A brand sells eleven units of something the system says it has and the warehouse does not. Eleven customers are told the order is delayed, three cancel, one writes a review, and the brand spends a morning reconciling a spreadsheet.
They will change provider within the year. Not over the eleven units, but because they can no longer trust any number they are shown.
Why this is the real question
Rates are comparable and services are similar. What a brand cannot assess from a proposal is whether the stock figure will be true, and it is the thing that determines whether they can trade.
What brands have usually experienced
A previous provider whose numbers drifted, counts that were never reconciled, discrepancies explained away and a relationship that ended in a dispute about who owed what.
Publish your receipt process
How inbound stock is checked, counted and recorded, what happens when a delivery is short and how the brand is told. Most accuracy problems begin at receipt.
Publish your counting approach
Cycle counting, full counts, frequency and how items are selected. A provider that counts continuously finds errors while they are small.
Publish your accuracy measure
How it is calculated and what it currently is. Publishing a real figure is unusual and it is enormously persuasive to a brand that has been lied to before.
Explain how a discrepancy is investigated
The steps, the timescale, who is involved and what the brand is told during it. Brands want a process rather than an assurance.
Explain who bears the loss
Honestly, and what the contract says. It is the question brands are afraid to ask and the answer decides trust more than any accuracy statistic.
Explain how damage is handled
Damaged on receipt, damaged in storage and damaged in transit, each recorded differently and reported to the brand. It is a category of loss that gets quietly absorbed.
Explain the returns effect
How returned stock is inspected, graded and put back, because badly handled returns are a large source of phantom inventory.
Explain the system reconciliation
How often the warehouse system and the brand's platform are reconciled, what happens when they disagree and who resolves it, which is the ground in inventory visibility questions from brands choosing a 3PL.
Explain what a brand can see and when
Live figures, reporting frequency and whether a brand can interrogate movements themselves. Visibility is what rebuilds confidence.
Explain what happens at peak
Accuracy degrades when volume triples and temporary staff arrive, which is the honest conversation in peak season capacity questions from growing brands.
Explain how short picks reach the customer
A missing unit discovered at the packing bench is the last chance to prevent a bad customer experience, and what happens next matters enormously. Describing whether the order is held, shipped short with notification or escalated to the brand for a decision tells a prospective client how their own customers will be treated when something goes wrong.
Explain how a brand audits you
Whether they can attend a count, request a stock take and what notice is needed. Providers who welcome it are the ones brands choose.
Answer the accuracy question at enquiry
Brands ask about rates and decide on trust, which is where warehousing enquiries from growing online brands start, and the customer facing consequence is in is it in stock, the question retail websites fumble.
Getting started
Publish your receipt process, counting approach, accuracy figure and discrepancy procedure, then answer at any hour. SpideyChat for logistics providers answers from your published pages, plans are on the pricing page, and the chatbot ROI calculator works through the numbers.