Yesterday, the supporting platform for the Yodel Driver app hit technical issues. This resulted in customers being unable to track their parcels via the Yodel website and the customer facing Yodel Parcel Tracker app. Features relying on this detail such as Inflight & default safe place setting were also impacted. This would also have affected Collect+ parcels as they are delivered by Yodel.
However, Yodel sprang into action with a back up manual delivery process so drivers continued to deliver parcels due for delivery while Yodel were working on rectifying the issue.
For retailers, reports covering Tuesday’s service may initially be impacted however Yodel will update these to correctly reflect today’s performance once the systems are recovered.
It’s tempting to point fingers at Yodel but it’s worth noting that they’ve come on in leaps and bounds in recent years and their service is normally flawless and their tracking exudes excellence. A decade ago, the only tracking you’d get from Yodel would be a delivery date, now you get a two hour time slot via email/SMS and can follow updated delivery estimates on the Yodel app. Plus of course you can make on the day changes to delivery (such as nominating a safe place or neighbour).
Unfortunately, technical glitches do happen and the mark of a great company is how they deal with them and their interim performance and recovery plans. I’m willing to bet that most consumers who received a Yodel delivery yesterday didn’t even notice that Yodel were having technical issues.