In the last decade, growth in most logistic company is driven by the B2B segment. This fuelled massive consolidation where smaller players were acquired by multinational groups to enhance their networks. In order for continued corporate survival and sustained growth, many companies continuously innovate and adapt their business model to cater to the surge in demand in the B2C market. These days end customers not only expect their orders to be delivered on time but also be notified of delivery timings down to the last hour. There is nothing worse than waiting all day for a failed delivery.

From my experience, one of the most commendable company is DPD UK (Interlink Express), which is owned by La Poste. On the day of delivery, I usually receive a text message alerting me of a 1 hour delivery slot. But what I find truly innovative is their use of GPS, pinpointing the location of their courier driver and a live indication of my delivery queue number.

On the extreme end of the spectrum, I am least satisfied with TNT and Yodel. Both companies have on many occasions missed deliveries and their online tracking system is hardly of any use. The former does have a UK based call centre but the customer agents appear to be more interested in fogging off callers rather than providing any accurate advice. As for the latter, the company simply shirk responsibility to the merchant, especially when it comes to missing packages.

I recently had the opportunity to try out DHL’s collection service at a service point. In theory, this is a great win-win proposition for both DHL and the end customer. DHL is able to minimise cost by leveraging on its existing B2B network for B2C deliveries whist customers are able to collect their parcels at a convenient place and time. In my experience, DHL achieved its costs saving objective but it inherently meant that I had to wait for 1 additional day before I could get hold of my parcel.

The barriers of entry for any domestic or international logistic company are high and it provides a false sense of security for mammoths like DHL, UPS and FedEx. If these companies continue to rest of their laurels and ignore the B2C market, they will soon lose sizeable market share to smaller but more innovation players.