Great Customer Experience Starts With the Right Tools

A great customer experience starts with a specifically curated list of assets, the most important of those being great people. Then providing those people with the tools, education, and context they need to use them to best serve the customer.

For example, the brokerage, forwarding, and quotes teams at Future Forwarding all are focusing on CCS completion. The Certified Customs Specialist (CCS) Certification Program is designed to assist trade professionals involved in the import industry to become experts in the current import regulations. The MCS (Master Customs Specialist) designation is the next level certification of knowledge of advanced compliance topics, and is awarded only to a select group of knowledgeable individuals nationwide. Both are recognized by industry professional colleagues and accredited by the National Customs Broker and Freight Forwarders Association (NCBFAA) National Education Institute (NEI). Once passing the CCS exam, each individual is required to complete over twenty CEU hours annually to maintain the designation.

This gives our teams an advantage. This extra level of job knowledge achieved by cross-training other departments improves our quoting and shipping reliability. The team knows to ask questions about specific commodities subject to high duty or release by partner government agencies in the quotes and shipping process. Not only does that strengthen our stance on compliance and continued education, but it makes us more efficient and ensures that you’re getting optimized service every step of the way.

With an ever-changing industry, it’s important to stay up to date on regulatory requirements and market conditions, and have a trusted logistics partner who will keep you informed, compliant, and your cargo moving.

Meet a few of the team members who make that happen. Cody Chatman, Brokerage (CCS), McKenzie Bonner, Forwarding Dept (CCS), Veronica Windisch, Quotes Team (CCS), Jeremiah Hill, Forwarding Dept (CCS), Kristhian Vejarano, Brokerage Supervisor (MCS). And not pictured is Heather Stalvey, Quotes Team (CCS). Put yourself in their capable hands and let them guide your success.

What Is Happening in Congress

Congress has seen a major effort meant to empower the shipping industry’s regulator and strengthen the hand of shippers introduced in the Senate. The Ocean Shipping Reform Act (OSRA) has been introduced in the Senate after passing the House in remarkably bipartisan fashion, 364-60. The bill’s aim is to give more power to the FMC and take action against those engaging in anti-competitive behavior, which has resulted in a negative impact on US importers, exporters, and retailers. The proposed changes also require carriers to meet minimum service standards.

The goal of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021 (H.R.4996) is:

Establish reciprocal trade to promote U.S. exports as part of the Federal Maritime Commission’s (FMC) mission.
Require ocean carriers to adhere to minimum service standards that meet the public interest, reflecting best practices in the global shipping industry.
Require ocean carriers or marine terminal operators to certify that any late fees —known in maritime parlance as “detention and demurrage” charges—comply with federal regulations or face penalties.
Shift burden of proof regarding the reasonableness of “detention or demurrage” charges from the invoiced party to the ocean carrier.
Prohibit ocean carriers from declining opportunities for U.S. exports unreasonably, as determined by the FMC in new required federal rulemaking.
Require ocean common carriers to report to the FMC each calendar quarter on total import/export tonnage and twenty-foot equivalent units (loaded/empty) per vessel that makes port in the United States.

Focusing on detention and demurrage that predated the pandemic, the main concern leveled on this new bill is that it misses the point of the complaints about inability to ship cargo during the pandemic. The main concerns surrounding disruption in the supply chain on a historic level have not been addressed, though the bottlenecks have moderately abated when the White House put intense political pressure on carriers and terminals to get the flow moving.

The House of Representatives also passed the America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing Pre-Eminence in Technology and Economic Strength (America COMPETES) Act on February 4, 2022. Contained in this legislation are:

The reinstatement of the Generalized System of Preferences, retroactive to December, 31, 2020.
Providing for two cycles of the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill.
Imposing restrictions on the use of the Section 321 “de minimis” exemption for non-market economies like China.

For both bills, the Senate will face pressure from interests to water down or remove provisions from the House bill. Ocean carriers do not want to be exposed to violations for incorrect demurrage and detention bills – a common occurrence right now. With the COMPETES Act, companies have made major changes to take advantage of the de minimis rule and e-commerce platform operators and e-tailers would have a seismic shift in returning to processes that included holding inventory in the US and paying ad valorem duties and – more importantly right now – Section 301 duties on many of those items.

We will continue to monitor these two pieces of legislation and update clients on what ultimately is agreed to and passed through Congress.

FUTURE FORWARDING AND REVERSE LOGISTICS

Because shipments are now leaving warehouses for consumers rather than exclusively distribution centers or retailers, the need to have a process for managing customer-level returns is of increasing importance to e-Commerce sellers. An entire association has in fact come into being because of this need. Reverse logistics management is one of the most rapidly growing sectors of e-Commerce management and fulfillment.

The buying and return management needs of goods owners in sectors such as footwear and apparel are far different because their customers are buying differently than a company selling home furnishings or consumer electronics. Garment and footwear importers and cargo owners cannot rely on a one-size-fits-all returns solution offered by just any provider. The specific returns management solutions that Future Forwarding offers differentiate us from the competition.

As detailed in this recent BBC article, consumers who are choosing not to go to stores – or who pre-pandemic were already purchasing these items online – may be unsure of the size they need. Instead of buying one, they may buy two, three or even five versions of the same garment or shoe, bracketing a range of sizes to find the one that fits just right.

For the seller, it means carrying additional inventory and carefully forecasting their selling price to accommodate the inherent cost of processing a return of 50 – 80% of the initial shipment.

For the logistics company, it increases the number of picks for a single order and creates a bidirectional flow of freight into and out of their warehouse, including designing a process to inspect, repackage and prepare a product to leave the warehouse for a second or perhaps even third time.

Future Forwarding has at its core deep experience in handling reverse logistics for garment and footwear importers. We have designed systems that involve inventorying, picking and shipping seasonal orders to traditional brick and mortar stores operated by department stores as well as the brands themselves. At the end of a season, items may be returned to be cleaned, hung, have small repairs made and bide their time to go back out the next year.

The same systems that we use to send and receive these large pick-and-ship orders are immediately translatable to individual e-Commerce orders destined directly for the purchasers.

We maintain comprehensive on-hand and inbound inventory visibility at style, size and SKU level. This ensures accuracy for online stories and also helps the cargo owners determine whether or not a single or multiple shipments will be required to fulfill a single order.
Future Forwarding has designed and optimized our warehouses and deployed technology for our employees that allows them to receive, prioritize and fill orders using rules that we or our customers have set.
Our locations in the Atlanta metropolitan area put us within immediate reach of a significant percentage of our customers’ audiences in as little as three days for most ground-based parcel services.
We have garment-on-hanger and footwear specific racking.

There are warehouses who talk about e-Commerce fulfillment and their ability to pick and pack for garment and footwear companies – and then there is Future Forwarding.

Contact us today for a virtual or in-person tour of any of our buildings or to learn how we can become your e-Commerce fulfillment provider on the back of our strength in return logistics management.

Author: jameshumphrey

Great Customer Experience Starts With the Right Tools

What Is Happening in Congress

FUTURE FORWARDING AND REVERSE LOGISTICS

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