Most retailers know how many parcels are lost.
Fewer know how much those losses actually cost.
When a delivery goes missing, the obvious costs are easy to measure: the replacement item, the refund or the compensation from the courier. Those figures appear on reports and dashboards every month.
The problem is they're only telling a fraction of the story.
Behind every lost or damaged parcel is a chain of hidden costs that rarely belong to a single department. Customer service spends time handling enquiries. Finance waits for credits that may never arrive. Logistics manages carrier disputes. Marketing works harder to replace customers who quietly never return.
No one owns the whole picture.
That was the focus of our recent BOOM Live webinar, where Anansi CEO Megan Bingham-Walker was joined by retail supply chain consultant Becky Lombardo to explore why last-mile delivery failure has become one of retail's most overlooked profit leaks.
Why this matters now
Retailers have spent years investing in faster fulfilment, better visibility and improved customer experiences. And even more at the top with marketing and branding to ensure enough customers come into the last mile.
Yet when something goes wrong in the final mile, many organisations are still relying on processes that haven't fundamentally changed for decades.
Carrier liability rarely reflects the retail value of the goods. Claims are often slow, manual and inconsistent. Credits replace cash. Teams repeat the same work across multiple systems. And perhaps most importantly, very few businesses measure what happens to the customer after the claim has been resolved.
As Becky explained during the session:
"The customer query may be marked as resolved, but that doesn't mean the customer feels the issue was resolved."
For businesses operating on increasingly tight margins, these hidden costs can quietly become a significant drag on profitability. You can be losing customers you spent a lot of time and budget acquiring.
This is a business problem.
One of the biggest themes from the webinar was that this isn't really an insurance problem.
It's a business problem.
The discussion explored:
Why the true cost of a lost parcel often exceeds the retail value of the item.
How delivery failures impact customer retention and lifetime value.
Why ownership is fragmented across logistics, finance, customer service and marketing.
The hidden operational cost of manual claims and carrier disputes.
Why measuring customer behaviour after a delivery failure is just as important as measuring the claim itself.
Practical steps retailers can take today to uncover the real financial impact inside their own organisation.
Rather than focusing purely on claims, the conversation challenges retailers to rethink delivery resilience as a strategic capability that protects profit, customer loyalty and operational performance.
One question every retailer should ask
If you selected 20 customers who experienced a lost or damaged delivery last month...
How many of them came back?
It's a deceptively simple question, but one that very few organisations can answer with confidence.
Until you can, you're only measuring part of the cost.
Watch the full webinar click here
If you're responsible for logistics, supply chain, finance, customer experience or retail operations, this session will give you a completely different perspective on the hidden costs sitting inside your last mile.
Watch the full webinar to hear practical advice from both the retail and insurance perspectives, including where to start if you want to quantify the problem inside your own business.
Because delivery failures may be inevitable.
Unmanaged losses don't have to be.
