Case Study 2: Better Safe than Sorry
The success criteria of the Same Day Courier business are pretty simple. You pick things up and deliver them – safely and on time, on the same day.
Day after day, week after week, month after month. And top firms like Proactive Despatch maintain this performance level year after year – and do it with fantastic service. That’s what delivers great customer reviews like Angela’s:
‘Would highly recommend this company. Staff go above and beyond to make sure you get an excellent service. Easy to email your requirements and you get a response within a couple of minutes. Kept up to date at all stages, booking, costs, confirmation of arrival for pick and confirmation of delivery. Excellent Job. Keep it up.’ – Trust Pilot: April 2023
With the boom in ‘lean’ business structures, outsourcing, online shopping and working from home, never mind the impact of the Covid lockdowns, there are more delivery vehicles on the road than ever before. More collections. More next day and same day drop offs. To the point where we all now just assume everything will go perfectly, time after time after time.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s difficult to find exact numbers, but the Government Health and Safety Executive gives some idea of the number of accidents linked to the industry. Their latest statistics showed that in the Transport and storage industries in the year 2021-22 there were 16 fatal injuries to workers – up over 14% on the previous 3 years. Of these fatalities, 34% were due to individuals being struck by a moving vehicle. Over the period 2019-2022 in Transport and storage there was an average of 31,000 non-fatal injuries at work every year. 25% of these cases resulted in an absence from work of over 7 days. And this data excludes fatalities and injuries from work-related road collisions.
Clearly the Same Day Courier business is only a small part of this very large industry, but given that these are, by their nature, urgent deliveries working to tight deadlines, the risks and likelihood of accidents in this space are probably at the higher end of an already high industry sector.
So despite the seemingly endless flow of faultless deliveries, things clearly sometimes do go wrong. Regardless of the best intentions of everyone, accidents do sometimes happen and they can have serious consequences. In these circumstances, it is critical to be safe rather than sorry and part of that means ensuring proper insurance cover.
For the team at Proactive Despatch, exceptional service is built on attention to detail. One detail which sets Proactive Despatch apart, is the thoroughness of their courier onboarding. Every courier goes through a thorough induction process. Every courier signs an annual service agreement. The documentation of every courier is checked on every job, to ensure that their Public Liability and other Insurances have been renewed and are still valid, before they are dispatched to handle your order.
This not only helps safeguard the couriers. These couriers are coming on your premises and interacting with your staff to whom you have a duty of care. Potentially they are also going on your customers’ premises and interacting with their staff as your representatives. With the increasing focus on environmental, social, and governance factors and reputational risk, using uninsured couriers is not something any company wants to find themselves guilty of.
And no one wants to be the person explaining to senior management how what was initially an unfortunate accident has now turned into a potentially much larger issue, due to an uninsured courier. There is no risk of that with Proactive Despatch couriers.
For Paul Wood’s team at Proactive Despatch, this is just another part of their ‘excellent service’. It’s just a small detail – and hopefully one you’ll never need to put to the test. But it adds up with all the others to guarantee that they deliver on their promises and let you deliver on yours. And one of their promises is to take as much care with your reputation as they do with theirs.
If you want to learn more about Proactive Despatch’s customer service excellence or test it first-hand on your own deliveries, contact Paul or the team on 0333 003 0022.
Sources:
- Trust Pilot Reviews: proactivedespatch.com/trust-pilot-reviews/
- HSE Transportation and storage statistics in Great Britain, Nov 2022