Colchones Spring Cuts Route Planning Time by 80%

Last-mile delivery often presents challenging scenarios, especially when your brand promise is to deliver rest. For Colchones Spring, ensuring a smooth, anxiety-free customer experience was a fundamental priority. Relying on manual processes, the uncertainty around delivery times affected end-customer satisfaction. By adopting new technology, the company was able to make a positive transformation in its operations.

In this article, we explore how this Colombian company overcame these challenges and optimized its distribution.

About the company

Colchones Spring is a well-known company dedicated to manufacturing and distributing sleep products, including mattresses, bed bases, and pillows. To reach its customers, the company uses two main channels: a network of retail locations and commercial partners, and home delivery to end customers. For Colchones Spring, the quality of its distribution is just as important as the quality of its products.

The challenge: Uncertainty in the field

Before implementing specialized technology, route planning at Colchones Spring was completely manual. The process was carried out using spreadsheets and relied on the specific knowledge of the person in charge to determine which areas to group together and which vehicles to dispatch.

The real challenge began once the truck left for its route, as real-time visibility was lost. This resulted in failed delivery attempts due to customers being unavailable, while the customer service team had to constantly respond to buyers' questions and concerns.

""The underlying pain point wasn't logistics; it was our brand promise. We sell rest, and we were creating anxiety in the last mile," says Laura Robles, Customer Loyalty and Customer Experience Manager.

The solution: Operational efficiency and visibility

Looking to improve its service standards, the company decided to take the next step. It implemented technology to overcome these challenges, making complex logistics more organized and measurable.

"Route planning today takes a fraction of the time, resulting in a reduction of up to 80% compared to how long it used to take us. More importantly, it changed the nature of the work: the planner stopped building routes and started reviewing exceptions. The platform makes the proposal, and the person makes the decisions when something falls outside the norm," Robles explains.

This evolution allowed knowledge to move from being held by one person to becoming an asset for the entire company, providing the ability to simulate grouping scenarios in a predictable way.

Results: The customer as the true hero

Colchones Spring's greatest achievement has been using digitalization to put customer satisfaction at the center of its operations. Some of the most notable impacts from the technology deployment include:

• Increased customer satisfaction (NPS): More consistent and on-time deliveries helped turn neutral customers into active brand promoters.
• Fewer rejected deliveries: Early alerts with estimated arrival times made it possible to coordinate receipt in real time, significantly reducing failed deliveries.
• Evolution of customer support: With greater traceability, the volume of proactive calls dropped substantially. The customer service team shifted from handling transactional inquiries to focusing on retention strategies.

"We stopped operating blindly. That's the honest answer. Today, if something goes off plan, we find out first and decide what to do. The difference between finding out about a problem through your system and finding out from an upset customer is enormous," concludes Laura Robles.

Solutions such as Descartes + Drivin help companies transform last-mile uncertainty into a predictable and highly scalable process, giving logistics teams the support they need to deliver exceptional service.