Uber and the new ways for your company to reach the customer

McDonald's in the US has just announced that it will deliver delivery using Uber. Here in Brazil, Uber already has, in São Paulo, partnerships with restaurants through UberEATS, in which it delivers food wherever customers want.

The question is: if today we already have food delivery, why not use apps to deliver other goods? Why are retail companies still not partnering with Uber or any other app to deliver small packages?

Think about the following example, you have a birthday tonight and you forgot to buy the present, you don't have time to go out and buy a present since you have meetings until the end of the day, what would you do?

1. I would go to the party without bringing a gift
2. I would ask someone else to buy
3. I would find a way to buy something before arriving at the party
4. I would buy it online, as long as I received it in time to take it to the party

The latter option is not yet available to many retailers, but could be explored by partnering with one of these apps. With all this discussion of Ommi-Channel in recent times, a partnership like this could be another alternative for consumers, both to receive the goods and to return them in case of need for exchange.

For apps, what's the difference between delivering food or a package? At first, I would say that delivering a package should be easier. For retailers, why not use this new form of delivery and let the customer decide whether the cost-effectiveness of fast delivery is worth it? For the consumer, who already has a relationship of trust in the application, why not use the fast delivery service, as long as it has a cost that compensates?

I believe that in the future these applications, aggregating all these functions, will classify their customers as airlines, giving more benefits to those who use them the most. In the end, everyone wins.

Another example in the form of final delivery comes from Wal-Mart, also in the USA. In two stores, the retail giant tested the possibility of network employees making final deliveries to customers. The products are taken from the chain's DC to the supermarket and, from there, it is up to the Wal-Mart employee to deliver them outside office hours. The employee wins, with extra income, Wal-Mart, with reduced shipping, and the customer, who pays less for it.

I am sure that the bureaucratic and labor part will still have to advance for this to be possible in Brazil, but the new technologies are there, it is up to us logistics professionals to know how to take advantage of the opportunities and, with that, add services and differentiate ourselves from our competitors. .

And is your company already thinking about alternatives for final delivery to your consumers?