Food banks provide assistance to many people within a community who are struggling to put food on the table. Many food banks even deliver groceries straight to those who need them, going above and beyond to ensure that no one goes without, especially during the challenges of COVID-19 and physical distancing.
When someone needs to utilize the services of a food bank, they can make their requests via phone calls to the food bank, who then delivers the food once the request has been verified. Depending on the number of calls received within the run of a day, this process can easily become overwhelming and disorganized for food bank staff, especially when done manually.
This is why introducing automation into the food bank delivery process is a great idea!
An automated food bank distribution solution can be of great benefit to food banks, helping to ensure that those who require their services can request and receive them accurately and efficiently. Here are the top six benefits of implementing a digital food bank delivery solution.
1. Increased Efficiency
A typical food bank distribution solution includes a set of manual tasks that are completed separately for each requestor. Once someone makes a request for food bank delivery services, the food bank has to verify the request, send a confirmation to the recipient, fulfill the order, send a delivery reminder, and then deliver the food.
An automated food bank distribution system not only can easily collect requests through an online form and store them centrally, but it can automate the sending of the confirmation and reminder messages, increasing the overall efficiency within the food bank and reducing confusion by eliminating some of the tedious manual tasks.
2. Multi-channel Communication
With a manual food distribution process, food banks will generally only ever use one communication method to send out order confirmations and reminders. Often, a single communication method will be enough, but wouldn’t it be even better to send messages using more than one?
If you’re only using one communication channel to send out food bank delivery messages, there is always that chance they may be missed. An automated food bank distribution solution allows you to automatically send out confirmations and reminders using multiple channels to ensure that your messages get seen by recipients.
3. Personalized Communications
Automating your food bank’s food delivery process doesn’t mean you have to lose that personal connection with your community and your food recipients. Because you are storing contact information in the automated solution’s online database, this means the initial order confirmation message and reminders can be automatically personalized based on the information in this database without you having to put in any additional work.
4. Secure Information Storage
In a digital food bank distribution solution, all data is stored in a centralized and secure online platform and all message transmission is encrypted. This means you and your food recipients can be sure that all information that gets collected will be stored safely and protected.
5. Automated Surveys
It is important to gather feedback on your food bank distribution system to ensure that you are maintaining an appropriate level of service and that your recipients are satisfied with their order fulfillments.
The automated food bank home delivery solution is able to automatically send out a follow-up survey each time food gets delivered to a recipient, allowing them to provide you with their feedback while the experience is still fresh in their mind. You can then take this feedback and apply it to your process to ensure that it is as optimized and as efficient as possible.
6. Provided Reports
In a manual food bank distribution solution, it can be difficult to know just how well your messages are performing and how many are reaching their intended recipients. It is important that you know whether your messages need to be optimized at all to achieve higher open rates and engagement.
A digital solution will generate reports automatically once it sends out the messages, so you are able to easily analyze these reports to determine how your messages are being received by their recipients. The reports provide you with key information such as the messages’ open rates, click-through rates, as well as any unsubscribes that may have occurred.
Looking to implement an automated food bank distribution solution?
Each of these benefits can go a long way to making your food bank home delivery and distribution process more effective. You may be wondering how much work is involved with implementing such a solution and what kind of tools you need to acquire to piece it together.
Luckily, SimplyCast has already developed an automated food bank distribution solution using its all-in-one suite of tools that any food bank can use and customize to suit their own particular needs. Rather than integrating multiple different tools to create an automated solution, SimplyCast includes everything food banks need in one centralized platform.
Would you like to learn more? Click the button below to request a demo from our knowledgeable team to see how your business can leverage automation!