UPS has made it possible to never miss another delivery again. With UPS Access Point, you never have to worry about waiting at home for a parcel – especially if it’s more convenient for you to pick it up from one of the hundreds of Access Points across the United States. If an Access Point is closer to work, your office, the gym, or anywhere, you can pick it up there instead.
No more possibility of parcels being stolen from your customer’s front step, leaving you with the tough choice to replace the items lost. Many of these Access Points are also open on weekends and extended evening hours, making it even simpler and more convenient for your customers. UPS Access Points make it even easier for your customers to shop from your eCommerce store and leave happy reviews and become repeat buyers.
You can find out more about PluginHive’s UPS and Multi Carrier shipping options that integrate easily with your Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and other eCommerce platforms.
Should My Business Become a UPS Access Point?
UPS Access Points are created when a business signs up to become a delivery drop-off location. If you have your own storefront as well as an eCommerce website, this may be beneficial to you as UPS drivers will be able to drop off and even pick up parcels each day. Access Points receive a small payment for each parcel dropped off, however, they also receive quite a bit more foot traffic to their store, which also becomes beneficial to growing a business.
Where are UPS Access Points?
UPS provides a Global Locator tool to users who are both shipping and receiving packages through their delivery system. With this tool, you can search a city, neighborhood, or address, and find the best UPS Access Point or UPS Store that’s closest and most convenient to where you want to pick up.
There are so many UPS Access Points located across North America that your customers will not have a problem finding one that works for them. Perhaps it’s within a business they were hoping to shop at soon anyway, making their day even easier.
What is the UPS Access Point Network?
The UPS Access Point Network makes it easier than ever to provide your customers with more options. Many shoppers may choose not to shop online because they dislike the idea of having their deliveries sitting on their front step when they can’t be home to receive them. This is why UPS has created their network of over 22,000 Access Points to provide more options for customers – so they can choose when and where they want to pick up their parcels on a timeline that works for them instead of having to rework their schedules for a package. Each Access Point location is thoroughly checked and verified before receiving the green light to receive your customer’s packages.
How Do I Provide the UPS Access Point Option to My Customers?
It’s actually very easy to integrate UPS Access Points as a shipping option available to your customers. Through an integrated solution or an installed plugin, such as PluginHive, you are provided with a way to easily implement this option into your website. When customers are checking out, in the area where they are to fill in their shipping address, they can instead choose to have the purchase delivered to their preferred Access Point. The Access Points that are offered to them also provide their hours of operation and address, so customers can choose based on their preferred pickup time as well. When the shipment is ready to pick up, they will receive an automatic email or text alert letting them know it’s ready.
Having access to the many locations available in the network makes the shopping experience for your customers even more transparent and simple. If there are returns, offer your customers to drop them off easily at an Access Point.
UPS also mentions that small online businesses should recommend their customers to sign up for UPS MyChoice so that if there is any need to reschedule a pickup or change a location, this can easily be done through their MyChoice account online or through the app.
What Else Should My Customers Know About Using UPS Access Point?
UPS provides valuable information to consumers so they can easily pick up their packages from any UPS Access Point that is convenient to them – not just the one that’s closest to their residential address.
On the UPS website, they remind users to always have government-issued I.D. with them when picking their package. This I.D. should have their current address on it.
They also mention that there are a few more things you need to know:
- Locations, including lockers, are hand-selected based on reliability, locale and ease of experience.
- We may redirect your packages to a nearby location if you’re not at home at the time of delivery.
- You can use your UPS My Choice® membership to redirect packages to your preferred location before or after our first delivery attempt.*
- All locations accept pre-paid UPS packages.
Remember to continue to offer options to your customers. Not every customer or purchase is the same and having multiple carriers and multiple delivery options available to your customers means that the likelihood of their satisfaction and return to buy again is higher.
PluginHive provides integrations for automated shipping labels using UPS for Shopify, WooCommerce, and other eCommerce-based platforms. To find out how, reach out to our customer support team today. We can’t wait to hear from you!
