Yodel invested some £30 million this year to prepare themselves for the Christmas peak. They then announced early in 2015 that they would be capping collections from retailers in line with pre-agreed volumes.
Yodel then delivered 5,098,559 in the “Cyber week”, compared to 5,048,305 in the same period for 2014. That’s just a 1% increase in deliveries in return for their £30 million investment which has led to some sniggers within the industry as other couriers increased volumes with no caps on collections.
In reality however, Yodel may have made a very smart investment. It’s obvious that in 2014 they over stretched themselves, evidenced by their shut down on collections for several days. For Christmas 2015 they ran like clockwork and having delivered 22 million parcels in the five weeks running up to Christmas, Yodel’s customer satisfaction levels reached an all-time high with 83% of online shoppers surveyed reporting a positive delivery experience. Yodel have now received over 2 million customer satisfaction reviews.
Personally having in the past been pretty unhappy with Yodel’s delivery experience, today I’m one of Yodel’s satisfied customers.
Yodel’s changes included partnering with retailers’ marketing departments to ensure that the supply chain was included in promotional planning, agreeing daily parcel volumes with retailers in advance and placed limits on next day delivery capacity, encouraging clients to spread the delivery of orders taken during flash sales.
Dick Stead, Yodel’s executive chairman added: “Our customer satisfaction levels have continued to improve in line with service performance and it’s particularly pleasing to see them hit record highs at our busiest time of year”.
4 Responses
Yodel? Satisfaction at record high?! Not my experience. The worst delivery company I have ever used.
Chris, have you got shares in Yodel?
Just in case others have the idea of buying Yodel shares it is not possible. They are a private company 100% owned by the billionaire and reclusive Barclay Brothers (worth £6.5B at the last count). Amazon have an option to buy a stake. They do not actually own a stake.