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How to get your freight delivered on time

June 6, 2011 By

Imagine a day where you are not dealing with late delivery complaints.

For us that is every day.

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Sick of late freight?

As providers of courier services we know how tough it is to get your freight delivered on time. We are fortunate though – we have a process that we are going to share with you and if you follow these steps your freight will always reach it’s destination intact and when it should.  The day you cease to have customers calling about late deliveries is now a few steps closer.

1. When a customer wants a delivery double check their location details

Sometimes a customer calls from one location (that you have on your database) but they want their pallets delivered to a different destination. They don’t tell you but they do tell the warehouse. This means when you schedule the delivery their isn’t enough time for subsequent deliveries because you are routing to the wrong delivery address. A quick check at the booking stage can save your business hours.

2. Manage your clients delivery expectations from the outset

If your client calls at 8am and want their pallets in Birmingham at 10am that is not a problem providing you are also in Birmingham. However if you are in Edinburgh or London you will not be able to get the pallets to their destination in 3 hours. Not even documents using a motorbike could get delivered in that time frame. If you manage your clients expectations openly and honestly then you will have less phone calls hassling you.

3. When outsourcing to a courier service check that they have all the customer details…

… and that those details are correct. Email the courier the correct delivery addresses, phone numbers and details of service areas (especially if they haven’t delivered for you before). If there are issues parking at the delivery destination tell them now. The better prepared they are the more likely they are to be on time with your consignments.

4. Named contacts

Inform your courier service of the person ordering the job at collection and delivery points. If the job is a “special” or “screamer” then sometimes the general warehouse staff are not aware of it. Make the loading and unloading process faster by providing points of contact with phone numbers. A good courier company will ask for these at the time of booking.

5. Documentation

Most hold-ups at collection points involve the documents travelling with your freight. Call the warehouse and prepare them in advance for urgent collections and make the office staff aware of that days deliveries and who is collecting them. Without the correct documents a warehouse won’t release the freight and this will make the delivery late. A few minutes here can save you an hour and you avoid paying waiting time.

If you run through the 5 steps every time you outsource a delivery you will rarely have a problem getting your freight delivered on time.

Sarah

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Trouble shooting parcel couriers

February 21, 2011 By

Parcel Couriers can have a terrible reputation and today we find some of it is justified.

For our regular customers we use a third party parcel carrier to deliver the odd parcel that they have. This is a win/win for all of us as we get to look after all the delivery aspects, the customer gets a good price and the parcel carrier still gets the job.

If it goes wrong, the customer let’s us know and we chase the parcel carrier to see what the problem is and resolve it.

The first thing we have to do is find out where the parcel is, easy you may think but the parcel system is not set up to be easy; it’s set up to be fast – see a day in the life of a parcel.

We need to establish where in the “system” the parcel is, on Friday this took us 5 hours and we still didn’t get to find the parcel in question. This morning we did locate the parcel and it is on a van awaiting delivery.

When we asked the parcel delivery company why they didn’t locate the package sooner or deliver it (they sat on it for a week) their response left us speechless.

They said it was undelivered as they didn’t have a driver.

That’s our problem as we thought they were professional. They had lost our business once before and worked hard to get us back, now they have blown it again. Needless to say we are furious, our customer is unhappy but the parcel company is happy. In their small print they have the statistic that 90% of parcels are delivered the next day. They are still getting paid even though their abysmal service has cost everyone else in the chain.

90%? Great! But what happens when your parcel is one of the 10% not delivered?

If our parcel was still in the depot we would send one of our Nottingham based drivers to collect it then complete the delivery. We would make a substantial loss on that package that we could not recover from the customer or the parcel company. It doesn’t sit with our green company culture to do this, but we can honestly say that we did our best.

For your the customer, the one who deals directly with the parcel company life is tougher. It’s you who is losing hours on the phone chasing and tracking your package. It’s your business hours wasted which are billed out at a higher rate than what your package costs to send.

1 x package for national delivery = £12 +VAT

5 x £10 per hour for admin member to chase the problem = £50 + taxes and NI costs

Total = £62 + to send a parcel by a parcel company.

That’s an expensive parcel delivery whichever way you look at it.

For our parcel carrier their slapdash attitude has cost them our few thousand parcels per year, we have sourced a new provider that has a better grasp of customer service and promises 99% of parcels delivered. They cost a bit more than £12 a carton but they will be saving us £62 in wasted time.

Sarah

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Using a courier that thinks….

February 19, 2009 By

Of course everyone thinks, including most same day courier and home delivery drivers. Just as well, because for everyone that uses there brain there must be ten that don’t!

