The difference is in the delivery

Yeah I know that’s our company strapline but today it’s also the title of this blog post.

I was reading Chris Brogan’s blog post – Ship Vs Shit and musing how delivery terminology has now entered the mainstream online world thanks to Seth Godin. I had been meaning to write a post about why “shipping it” means something different to couriers, and now my opportunity has arrived in a different guise.

As couriers we know when you are shipping shit.

It’s quite simple really, you ring up and you say “how much to move a box of whatevers to the other end of the country”. You know zip all about us, how reliable we are or anything else and the first words out of your mouth is “how much?”. When you ask that (I will be blunt) you are shipping shit.

A customer who calls us who values their goods / freight / product asks a different set of questions.

They ask:

  • Are you insured and for how much?
  • Is my item insured?
  • How will my item be delivered?
  • Who signs for my item and where will you leave it if someone isn’t in?
  • What size vehicle do I need?
and then when they have satisfactory answers to those questions they ask about the cost of delivery.
This makes A Big Difference when it comes to the actual delivery. Firstly the clients that ask the questions are the ones that book us, they understand the value of the product they are shipping. They understand the cost of production down time. They know the meaning of time critical delivery . They are also the people that care about how they are represented to the end user.
The people who ask how much? first are the people who waste the morning costing their bosses £30 in wages to try and save a fiver. They should have been doing something more productive but hey, a false economy is better than no economy in these tough times.

No matter what your product is, the delivery aspect leaves the first impression of it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an ebook or 20 pallets of baked beans. If  your ebook doesn’t download correctly then your delivery agent is screwing with your reputation. The same applies when your 20 pallets arrive 4 hours late and in 111 different pieces. The end user, your customer is not happy. You can blame whom you like but the buck stops with you, you were shipping horse manure and you got caught shipping horse manure.

You may be “shipping it” all over the place but the truth is the difference is in the delivery.

Sarah
Return Home.