In the realm of subscription and delivery services, the concept of an "empty box" might seem puzzling at first. However, understanding and managing these can significantly enhance your delivery process's efficiency. Let's dive into what an empty box is, why it's important to remove them from your delivery events, and a step-by-step guide on how to do so.
What is an Empty Box?
An empty box, often referred to as a "build your own box", "fill your boots box", "you choose box", or "empty basket", is a core item in many subscription services. These boxes offer customers the flexibility to select their preferred items for each delivery. Despite their potential to be empty, they are treated as standard orders, meaning they can be subscribed to and included in event orders, even without any contents.
Why Remove Empty Boxes?
Processing an empty box like any other order can lead to unnecessary complications in your delivery system:
Delivery Inefficiency: Delivery rounds will include stops for delivering empty boxes, which is impractical and a waste of resources.
Confusing Communications: Customers might receive order confirmation emails for an empty box, leading to confusion.
Wasted Resources: Generating labels and manifests for empty deliveries is an unnecessary use of resources.
When to Remove Empty Boxes
To avoid these issues, it's advisable to remove empty boxes from your delivery events immediately after creating them. This proactive step helps in two key ways:
Prevents Routing Delays: Removing empty boxes quickly ensures that your routing system, such as Google Maps, doesn't need to recalculate routes, avoiding delays in the delivery process.
Eliminates Confusing Customer Communications: By removing empty boxes before sending out confirmation emails, you prevent customers from receiving notifications about the delivery of an empty box.
How to Remove Empty Boxes
Follow these steps to efficiently remove empty boxes from your delivery system:
Navigate to Core Products: After creating the event, go to the Core Products section at the top of the event page.
Access Actions: Find the Custom Box (or your specific term for the build-your-own box) and click on "Actions" next to it. A prompt will appear, asking if you want to delete orders containing only this product.
Confirm Deletion: Click on the prompt to proceed with deleting only the empty boxes. If a box contains other products or is paired with another core item, it will not be deleted.
Notification of Deletion: After confirming the deletion, a green notification will display the number of empty boxes removed.
Conclusion
Managing empty boxes in your delivery system is crucial for maintaining efficiency and ensuring customer satisfaction. By promptly removing these from your delivery events, you streamline the delivery process, save resources, and avoid potential confusion among your customers. Always aim to keep your delivery system as efficient and customer-friendly as possible.