Shipping inspection is a procedure that some company managers think they can get away without. While it may be tempting to trust your employees to do a good job on their own, and not pay for someone’s time to inspect goods just prior to shipment, you’d better have a LOT of confidence in those employees. If you don’t have a HUGE amount of confidence in ALL of your employees, it’s probably a great idea to have someone do an inspection just prior to shipping your goods.
Depending on your circumstances, it can often save you money to have a dedicated shipping inspector. Without an inspection, you may not know what percentage of your product leaves your door with flaws. Is the packaging damaged? Are all the components in place? Is the customer getting the correct product? Without someone performing a final check, how can you know?
What percentage of your orders are coming back as returns? What quantity per day? If you are experiencing a significant rate of returns, you’ll probably save money, and make more money in the long run, by instituting a shipping inspection.
With a shipping inspection in place, you should experience a dramatic reduction in customer returns. This will probably save you a large amount of money. How much time are your employees spending processing returns? How happy are your customers who are returning goods? Not very happy I would guess. How much in shipping charges are you spending to deal with customer returns? There is really no upside to allowing incorrect shipments to leave your door.
It is very important to have a specified person (or persons) charged with peforming your shipping inspection. Inspectors must be held accountable for getting it right. A stamp can be used, or a distinctive signature may suffice. However you choose to handle it, you must be able to easily identify the inspector who handled a particular shipment. Then, if any problems arrive down the road, you will be able to correct them effectively.