Yodel have promised that they’ll deliver for Christmas 2015 and to support their plans have appointed Mark Horrobin to the newly created role of Peak Programme Director.
Mark has joined the company to strengthen and oversee the planning and execution of this year’s Christmas peak, when parcel volumes from Yodel’s retail clients increase dramatically, in line with online sales. You can read more about Yodels plans to ensure Christmas runs smoothly here.
A highly successful board operator, with extensive senior commercial and operating experience in challenging consumer and business markets, Mark has previously worked in the retail, transport and technology sectors.
Mark’s CV includes board level positions at a number of blue chip companies including Tesco Telecoms and AOL and also two years at Onetel Communications which was successfully sold to Carphone Warehouse, where he was Commercial Director.
The appointment is the latest in a series of peak preparations by the carrier, which has already invested heavily in new sites, fleet, technology and training as well as consumer research, which recently revealed a 375% increase in the number of shoppers planning to take part in this year’s Black Friday promotions.
One of Mark’s first actions was to appoint a peak planning team, drawing expertise from all parts of the Yodel business, to ensure a fully integrated approach.
Mark will report directly to Yodel’s Chief Operations Officer and Interim Joint CEO, Keith Basnett. Commenting on the appointment, Keith said; “We’re delighted to welcome Mark onboard, as our planning for this year’s peak enters its next phase. His extensive experience and track record of delivering results in challenging circumstances will help to shape our peak plans and ensure that we are on track to provide the resilience required to deliver this Christmas.”
Whilst Yodel had what’s been viewed in the press as a terrible Black Friday 2014, in reality they did the only sensible thing that they could and suspended collections for a couple of days. All couriers will need to manage peak traffic, which will only grow. Whilst it’s been said that other couriers coped better than Yodel in 2014, in reality they were all working beyond capacity and sooner or later every courier will have to put throttles in place for the peak traffic.
It’s also worth pointing out that Yodel delivered every package in their network in time for Christmas 2014 and their plans for 2015 and the appointment of Mark shows just how serious they are in ensuring they meet retailers and consumers expectations for Christmas.
3 Responses
Well at least they have a scape goat to fire when it all goes wrong.
I think they need to look at how they deliver to the door, sending out the biggest possible transit vans from 8am to 8pm does not appear to be efficient. The driver is having to spend 10 minutes per drop to actually find the parcel they are delivering because they have been overloaded with work to the point they cannot find anything in the back of the van, parcels getting thrown around all day as they have to move a number of parcels to find the next delivery, i have seen Yodel drivers in the back of their van for 15-20 minutes before trying to find my delivery.
I would personally try to avoid a retailer using Yodel and avoid using Yodel to delivery my orders.
We know that customers blame retailers / brands for not delivering within estimates etc, even if they are estimates, so i do wonder why big retailers are still willing to tarnish their brand etc by using these low end couriers, i guess the cost saving must be greater than the cost of the damage done to their reputation.
Perhaps they need to higher a ‘collections’ Director, in the last month 5 non collections from us, useless!
Also mentioned in the post that all parcels were delivered before Christmas, sadly this does not take in to account all the parcels that missed delivery dates/times that we promised to customers and promised by Yodel. How many of these parcels were returned or refunded? How much discount was given to customers because of these issues.
Our returns for the service we use with Yodel are higher than any other channel because of these late deliveries.