Triangle Management Services, the specialist services provider to the global mail and express industry, has followed up last year’s successful introduction of the ‘UK Domestic Express Parcels Distribution Survey’ with the 2012 edition of said report. This major survey consolidates the results from Triangle’s two individual express parcel surveys for 2012; the business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) surveys. The total UK market survey is based on 900 in-depth shipper interviews, and a total of 1,238 benchmark service ratings for the two main carriers used by each shipper. These ratings measure the carriers on ‘Overall level of service’, ‘Competitive price’, ‘Customer service’, ‘Image’ and ‘Provision of information’. There are also fourteen other key service description factors on which the carriers are rated, such as: ‘Collect on time’, ‘Deliver on time’, ‘Rarely damage parcels’, ‘Rarely loses parcels’, ‘Cares about me’ and ‘Solves my problems’ for example.
The survey also includes sections on overall ‘Awareness’, ‘Usage’, ‘Volumes’ and ‘Media re-call’ and how each carrier performed in these fields. All of which contributes to a comprehensive benchmark study of the UK domestic express parcels market. The survey shows, for example, that APC Overnight is highly rated by their users, with FedEx and Interlink also rating highly for the main service criteria. Hermes are seen to ‘Care about’ their customers, UPS are top for ‘Image’, whilst DPD offers the best options for B2C deliveries.
There is, however, some evidence in the survey that ‘Carrier loyalty’ is weakening. The survey average ‘Loyalty’ score dropped from 32.6 in 2011 to 28.3 this year, and there was a significant increase in ‘Lapsed usage’ with the overall percentage of respondents who said they had ‘deliberately stopped using a carrier’ almost doubling in the last 12 months. A few carriers received a higher number of mentions from lapsed customers.
Carriers benchmarked by the survey include the major global integrators TNT Express, UPS and FedEx, along with Parcelforce Worldwide, Royal Mail, Interlink, DPD, APC Overnight, City Link, UK Mail, Yodel, Hermes and freight parcel specialists Nightfreight and Tuffnells. For reporting purposes, Royal Mail and Hermes features specifically as a B2C service providers, while Tuffnells is featured as a B2B carrier. A total of fourteen carriers offering UK domestic express parcel services are rated by their customers, and compared against each other in this landmark study.
Triangle’s ‘UK Domestic B2B Express Parcels Distribution Survey’ was first published in 1984 and remains the industry standard for the express sector to this day. Its status reflects the way in which subscribers, principally the carriers themselves, use the survey to benchmark themselves against their competitors whilst also judging their own company performance in all the important customer interface areas and the success of new initiatives. Triangle’s “UK Domestic B2C Express Parcels Distribution Survey’ was first launched in 2008, with the 2012 being its 5th edition. Both these sector surveys are available as separate reports in addition to the overall ‘UK Express Parcels Distribution Survey’ 2012 edition.
Express Director at Triangle, Robin Parr-Davies commented “having produced the Triangle B2B survey now for well over 25 years we know and understand the value of the UK Domestic Express Survey programme to our clients. This new report is based on a large sample of users of express parcel carries, both B2B and B2C, and as such, is of significant value to the industry in terms of benchmarking”.
Published on 24/09/2012
Triangle Management Services Ltd, founded in 1984, is the pre-eminent independent specialist management services company within the global mail, express and logistics sectors. Triangle offers the following services to clients: Specialist Media, Recruitment, Market Research, Consultancy, Conferences and Mergers and Acquisitions – all of which focus primarily on the mail and express industry sectors.
