2020 — a Year of Delivery. Industry Research: the Case of 10 Brands

Today’s pace of life of most people dictates its own rules. And the global quarantine has made its own adjustments. Fortunately, new solutions and convenient services, that save time and effort, appear for new challenges. One of them is home delivery of food and goods. 

Delivery is a convenient format for busy people and additional income for business. Almost all catering enterprises are aiming to implement it today. And that is a good decision: today, the food delivery market is growing faster than the entire restaurant industry, and this trend is likely to persist in the coming years.

Quarantine — Delivery Dawn Season

While the whole world stayed at home during quarantine, the city streets were crowded with the couriers. For some individuals who have lost their jobs that activity became one of the few opportunities to make ends meet. And for self-isolated fellows, online shopping with delivery option was almost the only way to renew wardrobe or enjoy restaurant meals. Thanks to this, delivery is one of the few businesses that managed to increase performance and open up new directions during the quarantine period.

The ResearchAndMarkets.com report on the global online shipping market predicts that the industry will grow and develop at an average annual rate of 15.8% (2019 – 2025). This study covers the analysis of leading geographic regions such as North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Industry Study: the Case of 10 Global Brands

Based on the popularity of the topic and increased interest in delivery, our customer experience company Scheduling has conducted research of 10 delivery services brands most popular in Europe and USA and identified NPS of these companies. Through the Mystery Shopping program, Competitor Analysis, and Retail Audit, our agency has identified the main problems in their customer service. In addition, we suggest ways to solve these problems. But let’s put first things first. 

In the course of the customer experience research, we have received insights into 4 main directions: from the clients, employees, support, and from the applications for delivery.

What a client is dissatisfied with:

• The customer’s efforts to receive the order are greater than when ordering from the competitors. 
• The customers experienced not polite, untimely service.
• The courier did not follow the necessary quarantine measures (the mask was missing).
• The employee’s appearance was unattractive (dirty clothes).

During the quarantine period, it is very important that the companies comply with sanitary and safety regulations. Most of the customer complaints were related to the employees’ appearance and lack of basic protective equipment: masks and gloves! That is a gross violation. There were cases when a contactless delivery courier left the order in the agreed place but did not make sure whether the order was received. This all affects the perception of a company and the desire to cooperate with it.

It should be noted that most couriers (70%) have been working in the company no longer than two months, which explains the lack of knowledge and low level of customer service.

What an employee is dissatisfied with:

• 55% of employees consider the bonus system unfair. 
• 70% of couriers are new, poorly trained, and don’t care about the company’s reputation. They are cheating the company.
• At all stages of EJM, a big gap is waiting for the next step.
• Misunderstanding between the departments.
• Courier documents are not scrutinized.

50% of couriers chose that profession during the quarantine period as the most profitable one. 45% of couriers are going to leave the company after the quarantine is finished.

Most of the personnel complaints are about processing their documents. The letter of registration confirmation is received when a new employee is already working as a courier! There were mistakes made in the documents, and no one paid attention to that. This explains the negligent attitude of the couriers to their work.

Dissatisfaction with customer support service:

• Customer complaints that influence the company’s loyalty greatly.
• Courier complaints affecting delivery time, effectiveness, and competence of employees.
• Only 30% of couriers received efficient assistance from support service.
• Only 11% received timely assistance.

In 90% of cases, a customer has to wait for the next step. E-mails are accepted in at least 3 days. What do you think will be the loyalty index to such a company?

Complaints from the employees are: “They asked to call the client and solve the problem directly.” That proves the lack of coordinated department work.

As for application, here is a list of issues:

• Bank card is declined sometimes;
• It requires from 6 to 12! steps to place an order (when the optimal is 3 – 4 steps).

• Complaints from the couriers: 

• constant cashing error;
• time resetting;
• requires constant restarts;
• incorrect location finding.

Most customers complain that after placing an order through the application, they do not receive a notification or call back from the support team. This suggests that this step is missed out of the customer journey.

