E-consumer delivery choice preferable to red tape
Parcel deliveries are coming under close scrutiny from Government ministers in London and Brussels bureaucrats eager to ensure that consumers’ rights are protected as the volume of e-commerce shipments continues to include.
The topic proved the basis of an animated debate at the Mail & Express Delivery Show chaired by Brendan Pittaway, the journalist, broadcaster and Director of Silverpoint Media.
Delegates who attended The Mail & Express Delivery Show in London will have been acutely aware of how e-commerce has radically reshaped the parcel business over the course of the last decade.
The volume of packages making their way directly to consumer rather than business customers has mushroomed while ingenuity, industry and innovation have all enabled the number of ways by which items arrive at their destinations to flourish.
It’s fair to say that consumer expectations have increased too. We now have the convenience of being able to shop where and when we want and have someone else deliver it how we like. Social media has also made us more aware of our rights as consumers – and of those organisations which don’t live up to the service levels which we believe we deserve.
However, official sensitivity to consumer – and voter – dissatisfaction has led to suggestions that more should be done to improve the experience of everyone who shops online, no matter where they live.
Both Westminster and Brussels have recently placed retailers and delivery firms under great scrutiny. Following the publication of a report highlighting issues with deliveries to the UK’s highlands and islands, the domestic Government has made clear the need for “guidance” to ensure uniform standards are met, particularly with regard to surcharges.
The European Commission has also promised “further action” if substantial enough moves are not made towards resolving the difficulties involved in shopping and shipping goods bought online across the borders of its member states.
If I gleaned one thing from a debate on the topic at MEDS hosted by Global Freight Solutions (GFS), though, it is that no matter how opposed the politicians and parcel delivery firms might seem at first glance, everybody essentially wants the same things.
Just as consumers want to know when they will receive their purchases and how much they need to pay for carriage, retailers and carriers also want transparency, more first-time deliveries and, of course, more custom.
As Daniel Ennor, GFS’s Commercial Director, made clear, the critical issue is one of understanding on all sides of the many complexities inherent in the industry as well management of consumer expectations.
The Consumer Futures’ report which has focused attention on e-tailers and their delivery partners was seized upon as suggesting that a broad swathe of shoppers were being failed in relation to the services they were offered and the manner of charging for them.
Whilst the document produced very real evidence of difficulties, it also highlighted something very much different.
It showed that individuals were happy to pay extra for certain premium types of deliveries if the amounts which they were being charged were not excessive, they knew what they were paying for and – critically – when the items which they had bought would arrive.
Daniel Ennor emphasised how those very points were fundamental to the GFS Checkout system being adopted in increasing numbers by retailers large and small.
His fellow panel members – Robert Hammond, Citizens Advice’s Director of Postal Policy and Regulation, and Andrew Mulvenna of leading retail software developers Brightpearl – were in full agreement when Mr Ennor outlined how delivery choice and transparency of cost were now considered essential to retailers and consumers.
Not only would the approach crystallised within GFS Checkout help reduce the dreaded shopping cart abandonment but it would help enhance carriers’ reputations by reducing the costs and complications associated with repeat deliveries.
Longer-term success, Mr Ennor concluded, was not only about delivering goods but delivering on promises too.
No-one with a sense of customer service wants to make or receive complaints. By providing consumers with the facts they need in the manner which GFS suggests, there is the potential to reduce those complaints being made in the first place.
Such an eventuality would not just benefit those directly involved in the e-commerce equation but their overseers too. That greater understanding will allow ministers to avoid the need for regulation which can act as a distraction and a drain on time and resources perhaps better expended on other parts of their parliamentary agenda.