SAN FRANCISCO - DECEMBER 08: FedEx courier Na...
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I read and hear stories all the time about how a delivery driver stamped on a package, threw it in the van and it broke and often they leave it in an unsecure place.

I used to belong to a book club who used a certain courier, on one occasion their courier left a package of books outside the door in the rain and the books got soaked. So I had to send them back.

It’s very frustrating when that happens.

Some of the problems can be eliminated when you book your courier. Simply you tell them what the items are to be delivered. Ask them if they have delivered similar before. Ask them if they have insurance and if your item is covered by insurance. Ask them if they have ever had anyone claim through their insurance (if it happens often, do you really want them delivering your goods?)

If you just pick up the phone and ask for a quote, you don’t know what you are getting service or delivery wise.

Sarah

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The 6 golden rules for obtaining your courier /delivery quote

November 20, 2008 By

When you need something couriering or delivered, there are 6 essential pieces of information that you need to supply to get a fast, accurate and trouble free quote…

  1. We need to know what the item is that is being delivered. Is it Fragile? Is it temperature controlled? is it chemical? or is it general freight that has no special requirements?
  2. We need to know the collection Postcode, at least the first four digits
  3. We need to know the delivery Postcode or Zipcode in the instance of European delivery
  4. We need to know the weight of your item, freight or cargo
  5. We need to know the Length, Width and Height (Dimensions) of the combined items if packaged by yourself, or each individual item if packaged by us.
  6. Preferred collection and delivery dates

This is so we can give you a choice of services, as in express / same day courier, parcel delivery or standard courier freight services. This obviously will impact on the prices you are given. The longer the delivery window, the cheaper the delivery generally is. If you require specialist courier and delivery services, we can quote for those too.

All of this information can be given by phone on 0844 884 3331 or emailed to us at kevin@arrowlighthaulage.co.uk and will allow us to respond swiftly with an accurate quote. If it is urgent and has to be there today, you can always call me on my mobile.

Regards

Kevin

Great for smaller parcels and smaller volume, say 5 -10 a day.

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parcel courier delivery in Essex

For all your Europe and other international destination parcel delivery.

For all your Europe and other international destination parcel delivery.
Same day courier and parcel delivery in Basildon, Thurrock, Brentwood and Romford

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Help with mail order deliveries and couriers

September 18, 2008 By

Another little gem on the internet, this time from a website that deals with consumer issues. It’s a very good read, the link is at the end of the quote. The article goes on to make some suggestions on what a same day courier can do to make things easier for the consumer when expecting delivery..

* Companies that offer “delivery within 2-3 days” – Well, which is it? And does that include the weekend?

* Companies that say “your order has been dispatched”, but not how it’s being delivered (Royal Mail, Courier, 24 hours?)

* Companies that let you order when there’s no stock, but don’t tell you that it’s back in stock and they shipped it – the first you know is when you get the “we tried to deliver but…” card

* Failed deliveries where the little boxes aren’t ticked so there’s no clues – so you drive to the sorting office to get a bit of junk mail that the kind postie didn’t want to fold or leave outside, when you were expecting to be picking up your hi-fi.

* Couriers that aren’t flexible. “We can’t deliver to your work address. We don’t deliver on Saturdays. You can’t collect from our depot”

* Couriers websites that let you view online tracking… that’s a day out of date

We all have to work, and it’s not always possible to take a day off work waiting for the knock on the door. I’ve lost count of the number of days I’ve either:

* Waited in for a courier that didn’t show

* Faffed about with parcel-tracking websites and “we called but…” cards

* Spoken to a courier’s head office to arrange redelivery – and got very frustrated

* Tried to get a number for the courier’s depot (not the call centre)

* Driven to a depot on a Saturday to collect something a courier wouldn’t send out at a weekend

Help with mail order deliveries and couriers.

As a courier company, we are happy to delivery out of hours and on a Saturday, or even a Sunday. Parcel deliveries we do Monday to Friday, and any delivery estimates do not include Saturday or Sunday when it comes to the parcels.

Parcels we will try and deliver three times, and always leave a card with contact details on.

Same day or Express Courier deliveries, we can tell you within 15 minutes what time your items will arrive, and we call our customers an hour prior to delivery, so if they have to nip up the shops for a pint of milk, they can do so without worry.

When looking for a courier service that understands what customer service means, look for someone local. Bigger is not always better when it comes to delivering your goods.

Sarah
Parcel delivery Essex
Basildon, Chelmsford & West Thurrock Same Day and Parcel courier

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