Empowering Forwarders with AI: Path to Higher Customer Retention

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For years, technology has been cast as a threat to freight forwarders. At Solvo.ai, we believe the opposite is true: far from a threat, technology—in particular AI—will deepen the quality of the work freight forwarders do, empowering them with new tools and freeing up their time to deal with aspects of their jobs that really matter.

To explore this optimistic perspective, we gathered insights from two Freight Forwarding veterans, each bringing unique insights and extensive experience. Despite the diversity of our backgrounds, we all hit on major areas regarding how AI will empower freight forwarders going forward. Below, you’ll find perspectives from myself and: 

• Sune Stilling, ex-Founder and Managing Partner at Maersk Growth now building the first supply chain and logistics focused venture fund in Europe, Nine Realms.
• Vivek Vanwari, ex-VP at Kuehne+Nagel now helping freight forwarders scale their sales operations through Founder & Thought Partner, Sales Therapy LLC.

This conversation is far from over. In fact it’s just the beginning. Reach out to let us to know how you see AI impacting freight forwarding—and where you think this exciting and dynamic field is headed - Gaurav Bajaj, CEO, Solvo.ai  

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Driving higher operational efficiencies is one key aspect of AI. But, all experts agree, it’s all in service of ensuring you can understand, serve and retain customers better. Sune Stilling sees predictive analytics and AI-driven decision support as being central to this aim.

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“With market volatility becoming the norm, the ability to wargame, to create contingencies and to safeguard against market disruptions is a critical capability that the freight industry needs to serve its customers better” Sune says. “A shipper might flag a delay or concern they have with a shipment, the consequence of which you might not be able to model as an operator. Sune says.

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“The right tech can flag these exceptions well before a shipper can, process scenarios and provide decision support to account teams,” he says. The decision support is also finding applications in determining how you should contract with your customers: do you go spot? do you go long term contracts?. In other words, leveraging AI for early detection and proactive action strengthens the relationship and delivers previously unseen value.

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Vivek Vanwari,, strongly agrees, noting that AI can improve the quality and quantity of customer interactions. “In forwarding, the relationship is so important. The comfort level, the trust that different layers of the organization that you need to build with the client is super critical,” Vivek says. 

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For Vivek, serving shippers faster and better can have a profound effect on retention. “If I'm at any level in sales, a sales leader or senior manager, the amount of time that gets lost in trying to find information during a contract period, for example, is huge. The moment you cut this down from 10 hours to ten minutes, your number of sales, your quantity and quality of outreach to customers is going to dramatically improve. That is a huge win.”, says Vivek. As an example, this can be achieved by using automated quoting engines or even Solvo.ai’s own door-to-door pricing optimisation engine that has the potential to free up to 25% of day’s work. More time away from quoting equals more customers served.

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In Conclusion

Forwarders I speak with regularly share their need to have better oversight and control. Many forwarders expanded at such a pace that decentralization and country-managed P&Ls was the norm. We’re in a new era, though. One where the customer demands transparency and zero-headache shipping. This has forced forwarders to re-evaluate the customer approach and the technology stack that helps them deliver. Ultimately, if they can’t control their first point of engagement (the rate they offer, the speed it’s delivered at and the margins they make), they’ll struggle to be seen as a customer-centric provider or survive in volatile markets. That first engagement sets the tone for the entire relationship and it’s one forwarders can’t afford to get wrong. 

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Those predicting technology as a threat to the industry are missing the point. It’s about the evolution of a forwarder, combining human expertise with AI insights that will deliver forwarder 2.0: one with operational efficiencies, retained customers, and improved margins.

What do you think? Let’s have a conversation.

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