Interview: UPS Europe focuses on SMBs, exports and digital investments

“Export is king” for UPS in Europe this year, along with SMBs and customer experience, David Stock, VP of Marketing, stressed in a recent interview with CEP-Research that also covered the company’s other regional growth plans for the coming months.

Overall, UPS is focused on helping its customers grow cross border, while creating added value for end consumers through increased digitalisation, driving SMB growth, and diversifying its own product mix to ensure it remains “agile and resilient”, he said at last week’s The Delivery Conference 2023 in London.

Dealing with disruptions

Stock is a long-term UPSer with more than 22 years working in different roles at the shipping firm. He started in 2000 in Europe and worked in many marketing roles throughout the continent before heading to Singapore in September 2020 to take on the position of VP of Marketing for the APAC region. Then in September 2022 he returned to Europe to take up his current role.

Stock’s time in Asia, which was during the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdowns, gave him good exposure to supply chain disruptions and capacity constraints and dealing with how to balance these. He now brings this experience to Europe at a time when the logistics industry and its customers – the retailers – are facing a perfect storm of cost increases, supply chain complexity and low consumer demand.

Cross-border growth

According to Stock, one way UPS’s customers can survive and grow during the year ahead is through export, and this is why the firm is focussed on developing the right solutions to assist them with cross border delivery.

“What we saw in 2008 during the last recession was that a lot of companies that grew their businesses were exporting,” he said. “They looked outside of their domestic markets and found new ones to sell to. As a result, they were able to offset low local demand by growing internationally. With this in mind, cross-border e-commerce is an extremely important area for us currently. We have a strong ground network across Europe and offer day-definite delivery to retailers so they can provide their consumers with accurate delivery information.”

Brexit solutions

Stock also acknowledged that shipping from the UK to Europe and vice versa is a bit more challenging due to Brexit, but UPS has developed “nicely aligned” solutions to support customers. “We offer things like consolidated clearance, where items are bundled together in one shipment for expedited customs clearance and therefore faster cross-border delivery,” explained Stock. “We have also set up new border entry points in countries including France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. We are getting a lot of success from these right now.”

UPS is also developing new solutions to support companies, particularly SMBs, better handle total landed costs. “We are able to give retailers the ability to predict and inform their customers what the total landed cost is,” Stock explained. “We also give consumers the ability to pay these costs and we’re increasing our payment options and the transparency of that whole process, which is a big pain point for consumers, especially post-Brexit.”

Overall, from a European perspective, “export is king” for UPS, according to Stock, which is why it is investing heavily in the solutions mentioned above. “We are growing export volumes year-on-year, and over the past 10 years export volumes have doubled,” he added. “It is an extremely important area for us.”

SMB growth 

The total landed cost solution mentioned by Stock is just one way UPS is working on better supporting SMBs as it aims to drive growth in this area. “We have a very broad base of customers at UPS, from very big enterprise accounts to smaller customers, but we really want to drive growth into SMB in the future,” he said. “We believe this will give us good returns and will also help us to diversify our product mix, which is extremely important right now. To achieve SMB growth, we are looking at how we can be more relevant to these businesses.”  

To illustrate its commitment to supporting SMBs in Europe, UPS recently rolled out a “Be Unstoppable Driving Gallery,” featuring artwork that highlights local small businesses. The unique designs were wrapped on dozens of UPS delivery trucks throughout Germany. 

“We want to connect with SMBs in Europe to look at how we can bring them on board, help them grow and give them the tools they need to be successful in existing and new markets,” Stock added.

Another way UPS is better supporting SMBs is through its MyChoice for Business solution, which was launched in 2022, and provides businesses with a detailed view of all their inbound and outbound shipments. It also enables firms to track or redirect shipments and offers a billing centre where companies can pay invoices.

Customer experience

One area UPS hopes to help SMBs and its other customers grow is to offer unrivalled customer experience to its customers’ customers – the end consumer. “We know we are reliable and deliver on time performance, but we want to make sure we are delighting both our shippers and the recipients,” he said. “We spend a lot of time carrying out surveys and looking into both shipper Net Promoter Score (NPS) and recipient NPS to try to understand what they feel about our service and to identify how we can improve in the future.”

According to Stock, UPS Europe is “unpacking the parcel journey” and breaking it down in different areas, such as shipper preparation, sorting, and the final mile, etc., to see where it can add value and where it can make things more transparent and user friendly for its customers and the end consumer. Digitalisation plays a big role here, Stock noted.

“This work has led to the redesign of UPS.com which will be launched this year,” he explained. “The redesign will help streamline our digital experience and make it easier for people to interact with and to use UPS. We also rolling out things like the Safe Place photo, which has recently been launched and we are currently working on offering delivery windows.”

For the latter, UPS is working on building a model that is “sustainable and accurate,” and that is standardised across Europe – something which is not currently available in the delivery sector, noted Stock.

“Although we acknowledge that different markets within Europe have different requirements, we also believe that consistency is key to delivering excellent service,” he explained. “This is why we try to create some kind of standardisation across Europe, in terms of the products and services we provide. We want to provide the same high-level experience, regardless of what market we are serving. The Safe Place photo is used in most of our top European markets and so will the delivery window product when it is launched.”

Diversifying its product mix

Along with creating added value for its customers and driving SMB growth, UPS is also focused on diversifying its product mix in 2023. A big area it is currently looking at is healthcare logistics, following the acquisition of Italian firm Bomi Group in late 2022.

“Healthcare is going to be a critical component of our growth strategy,” explained Stock. “And the Bomi Group acquisition really strengthened our presence in this area. It also pivots us into the space of driving premium revenue growth. We need to look at how we can diversify our mix to help us grow smartly. But this diversification needs to be focused on the customer value proposition and delivered with excellent customer experience in mind. Also, if we see changes in the market then we need to be able to adapt quickly and be agile enough to grow.

“In today’s e-commerce delivery market, customers are expecting more from their providers, in terms of value for money, but we believe this provides huge opportunities for growth, especially when it comes to differentiation. We are not standing still, we plan to invest in our network and our technologies during the year ahead to create the ultimate delivery experience,” Stock added.