The concept of ‘Cyber Monday’ at the beginning of December, which the industry claims is the busiest day for online shopping every year, has been disproved by parcel carrier manager Global Freight Solutions (GFS).
In its annual analysis of the Christmas peak, the company said the concept is “merely the first of a succession of busy Mondays in the UK”, which last year continued up to 23 December.
On average, Monday volumes in December were 65% higher than average weekly figures between January and October 2013.
GFS MD Neil Cotty suggested that the industry might require changes to established working practices to ensure that customer service remains high and all parcels are processed in time for Christmas.
“There is perhaps a growing acceptance that we might be moving towards working seven days a week during the peak season to clear some of the orders which come in over the weekend,” said Cotty.
This, he argued, would spread volumes out and avoid a backlog of parcels at the end of the week.
The concept of seven day deliveries has already been welcomed by Hermes this year, which plans to introduce deliveries of B2C orders on Sundays.
At a time when many consumers are not at home or unwilling to wait in for a parcel during the week, it seems like a viable service for the carrier to be exploring to increase its first time delivery rate and make its services more attractive to consumers. Online retailer Amazon also hopes to begin delivering seven days a week using its third party couriers.
The Hub thinks that seven day deliveries would help spread the volume of parcels out more and avoid the Monday “peak within a peak”, but with most carriers agreeing that 2013’s peak season did not grow as much as it had in previous years, will it make much of a difference to early week volumes?