Hermes saw their busiest Black Friday Weekend to date after handling in excess of 4.8 million parcels, whilst also recording its highest levels of service. This follows a significant year-long investment programme, which included the opening of its £31m Midlands Super Hub in Rugby.
The delivery firm saw a 7% percent growth in volumes compared to the same period last year, when it processed 4.5 million items over the weekend itself. This year, the company handled 9.1 million parcels during the seven days following Black Friday.
Hermes Investment
To prepare for the peak season, which incorporates Black Friday Weekend and the upcoming Christmas period, Hermes embarked on a dedicated investment plan to increase capacity and operational efficiency. In addition to Rugby, the company added 85 sub depots to its existing network, whilst recruiting an extra 4,500 temporary self-employed couriers to fulfil deliveries. Hermes has also added 490 trailers to its fleet, as well as 230 additional depot vehicles and 160 tractor units.
Customer Service Ratings
Not only did Hermes process record volumes during the Black Friday period, but the company also achieved its highest Net Promoter Scores (NPS) to date. Over the past year, Hermes has seen its consumer ‘communication’ score jump from 8.2 to 8.9, whilst the ‘timeliness of couriers’ also rose to 8.9, up from 8.6 in November 2016. The score for parcels left in a ‘safe place’ grew from 8.4 to 8.7, whilst the ‘condition of packaging’ and ‘condition of contents’ stood at 9.1 and 9.2 respectively.
“Our meticulous planning and ongoing investment has ensured we have been able to deliver another hugely successful Black Friday Weekend for our valued customers. Our network and infrastructure comfortably coped with the additional volumes. Over the coming weeks we will continue to work closely with our clients to understand their forecasts for Christmas and to guarantee the busy festive period will be equally as effective.”
– Martijn de Lange, CEO at Hermes
Do you use Hermes
Do you use Hermes or their consumer arm myHermes to deliver parcels? For a company which traditionally handles economy deliveries the way that they’ve scaled up over the years and increased satisfaction as ranked by parcel recipients is phenomenal. We consistently hear good things about them and although in the past there has been the odd story regarding parcels being left in unsuitable places that’s relatively rare today.
Hermes are also consistently investing in tech with everything from shipping notifications on Amazon Alexa and Google Home to their pay and print instore solution and photo or geolocation delivery success confirmations.
3 Responses
Not strictly relevant but Hermes have been complete pants over Christmas. Dozens of orders sent in on the 17th and 18th not even sorted or showing on their system. Spent all Christmas fending off customers and I await a tidal wave of negative feedback.