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Delivery standards – why we need them
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Delivery standards – why we need them From Opinion column, issue 51 – spring 2009 What is a satisfactory home delivery? It’s a more complex question than it sounds. Purists might say it’s when the item arrives at their front door on a nominated day at a pre-agreed time, and is handed to them personally by the delivery driver. Others might say it’s when the item is delivered to the nearest post office or convenience store for collection when they’re ready for it. Or left in a locker-box at the railway station they commute from. Or handed to a neighbour. Or slid under a piece of corrugated iron sheeting in the middle of the potato patch. In an ideal world, online retailers would cater for all these options. Then practically no home delivery would fail. The trouble is, up to now no one has codified all the widely differing approaches to the problem, or formalised them in any way. What is a safe place? What is a drop-box? How does the retailer or carrier recognise these things? Read whole of above item Email us about this item Who calls the shots? From Editor's Rant column, issue 51 – spring 2009 Do you have to go through a self-abasement ritual in order to persuade your web development department to make even the most trivial changes to the pages of your web site? Do you have to arm yourself with a stiff dose of Dutch courage before you even ask? Hopefully not; but to judge from many of the retail web sites we encounter, you’d think this was pretty commonplace. How else is it possible to explain the extraordinarily poor web site usability that is still so common on the internet? How to account for those form fields that request supplementary information about something you haven’t entered yet; for the scolding insistence that information like phone numbers be entered with no spaces in them (anyone who can’t deal with spaces shouldn’t be doing web design); for the forms that revert to default after you enter one wrong piece of information? Think about this. The Wright brothers pioneered powered flight in 1903, and little more than ten years later, fighter aircraft played modest but significant a role in the First World War. Read whole of above item Email us about this item Where’s the delivery information? Help! From Editor's Rant column, issue 50 – winter 2008-9 If you’re an online retailer and you’re sensible enough to offer information about delivery at the top of your home page, there’s one chance in three that you’ll make the mistake of hiding this behind a Help button. This is just one of many frustrating findings to emerge from Snow Valley’s latest Delivery Report (see story list for issue 50). It found that the second most popular name for a link to delivery information is “Customer service” (another obfuscation). Arguably this speaks volumes about the failure by a wide spectrum of online retailers to understand the importance of delivery. The term “help” implies that the user already has a problem. People click a Help button when they’re floundering, and you don’t enter a retail web site expecting to be floundering, do you? You expect to find what you want by yourself, and manage your interaction with the site on your own terms. Read whole of above item Email us about this item Wherever you start from, do it right From Opinion column, issue 50 – winter 2008-9 Internet shopping in the UK increased by 14 per cent in December over the same period last year (IMRG-Cap Gemini figures), whereas retail as a whole fell by 1.4 per cent (BRC-KPMG figures). So even though retail of all kinds is suffering because of the recession, online is still clearly the place to be. But what are traditional retailers to make of this? Should they focus their attentions on their online activities in a desperate bid to compensate for declining high street sales? The idea might sound tempting, but it’s surely too simple a solution? Perhaps the underlying fallacy summed up best in the old story about the man who stops someone in the street to ask directions, and is told: “If I were you I wouldn’t start from here.” Read whole of above item Email us about this item Next day or next month? The UK’s turbulent parcels past Competition may be tough in today’s parcels market, but this fascinating book is a reminder of past troubles in the industry From In the Air, issue 49 – Autumn 2008 Parcel carriers are the lifeblood of the multi-channel market, providing the essential last-mile delivery to consumers, often next day. But in this age of free market forces and price competitiveness, it’s easy to forget just how different things were in the past, when rates for parcel deliveries were fixed as a matter of course; when industrial discontent could delay goods for days or weeks; and when next-day delivery was almost unknown. In a new book that is truly breathtaking both in its historical sweep and in its minute detail, Gordon Mustoe and his fellow-writers draw us back to the distant origins of today’s parcels market. The 300 A4 pages and hundreds of black and white photographs of BRS Parcels Services and the Express Carriers bring vividly to life a largely forgotten era. Read whole of above item Email us about this item Why delivery is even more important now From 'Opinion' column, issue 49 – autumn 2008 What will be the impact of recent world events on the multi-channel market – and indirectly on the logistics support behind it? That's what many in this industry are wondering, though so far it's probably too early to call. Like all retailing, the multi-channel kind must take some sort of hit – but currently the evidence is that it will maintain growth levels way above those of the high street. Relatively speaking, it's still a good place for retailers to be. Yet already fierce price competition has hastened the demise of one parcel carrier, Amtrak. Who knows what other fallout will follow? What is clear is that even if the online market does dip, this can't be regarded as the plateau that some were previously predicting. Exceptional circumstances have prompted the current turmoil, not an arrival at some kind of inevitable peak. Read whole of above item Email us about this item Delivery – the resources are there, so why don't retailers use them? by Marcia MacLeod, from 'Checkout' column, issue 49 (autumn 2008) The development of wireless networks and mobile communications has certainly improved customer service levels. Gone are the days when drivers set off with their loaded vans and no one – not their depot, not their head office, certainly not the home consumer – had any idea where they were or when they would arrive at any particular delivery point. Now drivers can receive routes and schedules on handheld devices. In theory they can be informed immediately if a consumer has to go out, and can therefore hold that person's order until later on in the day or take it back to base for re-scheduling. They can also be given a return collection to add to the schedule "on the fly". In turn, they can tell their depot, by phone, text, SMS or email – and sometimes by just pressing a button on a pre-programmed menu – that they are held up, and subsequent deliveries will be late, or even that they might not be able to deliver their entire load that day. Better still, they can contact the consumer with the same information. And they can remind consumers they're coming in the morning of D (delivery) Day, or an hour before estimated time of arrival, again using SMS, text, email or voice. |