Well, if it is a thought out feature, then you need to set up an automatic notification that the order has been placed successfully, and a courier will deliver the order within X time.

What to Do When You Are Down On All Fronts

The market of postal and logistics services will continue to grow, as during quarantine consumers appreciated online shopping convenience, and the retailers managed to mobilize and quickly reorganize their work for online shopping.

 Those individuals who value the benefits of online shopping and fast delivery during quarantine will maintain this habit even after it is over. Therefore, we predict further worldwide shipping market growth. However, if the companies maintain the above trends, they may lose their customers. In order to avoid this, we suggest the following solutions.

Customers Satisfaction 

• Mystery shopping technique will help you to check the quality of your services. About 85% of all existing companies around the world use Secret Shopping service to monitor their stores and improve the service they provide.
• Competitor monitoring is a good option for attracting new customers. Constant competitor monitoring is essential for the development of any company as it helps to grow business successfully and enter new markets. This type of research will provide answers to many important questions.
• Monitoring competitors’ prices. Today, companies must more than ever quickly and effectively react to price changes. This service helps to always stay afloat and respond to market changes in time.

Employees Satisfaction

• Tracking the bonus system of competitors. With this service, you will always be aware of your competitors’ state and be able to attract good employees. After all, the motivational component is the main problem faced by all (without exception!) companies that we have studied.
• Courier feedback monitoring. Yes, it seems to be such a trivial thing, but it deserves the attention of management. Tracking the comments, experiences, ways of cheating on social networks, and working chats is an integral part of any successful business. This is the responsibility of HR and the heads of departments. You can also use Mystery Employee service and find out what the employees are hiding.
• Surveys for the couriers about their satisfaction. This way to find out the necessary information is actively used by competent managers and HR specialists. These polls should be conducted on a regular basis among all employees without exception — at least once a quarter, and even more often if needed, due to the changes, crisis, quarantine, etc.
• In-depth research “New Employee Journey”. When a new employee comes, you have to do your best to show how cool it is working in your company. After a probationary period, when he proves his professional suitability, you must constantly support him and promote his development. In this case, the employee will perceive his job as something more than just performing duties. In-depth research will help you get to know the employees, find out their pain points, and solve them, which will benefit the common cause.

Satisfactory and Satisfying Support

• How to check that your support is working? It is simple — call them.)) The “Mystery Caller” service is how we suggest solving the problem with poor quality support. And it’s not always about the call itself. Sometimes, applying the same method, you can check the support service via e-mail.
• Word-of-mouth marketing “Sarafan” as a tool for quick and effective work with feedback and requests from the customers and the couriers. This is an authoring development of our parent brand 4Service Group, that is aimed at being able to hear the client: all customer feedback analytics is on hand in your smartphone 24/7.

Improvements for Applications

Modern problems require modern solutions. We understood that even before the overall crisis and total quarantine, so we launched our new brand — 4testers, that is responsible for solving problems associated with the applications and website operation.

• User Experience Testing

UX research or, as it is sometimes called, design research, serves many purposes in the design process. It helps us identify and confirm or refute our assumptions, find commonalities among our target audience members, and recognize their needs, goals, and mental models. Overall, the study inspires our work, improves our understanding, and validates our decisions.

• Quality Assurance Testing

It includes actions that provide identification of bugs/errors/defects in the software. The main objectives of this process are to determine the methodology of quality assurance of the created product, to integrate the testing process into the general software development process, as well as to choose the tools to support business processes related to software quality assurance.

• Social Network Research and Competitor Research

Thanks to regular monitoring of new brand references in social networks, you will not only be able to respond quickly to possible negative feedback from dissatisfied customers or competitors, but also improve business processes within the company. By analyzing incoming feedback over a long period of time, you can identify customer service weaknesses or problematic branches for your network business.

These are the solutions for a popular industry that we see. If you are eager to learn more about each of them, feel free to follow the links in this article and find out about the services that have been helping to improve service quality for 19 years already!