynamic is rapidly shifting, and the default ways retailers once differentiated themselves online are dissipating, says Romulus Grigoras, CEO and Co-Founder of OneStock. 

Dealing with delivery promises alone is no longer enough and, as shoppers move to AI-led discovery and end-to-end purchasing journeys, brands will need to think more holistically about how they address and uphold the ‘Customer Promise’. 

Delivery matters – but it’s one piece of the purchasing puzzle

While the role of promise integrity is changing in modern buying journeys, retailers are under no illusion that delivery expectations remain high. 

DHL’s latest E-Commerce Trends Report, for instance, shows that 80% of UK shoppers would abandon a basket if their preferred delivery option was not available. But, at the same time, delivery demands remain nuanced – speed, cost, sustainability and convenience all now shape shoppers’ fulfilment expectations, with 78% of British consumers saying delivery is now central to their overall buying experience, according to a recent poll by Ingrid.

While integral, delivery is just one part of a wider story around each customer’s unique requirements. Shoppers increasingly evaluate purchases on other factors, such as product availability, delivery transparency, post-purchase communication and ease of returns. Even a strong fulfilment offering can fall short if those other elements aren’t offered or, if offered, fail to live up to widening expectations.

Change is afoot

At the same time that delivery demands are evolving, so too is the shopping journey. Fuelled by widespread consumer adoption, AI assistants, social commerce and marketplaces are all increasingly influencing how products are discovered and purchased.

Original research by the Retail Technology Show reveals that over a quarter (27%) of UK shoppers have already used AI agents to make purchases on their behalf autonomously, rising to almost half of Millennials (47%) and Gen Z (46%). Social commerce continues to grow, while ‘live streaming’ shopping events are gaining traction. 

If this channel expansion continues, retailers’ websites will no longer be the central moment of decision they once represented in the buying journey.

Discovery, comparison and checkout could increasingly happen off-site, inside third-party platforms where brands have little to no control over the customer experience. For retailers, this shift introduces new risks: losing control of the promises being made to customers in their name.

Keeping customer promises by closing the operational gap

When other platforms become the primary shopping interface and are making commitments to a brand’s customers on its behalf, this adds risk to the retailer in being able to realistically keep and uphold these promises. And this is where the challenge becomes operational.

The customer promise – from product availability to delivery windows and fulfilment choices and fees – can only be upheld if the systems behind the scenes are aligned. 

Yet many retailers still operate with fragmented data across their ecommerce platforms, inventory systems, carrier network partners and customer service teams. When availability, stock levels and fulfilment information are not synchronised in real time, promises can end up being made on incomplete information.

And that’s where the cracks start to appear: products shown as available when they are out of stock, for example, or delivery commitments offered which cannot realistically be met. In an environment where shopping journeys increasingly happen across multiple platforms and interfaces, those disconnects become even harder to manage.

Taking back control

As commerce becomes more distributed and brand control dispersed across a growing number of third-party channels, retailers need to ensure that the promises associated with their brand remain accurate, consistent and achievable.

Only when systems and data are unified – across stock, fulfilment and customer experience – can these moving parts work together.  

Without this alignment, delivery promises alone will no longer cut it; the real differentiator will be whether brands can consistently deliver on the full customer promises they make.