Why would you wait for a courier?

Imagine if a retailer gave service to their customers in the same way that the courier providers of New Zealand treated the end-users of their service. Just imagine it...

• We would go into clothing stores, choose a shirt, and wait forever for the clerk to bring that shirt in our size from the backroom to the checkout.
• We would listen to a sales rep talk up the latest iPhone, only for the EFTPOS machine to go 'missing' right before we were about to pay.
• Greeted by a sales assistant with a simple "hi" as we walk through the entrance, and then the sales assistant runs away - just as we were about to ask them a question.
• We would download apps from the App/Play stores, and experience broken links and glitches, rendering the app unusable.

You would not expect these behaviours from retailers, but every day this is the reality for the customers of couriers. Why do we allow sub-standard service from courier providers?

As online consumers, we buy with both trust and wariness from neighbours, on sites such as TradeMe, just to get a bargain. We must have that overpriced and highly sought flashy item from retailers such as Spark, Vodafone, and JB-HiFi. We desperately rampage across the internet in search for cheaper cosmetics, like from Strawberry. We explore with a juvenile openness on sites such as eBay, Wish, and the Facebook Marketplace for goods we did not know existed; to fill a need we did not know we had... We invest our time and energy when we buy.

A 'parcel delivery' is supposed to be the pickup, transport, and delivery of a parcel. I know, it is a simple concept. We hope it is simple enough that companies whose income revolves around it, gets it right.

Parcels are not just bought for us either - sometimes we send them to others, as gifts. But, who knew giving a gift, can cause pain to the one receiving it? For those of us generously good souls, we the buyer of that gift, pay the delivery fee, with an expectation that the person we are thinking fondly of will effortlessly get our parcel of joy/thoughts/stress relief - whichever the case may be. But, how would you feel if the people getting that carefully selected gift would cause the receiver misery and frustration? That carefully thought-out gift would be like gifting someone a debt.

80.6% of those surveyed received a parcel within the last 6 months.

When we shop, we circle many pages, read countless descriptions, and undertake countless choices. Then, we get to the shopping cart, and here in bold is a fee in addition to what we prepared to pay for our goods.

It is a fee decided between the retailer and an external entity - one which the retailer considers to be integral; a carefully constructed mutual relationship of collaboration to give me - the simple consumer - an excellent purchase experience. Lots of money and time has gone into constructing that experience - from advertising to website development, to suppliers, etc. It is this fee which causes us to hesitate and justify to ourselves what we want: 'is this really worth it?' In the end, we relent, and we pay that fee. A premium fee. We trust after our shopping adventure and paying that fee, that our work completes. We did our part. We bought our goods in their entirety - to be delivered to our feet.

We surveyed several Auckland City apartment complex residents - and asked for their experiences dealing with the courier industry. Surprisingly, the respondents were able to strongly recall the entire service (if you can call it that) even months apart.

We fell witness to a few tearful recollections of past discrepancies, stories of disappointing outcomes, and sights of abandonment. Courier drivers would "knock twice and leave," one respondent said before they had time to answer the door.

There is a solution to the madness, but it is going to take some patience to see how it performs in New Zealand. We at Parcelbox, are different. We do not play the same game, by different rules, hoping for different results - we play a different game.

Come and get in touch on Linkedin, via our website (below), or call: +642102560699

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