As the first female Executive Director on the board of GFS, and in an industry that’s been largely male dominated, Bobbie Ttooulis, Group Marketing Director obsesses about offering retailers the ability to deliver personalised delivery experiences and convenient parcel journeys for their customers. We spoke to Bobbie to find out more about her role and her thoughts on the industry today.
Bobbie tells us that GFS was the first and now the largest provider of multicarrier ecommerce delivery and returns services with over 1,000 services spread across 220 different countries around the world. And this all covered as a managed service to automate and simplify the multi-carrier multi-market shipping from the checkout to the doorstep as a single integration to power the delivery experiences customers want and need.
Contingency, Clarity & Choice
And delivery experiences are more important than ever, 85% of consumers would refuse to shop from an online retailer again if their experience is suboptimal, with Bobbie saying contingency, clarity and choice are the key factors retailers should consider.
Contingency planning is key, reliance on a single carrier is no longer an option as if things go wrong, as we’ve seen recently with the UK postal service, leaves frustrated customers and can paralyse a business overnight.
Clarity is key to delivering positive delivery experiences, with visibility of a parcel’s status through the ability to track it’s progress being key to setting customer expectations and delighting them.
Choice through offering a wider range of carriers can delivery the personalised experience customers demand, whether that be through free delivery from an economy service to a premium delivery at a cost.
Sustainability & Automation
The need for speed is of lesser importance than many may think, with 70% of consumers willing to wait up to 5 days for their delivery if there is an environmental incentive attached to the offering. Retailers can offer more choice with options such as click & collect, parcel locker solutions and carrier partners with electric vehicle final mile delivery. These are options that literally ‘won’t cost the earth’ says Bobbie and will delight customers who care about the planet we live on.
However, the more options you offer customers the more complex it is to delivery and so automation is the only possible way to make these delivery experiences that delight customers available. GFS are a single multicarrier partner who offer choice of carrier, with the buying power to give consumers choice of their personalised final mile delivery at the point of purchase, all powered by a single technology platform and one invoice for the retailer.
Through the last three years of pandemic, climate crisis, cost of living crisis, strikes, and war in Eastern Europe, the big take away has to be that ecommerce retailers can’t rely on a single carrier solution. Agility and ability to switch carrier tracks overnight is paramount to serving customers as is the ability to offer choice to meet their needs. And the only way this can be delivered is through automation to reduce the reliance on labour and manage a retailers cost base effectively, while at the same time offering the sustainable delivery experiences that customers are now demanding.
