Holiday gift orders and year-end wine club shipments bring plenty of details to manage. Packaging preferences, customer notifications, and delivery questions all need attention while your team is working to get orders out the door.
For wineries handling their own shipping, this is a good time to review where staff are spending time on manual tasks and which recurring instructions could be built into the process. These four checks can help you prepare for the coming weeks and identify improvements for 2027.
Make recurring shipping instructions easier to follow
Start with the details your team needs to remember when preparing an order. Do packaging preferences change by destination? Which shipments need special handling? Where are those instructions recorded?
Putting repeatable preferences into your shipping system can help staff apply them consistently. FORT Ship supports state-specific label language and automated packaging preferences by destination, helping wineries manage these details within their shipping workflow.
Give customer service a complete shipment history
When a customer asks about a delivery, your team needs enough information to give a clear answer. That includes what was packed, where the package has been scanned, and whether delivery has been attempted.
FORT Ship’s Package Life Cycle view provides carrier tracking updates, scan and delivery-attempt history, and a list of the products inside each package. That context helps staff investigate a question and determine the next step.
Review the messages customers receive
Take a look at your shipping communications from the customer’s perspective. Are the messages clear and consistent with your winery’s voice? Does your team have a process for following up when an email fails to reach its recipient?
FORT Ship offers customizable emails for order and package statuses, along with an email failure report. These tools help wineries manage the communications that accompany each shipment.
Turn this season’s shipping data into next year’s improvements
Keep a record of recurring questions and shipping issues as they happen. Pair those observations with your operational data to identify where further investigation would help.
FORT Metrix provides reporting across shipping, inventory, compliance, and customer behavior, including package returns by state and seasonal trends. Reviewing those patterns can help your team set priorities for its next club shipment and its 2027 operations plan.
If your winery is reviewing its in-house shipping process, FORT Ship brings tools developed specifically for wine shippers into a streamlined shipping application.