B2C specialist Hermes today launched time window-based parcel deliveries in Germany, informingprivate recipients about the expected time of delivery to within one hour.
Hermes said it can now inform recipients the day before delivery about the date and expecteddelivery time to within 60 minutes. This notification is significantly earlier than in common inthe parcels industry, according to the firm.
Recipients can call up the relevant information via the online tracking function underwww.myhermes.de and via smartphone apps that can be downloaded from app stores. The move, whichfollows similar initiatives by competitors, will help the company to improve its 95 per cent firstdelivery attempt success rate.
“The new notification service will make the shipment delivery more plannable for ourcustomers,” said Hermes Germany CEO Frank Rausch. “Our already high first delivery attempt successrate of 95 per cent will further rise as a result.”
Rausch explained that Hermes is following a clear trend with the introduction of deliverytime windows. “Customers are increasingly demanding that sending and receiving parcels must bebetter integrated into their daily lives. This is a clear call to action for the parcels industry.In future it will have to orientate itself even more strongly towards the individual wishes andneeds of consumers. Within a few years it will be everyday practice that consumers activelyco-organise and influence the delivery process. The customer will become the director of hisparcel.”
The new delivery notification service is free of charge and covers packets and parcelstransported within Germany, including C2C items and goods ordered online or via mail-order. It doesnot cover returns, deliveries with contractually agreed delivery times or direct deliveries toparcel shops.
Hermes said the new delivery notification service is based on a specially developed newsoftware programme. This uses historical data, the experience of Hermes delivery couriers, dailyupdates from linehaul transportation routes and final-mile data covering delivery rounds, averagedriving times and other relevant data to calculate the expected one-hour delivery time-window.
However, the company is not planning to reduce the delivery time-window prediction anyfurther as traffic delays would impact on its accuracy. “Even tighter delivery time windows wouldonly offer customers a limited added value as the tendency to errors would increase,” Rauschexplained. “Just think about the congested centres of big cities where a 30-minute deliverytime-window can quickly melt away in the rush hour. In view of this, a forecast that predicts thearrival of a parcel exactly to within one hour is the best solution for us at present.”
The launch comes after Hermes was ranked as Germany’s best parcel carrier for the third yearin a row and as one of Germany’s Service Champions in the largest annual survey of customersatisfaction with various industries. Hermes scored a customer satisfaction rating of 70.3 percent, ahead of DHL (69.6 per cent) and UPS (67.4 per cent). “To be the service market leader amongGerman parcel operators for three years in a row is a really excellent result,” Rausch commented.
The survey by ServiceValue GmbH, covering more than one million customer reviews of morethan 1,500 companies from 189 industries, ranked the so-called “service experience score” ofbetween 500 and 1,000 customers per company, based on an online survey.
