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.

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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.

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Here’s a neat piece of ellipsis in an email correspondence I’ve been having with a retailer. I had to return some faulty goods, and I wasn’t clear about the refund process. So I sent the supplier an email asking whether the refund would be activated automatically once they received the goods back into stock, or whether I had to take some action myself at that point.

And here’s the reply: “Once the parcel is returned to our warehouse we will be able to issue you a refund.”

Right – so they “will be able” to issue me a refund. But does that mean they actually WILL issue a refund, or merely that they “will be able” to do it if I ask them to? They haven’t actually spelled it out, so I’m left none the wiser.

The joys of ambiguity!

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This is true to a point, but it can backfire. We’ve just received an email from a consumer that runs as follows:

“I've just had the experience of cancelling an order because the quoted delivery time was too slow, then finding that the actual delivery time would have been acceptable after all.

“On Tuesday I ordered a DVD recorder from Amazon via one of its ‘partner’ suppliers, which stated a delivery date between the Monday and Thursday of the following week. That was the earliest delivery date I could see on the site on that day, though I really wanted to have the item by Saturday.

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Well, it’s finally happened. Someone (namely ByBox) has come up with what could be a real winner in terms of alternative solutions for the home delivery market: intelligent locker banks combined with public phone boxes on existing phone-box sites.

Shared locker systems have been hovering in the wings of the B2C delivery market for the past eight years, but although increasingly sophisticated, and now widely deployed for field service deliveries, they were never going to cut it with consumers when they were mostly tucked away in filling station forecourts and similar locations.

Getting them literally out on the street, as already seen in Germany and elsewhere, puts a whole new complexion on the idea, and ByBox hasn’t finished there. We’re reliably told it already has other plans up its sleeve to put the boxes where consumers can easily reach them.

Rival Business Direct already has similar locker banks in consumer use in supermarket car parks, and has told us it also has exciting plans to add other accessible locations to its network.

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The internet is like one enormous shop. That’s probably how a lot of consumers see it, anyway. Web sites are the display shelves, and the service counter is the consumer’s own doorstep.

However, a lot of retailers would probably like to change that perception, and draw online consumers back into their traditional bricks-and-mortar retail stores. But the big question is, should we let them?

Certainly we’re hearing a lot these day about concepts such as “shop online, collect in store”. With this kind of system, retailers are spared the hassle of doing the deliveries, but get the “virtual footfall” offered by the internet, as well as actual footfall in their shops. Win win.

Indeed, you could say this represents the ultimate “unattended delivery solution” to the failed delivery issue, since consumers are collecting their own goods, using exactly the same locations where they would have gone if there’d been no internet in the first place. Problem solved ... or so the retailers would like to have us think.

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