Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Fulfillment Services
Our DTC operations help you stay ahead of changing expectations to provide loyalty-inspiring experiences across all touchpoints – fulfillment, customer service, order management, payment and fraud, or all of these services wrapped up in a comprehensive package.
One of the greatest challenges facing brands today is rapidly changing consumer expectations. Your brand’s reputation depends on a quality customer experience across the entire eCommerce journey.
Our customizable solutions are adaptable to your unique requirements and backed by solution professionals offering in-depth experience across a variety of industry verticals. Look to PFS for an outsourced support solution that meets your unique requirements, with the flexibility to meet tomorrow’s challenges.
DTC Fulfillment
PFS is more than a 3PL. We excel at brand-centric fulfillment, particularly for rapidly growing brands requiring high-touch services. Our knowledgeable fulfillment experts, leveraging our advanced technology set, provide custom pick-pack-ship processes that ensure your business can operate at any volume – without compromising on customer experience. Scalability and flexibility is in our DNA: Our solutions are designed to grow with your business and help you adapt to a changing market.
Our DTC fulfillment capabilities include:
- 2 million square feet of global distribution space
- Proprietary WMS and lighted pick carts that automate and streamline operations
- Pick/pack/ship and value-added services that keep the focus on your brand
- Freight management that meets demand for fast and inexpensive delivery
- Returns management that maximizes your salable inventory
DTC Customer Service
We create a seamless extension of your brand through our international, award-winning contact center services, including inbound/outbound calls, live chat, chatbots, email and social listening. Our team of multilingual agents not only provide fast, friendly answers to the ever-recurring “Where is my order?” question, but also nurture the entire customer relationship, drive repeat sales and serve as an indistinguishable extension of your brand.
Unlike impersonal call centers that provide canned responses, we treat each interaction as an opportunity to engage, educate and inspire your customers. We accomplish this through a variety of features that set us apart, including:
- Custom hiring profiles by brand
- Product displays on the floor
- Brand-immersive training
- Support for VIP and loyalty programs
- Product consultations and recommendations
- Up-sell and cross-sell training to drive revenue
- Proprietary online knowledge hub for brand information
- Agent incentive programs and ongoing career development
DTC Order Management
Our PCI- and GDPR-compliant order management services are scalable for volume spikes and are fully integrated with your website, payment platform and ERP system. We can integrate with every major platform on the market, including Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify, SAP Commerce Cloud and BigCommerce.
We support a variety of order management options to meet your needs, including:
- Drop shipping
- Distributed order management
- Subscription and auto-refill support
- Merchant of Record services
- Fraud management
- International address validation
- Multi-currency, tax and VAT support
How will you manage my company’s sales peak period?
From late November to late December, 80% of our clients handle 40% of their entire business for the year. During the 2023 holiday peak, this translated to PFS processing 7.7 million orders, shipping 19.5 million lines, and fulfilling $777 million in shipped revenue – all between Thanksgiving and the end of the year.
We help each client stay ahead of demand with state-of-the-art forecasting tools and methodology, a 24/7 command center, flexible staffing arrangements and system-driven fulfillment process that are designed for maximum efficiency and throughput. Even if your business isn’t subject to seasonal peaks, we use these same processes to support promotions, highly anticipated product launches and unexpected spikes in volume throughout the year.
Do you process customer returns?
Yes! We understand that a hassle-free and seamless returns experience is key to maintaining positive customer relationships and preserving your usable inventory. We support the complete returns process and can customize each step according to your business rules, from prepaid returns labels and returns receiving, to cleaning, refurbishment and repair. We can also help you track return reason codes to identify and address any product or merchandising issues that might be driving higher returns. In the event you need to recall a product, we can support the entire process, from customer communication to shipping out replacement products. Like all of our solution components, we tailor our reverse logistics services to fit each client’s needs.
What value-added services do you offer?
Value-added services can be the difference between an ordinary and an exceptional customer experience. Here’s a sample of the variety of services we support today – and we’re also able to develop custom services, so if you don’t see a specific service listed, contact us and we’ll start a conversation about how we can support your needs.
- Branded packaging
- White glove handling
- Engraving and embossing
- Custom print-on-demand
- Embroidery and monogramming
- Kitting, bundling and shrink wrap
- Gift wrapping and personalized gift messaging
- Marketing inserts, including SKU-driven and order-driven inserts
Click below to watch a video about our value-added services.
Since 2012, PFS has provided PANDORA, one of the world’s largest jewelry brands, with a full suite of DTC eCommerce services. Given its product mix, global footprint and rapid business growth, PANDORA needed a partner who could not only handle high volumes efficiently – especially during the holiday season – but who could also provide branded pack-out services, security for high-value products and multilingual customer service.
Today, PANDORA’s solution features:
- A picking/packing solution within locked cages to deter loss and ensure products are handled with the utmost care
- Branded boxes, pull-string pouches and custom packaging for fragile products
- Order management services, including payment processing and fraud management across international platforms
- Multilingual contact center services throughout multiple countries
In 2018, PANDORA also participated in a pop-up distribution center (DC) pilot program to alleviate the strain on their primary DC during the holiday peak. Through this program, we built two pop-up picking/packing operations from the ground up in only four weeks, one in Memphis and one in Toronto, with distributed order management (DOM) order routing guidelines according to the brand’s business rules. Despite the high throughput of the pop-up DCs, we successfully preserved the high-end pack-out services that set PANDORA apart. For the seven weeks that the pop-up DCs were operational, PANDORA saw a 50% reduction in shipping costs, a 50% reduction in shipping time and a 25% reduction in contact center calls per order.
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