What should you expect from your 3PL’s communication? Most people don’t know the answer until something goes wrong. You send an email and wait. You call and leave a message. You start to wonder if anyone’s paying attention to your inventory at all.
Every 3PL communicates differently. Some are hands-off until you push them. Some send you automated reports and consider that the whole job. A few will actually pick up the phone before you have to call them.
I’ve been running Stewardship for years now, and I’ve had a lot of conversations with clients about what they wish their last 3PL had done differently. This article is what I’ve learned from those conversations — what good communication should look like, no matter who you’re working with, and then specifically what that looks like here at Stewardship.
How Fast Should Your 3PL Respond When You Reach Out?
Response time is one of the clearest signs of how a 3PL treats its clients. If you’re working with a large operation, it’s not unusual to wait a week for an answer. You end up chasing people down, following up on your own follow-ups, just to get information you needed days ago.
Here at Stewardship, my goal is a two-hour response window for any client inquiry. That’s not a policy printed on a wall somewhere — it’s a standard I’ve told my team I want us to hold. Being a smaller, boutique operation means we can actually do that. There’s no ticket queue between you and talking to our team to get your answer.
What Kind of Reporting Should You Expect from your 3PL and How Often?
Reporting varies with each 3PL. At Stewardship, we build automated reporting around what each client actually needs, but there are three types most clients get some version of:
- A monthly aging inventory report, showing how long your stock has been sitting in our warehouse
- An end-of-day shipment report with tracking numbers for everything that went out that day
- Real-time receipt confirmation — the moment something is received and posted, you know about it
That last one happens as it’s happening. If a container gets unloaded and posted this morning, the update goes out this morning, not at the end of the week.
Does Your 3PL’s Reporting Actually Tell You What You Need to Know?
A report can run on schedule for years and still not be built around what actually matters to you.
We learned this recently with a longtime client — a supplier to a national home improvement store. They’d been getting a monthly aging inventory report from us for years, structured to show inventory grouped by item.
It ran fine, but as their business grew, they started running low on space and called to figure out why. When we dug into it together, we realized the report format wasn’t giving them what they actually needed.
Grouped by item, it made it look like more than 60% of their stock had been sitting here for over a year, when in reality that wasn’t accurate for how they needed to track their stock. We rebuilt the report to track by individual piece instead, and it gave them a much clearer, more useful picture of their inventory going forward.
The report wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t built around what mattered to them. That’s the difference between getting a standard report and getting one that’s customized to what you need to make decisions.
Does Your 3PL Reach Out to You, or Do You Have to Chase Them Down?
Proactive communication is the difference between a 3PL that manages problems and one that just reports them after the fact.
A few weeks ago, we received a container with over 400 cartons, several of them missing labels. It was early morning, already hot here in Mississippi in August, and easy for that kind of thing to get set aside and dealt with later.
Instead, my operations manager started taking pictures and building a group text with the client within thirty minutes of the container being emptied. We were sorting it out before the client even knew there was a question to ask.
That’s what proactive communication should look like: your 3PL tells you about a problem, not the other way around.
Why Regular Check-Ins Matter More Than You’d Think
Beyond day-to-day communication, there should be a regular rhythm of checking in — not just when something’s wrong.
We started doing quarterly business reviews with our clients. They don’t take long, fifteen minutes, usually. We get on a call, look at the current scope of work, ask if anything could be running better, and find out if their needs have changed.
With that same national home improvement store supplier, our first quarterly review surfaced a few small adjustments that made the relationship run smoother going forward.
It’s a simple habit, but it keeps small issues from turning into big ones and ensures the partnership still fits the business as it grows.
Questions to Ask Your 3PL to Find Out How They Really Communicate
Whether you’re evaluating Stewardship or anyone else, here are a few questions worth asking that will give you insight into what to expect:
- What’s your typical response time when I reach out with a question?
- What reporting do I get automatically, and how often?
- If something goes wrong on your end, how will I find out — and how fast?
- Do you check in with clients on a regular basis, or only when there’s a problem?
- Can you walk me through an example of a time something went wrong and how you handled it?
The answers will tell you a lot.
Good communication isn’t complicated. It’s showing up, telling the truth, and reaching out before you’re asked. At Stewardship, we believe great communication isn’t just what is said. It’s also how the communication makes you feel. Our goal is for every client to feel valued and seen.
If you want to talk through what that looks like for your business, reach out, and I’m happy to discuss it with you.
