DPD is the UK’s leading domestic parcels carrier, with 10 consecutive years of profit growth. It has more than doubled turnover since 2013 and 2019 was another successful year, with turnover up £72m to £1.38bn. Its 15,000-strong team delivers 263 million parcels a year from 65 depots for 7,500 customers, including ASOS, John Lewis, Selfridges and Next.
Around 70% of its top 100 customers have been with it for five years or more, and a survey in January 2019 found that 92% of its largest customers were ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’, 93% were likely to remain a customer, and 68% would recommend DPD to others.
Regular meetings with customers yielded requests to ‘put some cherries on the cake’ and ‘make the consumer experience more personalised’. One customer noted: “It’s the ‘tiny noticeable things’ (TNTs) that separate the truly great companies from the rest”.
So DPD took customer closeness to a new level in 2019, with a series of small but significant initiatives, using 45,000 users of its app (now downloaded by 6 million people) to help it design new services, six of which were launched in 2019, with 10 more on the way.
Those launched include: Prove Yourself, which makes it easier for a consumer to prove who they are when collecting a high value parcel from a DPD site; Partner Rewards, which gives consumers discounts at companies DPD delivers for; Message the Driver, allowing consumers to contact their driver; You’re Next, which alerts a consumer when the driver is five minutes away; In-Flight, allowing consumers to make changes to their delivery once it’s on the road; and Rate My Driver, which lets them provide quick feedback on their driver and doorstep experience.
This approach to customer care produced DPD’s best-ever service level of 98.95%.
DPD has been a serial winner of the Customer Care Award in recent years and our judges were again blown away by this year’s entry. Comments included: “A fantastic entry with a strong focus on customer service,” and “by listening to their customers they have made small changes to what is already a great service offering.”
"Customer care is one of the greatest awards you can win because the customer is at the heart of everything we do. Every time we win is special and this year is no different. We feel very proud and it’s great to have that independent recognition of what we’re doing.
"We’re a customer-centric company driven by technology and innovation. Customer care is crucial to everything we do."
Dwain McDonald