At the MetaPack Delivery Conference I sat down with Roger Morris, Head of Royal Mail Parcels to find out about their latest innovations and plans for 2018.
Royal Mail have been making huge investments in recent years with their roll out of hand held PDAs and this is going to power their new system of Track and Trace with new retailer branded notifications – 7 retailers are already on the programme for nationwide branded notifications meaning that you won’t be just told a parcel is on it’s way but that your purchase from a particular retailer is out for delivery.
Royal Mail Parcels – Tracked & Tracked Returns
Royal Mail are seeing massive growth for their Tracked and Tracked Returns services, 31% growth year on year so it’s no surprise to see a focus around these services. They are also adding barcodes to all Large Letters sent through business accounts so you’ll be seeing robust delivery confirmations for these too.
Royal Mail Parcels to get more specific notifications
Notifications to consumers will get more specific as Royal Mail start to focus in on the customer experience. Time and time again we heard at The Delivery Conference that the carrier industry as a whole are zeroing in on the customer rather than the traditional focus on the parcel.
Royal Mail will start issuing notifications the day before delivery to inform the consumer that a parcel is due for delivery. They’ll initially then notify customers of an expected delivery window on the day and aim to narrow this time slot down as the service rolls out and becomes established.
In addition Royal Mail will offer easier ways to perform deliveries first time including deliver to neighbour or safe places and will capture details and pass the information to the customer through the use of their hand held PDAs. Expect pictures of the parcel in the safe place or the name as well as the house number of the neighbour your parcel has been left with.
Personalisation of Royal Mail Parcels delivery experience
Deliveries in 2018 across the board are going to become a personalised experience and carriers who fail to adapt and innovate will become less popular with consumers and eventually retailers. Everyone would love an ideal world where every single parcel was personally handed over to the recipient at a time and place convenient to them, but second best has to be the ability for the consumer to choose how the delivery is performed and without question consumers want to be kept informed as to where their parcel is, when they can expect it and if they’re not home some certainty of how they can retrieve it.
As the national postal service, Royal Mail are in the unique position of delivering to every household in the country every working day of the week so it’s no surprise that they are stepping up their efforts to personalise deliveries and tailor the experience around the customer. It follows that the benefits for retailers will be fewer failed deliveries, fewer ‘lost’ parcels and fewer parcels returned because they were not collected. That’s good news for everyone.
11 Responses
So basically they are going to copy what DPD have been doing for the last 3 years. Well done Royal Mail
Perhaps they should just go back to basics and actually deliver stuff on time. This last Christmas was the worst I remember for along time, 1st class taking 10 Days plus to arrive!!!
The postman can’t handle scanning the 2D barcodes as it is, temporary staff at Christmas are the worst as they don’t have enough scanners so they don’t bother.. I think royal Mail have avoided the full tracking experience thus far as it would just show their own inadequacies. We have long awaited the 2D confirmation delivery on Large Letters, this went quietly live late last year, problem now is they have not told all the postmen ?
we still wonder why undelivered packages disappear
any chsnce of this wondrous new fangled tracking thing finding them?
When mail goes missing it’s normally because it’s been damaged. Royal Mail prefer to say it’s lost than admit someone has mistreated the parcel.
Last year I was handed 3 signed parcels & one was left on my doorstep in plain sight. All of them were signed in my name but none of them were actually signed for by me. The postmen are signing for tracked mail.
At least 7 times I received mail addressed to a completely different borough. I’ve called them & told them to come & collect it from me on every occasion & they have never once bothered to turn up.
And the postmen in my area of London change like the weather. I’ve never had a regular postman for longer than a few months. There are up to 7 different postmen delivering my mail at the moment & sometimes three deliveries a day. Delivery times change from 7am to 5pm…it is a total shambles.
This is down to bad management not keep the same person on same route. They want to control people and treat them like crap that why new starters are not bothered were mail goes because they not on same job altime. When you leave a person on same job you see how happier they are and will do a gud job en. That why at my office people are trasfering to others office because they had enough of being messed about. The best way is to have most of posties to on regual jobs en we will happy work force and less conpliants. But will managers listen. Nòoooo
Missed that show… But if I had one question for RM it would be:
When you deliver items, can you not confirm the delivery address or if leaving it with a neighbour, indicate which neighbour you have left it with.
Showing “Your item was delivered to your address or a neighbour” is not very helpful when the person is saying they do not have the item.
I would also ask that they did not leave the item in the customers safe place as the seller is still responsible if the item goes missing.
When they start to actually “DEAL” with their constant issues, we will look at their personalised experience (this seems to be the buzz word this week)….Simply put RMG do not deal with issues.
We have had some awful experiences with their Tracked services, there is nothing personalised about it, it is just poor. Right now we are dealing with several international tracked items they could not even be bothered to scan onto the system. Customers were rightly refunded AGES ago and we still cannot claim..it is just poor.
posties are on the whole hard working usually good natured
and affable there very good at
walking miles and lifting heavy sacks
though we suspect they are not computer whizz kids or overly tech
savvy
so royal mails high tech systems are doomed