This article first appeared as a LinkedIn article I wrote on December 4th 2015.

It was extremely exciting watching Amazon’s demo video of drones delivering goods to the customer. There is still time for this to become a full-fledged reality. If we take in consideration the Indian market, it is probably going to be much later given the sheer operational nightmare with unplanned city development and electric cables which criss-cross at no fixed height.

I'm not here to talk about the future but the present building into the future. Till the date that happens we need to focus on the most critical element of the last mile operations cycle-The delivery boy. After all is said and done he is the most integral cog in the machine and without him all efforts which are made to get the shipment to the desired location will crumble.

Given how important he is, it is necessary(The need of the hour I would say) to keep him happy, motivated and excited to come to work. It is not feasible to pay a very high salary as the overall impact on costs and profitability will be too heavy.

He is the guy who spends his time in the field, breathing through the dust, bearing the brunt of the heat in summer and rains in the monsoon. How exactly does one keep them happy?

Something as simple as a pat on the shoulder works wonders. Spend 30 seconds asking him how was the day? Could he make all the deliveries? In case he couldn't what was the reason? Give him a smile and buy him a cup of tea.

Doesn't take too much out of us but makes a massive impact on the guy. The feeling of being wanted in the company itself is a huge boost for them. Given their pay cheques it doesn't take them long to get another job somewhere else.

Retention is key given the huge upswing in volumes of consignments that we see have begun to witness thanks to the e-Commerce explosion in India!

I'm sure you'd agree how difficult it is to recruit delivery field staff today. It takes under 30 seconds in a day to keep your delivery staff motivated. Try it!

Shomik Roy is a second year MBA student at Schulich School of Business, Toronto specialising in marketing. Shomik’s area of expertise lies in marketing strategy and scaling up sales and operations networks.