Freight loss is becoming a massive beast eating up costs and time. To see how devastating this beast has become, one only needs to look at this statement: The global financial impact of cargo loss exceeds $50 billion annually, according to the National Cargo Security Council (NCSC). Filing freight claims, the only recourse to reclaiming the cost of freight loss, also takes on greater importance. The claims process does not take an easily maneuvered path. That’s why having an expert partner with a cloud-based software platform can make it much easier to walk that tricky route and avoid the beast. It’s also prudent to be attuned to where some obstacles can come from, so let’s look at five ways to improve every shipper’s approach to freight claims.
The first recourse in reducing freight claims has to be preventing them from happening. Successful shippers need to try to identify and limit OS&D (overage, shortage, and damage) before it can ever happen, especially when one study found that 21% of U.S. adults who have bought a large item said it arrived damaged, and 15% said the item never arrived at all. One way to preemptively strike against freight loss is to prioritize and rank each shipment. Access to analytics from the software platform is needed to compile those rankings and create an alert system to instantly keep up on the high-priority shipments. The software can also collect and review details of past red-flag areas with an eye on risk management of future shipments.
Freight claims are useless without documentation. To have any success at winning a freight claim, you must have documentation of the bill of lading, a transport manifest, signatures from representatives in charge of the shipment, etc. It is where past practices, such as manual documentation strategies and many tech solutions, fell short. Documents were often displaced in the former method and often lost in file cabinets. In the latter approach, the dependence on multiple apps led to confusion and needlessly complex storage and organization processes. That is where a specialized freight claims document organization provider with worry-free and expert management can solve those maladies for shippers.
Along with many other facets of shipping, the logistics visibility industry is reaching new levels of prosperity. For instance, one estimate figures the North American supply chain visibility industry could soon be worth $1 billion, according to the Journal of Commerce. But with so many software-based visibility solutions, shippers can easily create a messy web of software. Poor software management is a detriment to daily logistics operations, but it’s a potentially disastrous liability in freight claims. By limiting claims operations such as document storage, analytics, and deadline management to a single software interface, shippers can avoid the easy mistakes of bad platform-to-platform interactions, such as transferring documents between software platforms.
With the logistics market reaching more places across the globe, shippers everywhere are facing logistics crises all over the world. One such dilemma has been facing the Chinese port of Qingdao. Due to a COVID-19 outbreak lockdown in Shanghai earlier this year, vessels were diverted to Qingdao, which saw a 33% increase in ships. The Chinese port of Tianjin also was dealing with a 29% rise in one month. In another part of the globe, dock worker strikes were wreaking havoc for shipping logistics managers dealing with the British ports in Liverpool and Felixstowe. In Liverpool, the workers were expected to strike for eight days. These two examples testify to how much the landscape can change and how shippers need to be prepared to handle claims of all kinds. In these dire situations, that’s when it’s vital to have cloud-based freight claims management and communication. This expert software gives the shipper’s entire logistics team access to the same information on-demand, no matter where and no matter when, to try to stay ahead of mammoth obstacles.
When you hear the phrase “freight claims,” it usually comes with an “oh no!” That usually means an error in logistics and something has not gone right. With that comes the uncomfortable conversations with customers to explain what went wrong. But those calls don’t have to be limited to the negative, and shippers can show customers that their services aren’t just impressive when things are going smoothly but also reliable when things turn sour. With 25% of containers arriving damaged each year in the U.S. and 73% of respondents saying the returns experience affects their likelihood to buy again from a particular retailer, that’s a significant number of people that shippers want to impress with a smooth freight claims process. Using the right platform with integrated deadline management can keep shippers up to date with deadlines as well as streamline the communication and documentation needed to ensure that customers stay informed every step of the way.
These five practices can help shippers make freight claims management more efficient and up-to-speed, from the beginning (prioritizing and identifying concerned areas to prevent damages) to the end (integrated deadline management that can keep the customer up to date). It takes teamwork to understand and master the formidable freight claims process. With Freightclaims.com, shippers can access the expertise they need through an easy-to-use software system. To start connecting with those freight claims software experts, request a demonstration from Freightclaims.com.
