Ray Kroc, CEO of McDonald’s, famously said ‘Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself’. But whilst looking after customers is vital, it is not an easy route to business success.
In the world of the same day courier, where anyone with a van and a mobile phone can get into the business, standing out based on customer service requires a never-ending focus on consistently delivering outstanding responsiveness, reliability and value for money.
Delivery after delivery, day after day, week after week, month after month…
Anyone can perform for a few deliveries, for a few days or a few weeks. But maintaining outstanding service standards, year after year after year takes real dedication.
At Proactive Despatch, Paul Woods and his team live for the job. Like many courier companies, they are on call day and night, looking after customer requirements. Hard work is the norm for couriers and certainly isn’t exclusive to Proactive. But exceptional service is built on effectiveness as well as efficiency. It is the attention to detail to ensure absolutely everything is in place to enable the drivers to meet the promised delivery times in the easiest way possible.
One of these details is that at Proactive, all couriers get an early morning alarm call to ensure they are ready to leave on time to pick up their consignments. It’s not rocket science, and once you think about it, it seems basic common sense. But it is a small detail which can have a huge impact.
A typical example recently was a single 30kg item, requiring an urgent delivery to Bury St Edmunds. The consignment was ready for collection at 5am the next day. But it had to be there before noon.
On most days there would not be any issue and this would be routinely collected and delivered. However, on this morning, there was no response from the driver to the wake-up call. And it’s clearly not easy to meet your delivery commitments, if the consignment isn’t even collected on time.
The lack of response immediately triggered a series of escalations ending with Craig Hyland, the Operations Director contacting the drivers’ mobile phone. The driver had simply misunderstood the arrangements – we’ve all been there – but once Craig had re-briefed him, he was able to collect the consignment on time and critically, deliver it on time.
So, to the client, unaware of any problems, it was just another example of Proactive Despatch doing what they promised.
To Paul, Craig and the team, it was just another example of how the absolutely rigorous focus on all aspects of the customer experience catches issues before they turn into problems and helps position Proactive Despatch as the North West’s most trusted Same Day courier service.
If you want to learn more about Proactive Despatch’s customer service ethos or experience it first-hand on your own deliveries, contact Paul or the team on 0333 003 0022 or check out the website : www.proactivedespatch.com.