One Million Customers Tell Yodel How Good It Really Is

One Million Customers Tell Yodel How Good It Really Is

Yodel celebrates a million customer feedback responses with rise in satisfaction

Yodel, the UK’s leading independent parcel carrier, is celebrating after recording over one million customer feedback responses and a marked rise in satisfaction, thanks to the company’s customer unique experience management programme, Have Your Say.

The bespoke system, created for Yodel, was designed and is managed by Voice of the Customer specialist, eDigitalResearch.

Launched in March 2013, the programme was developed in response to a brief from Yodel. The carrier, along with most others in the industry, had long been measuring its performance on service levels, however with the rise in social media it became clear that there was an increasing need to listen not just to its retail clients but also to their consumers.

The programme is designed to gather feedback from shoppers on their entire delivery experience – from how they rated their delivery driver to the user friendliness of Yodel’s parcel tracking service and even what they would like from their delivery service in the future. Feedback is gathered via a number of channels – including Yodel’s online portal MyYodel.co.uk, as well as ‘in the moment’ email and text prompts.

Yodel has recorded a 49%rise in customer satisfaction*, in the last 18 months. This is thanks in part to the carrier’s ability to react quickly and enhance consumer experiences and resolve issues at the time the response is received. The company is also using the feedback to understand where and how it can improve its operation and develop its proposition in the long term. All feedback is collected and processed in real-time, allowing Yodel to make continuous, incremental improvements, while regular insight reporting provides key areas for on-going business development.

Results can be broken down in many ways including by service centre, selected service and individual driver and dedicated reports are shared with clients.

The introduction of the Have Your Say programme has brought around a cultural change at Yodel – brand advocacy, customer experience measures and insight is now used daily throughout the business to make informed decisions in the moments that matter.

As online shopping continues to grow, meeting consumers’ delivery expectations becomes increasingly important. Yodel handles over 155 million parcels every year and has a relationship with over 85 per cent of the UK’s top retailers – and understanding shoppers’ needs and providing an exceptional customer experience is key in remaining ahead of the competition.

Real-time eDigitalResearch dashboards keep all Yodel managers – from head office to service centres all over the country – up to date with how shoppers rate their Yodel experience. Managers are now able to report results daily to Yodel’s workforce, celebrating success, sharing best practice and proactively stepping in when things don’t go to plan – assessing the impact of what went wrong and how to improve for the future.

Dick Stead, executive chairman, Yodel, commented; “The Have Your Say programme has allowed us to listen to and increase our understanding of consumers and to let the voice of the customer shape our organisation.

“The programme isn’t just benefitting Yodel. We share the live data with our clients and offer them the opportunity to include their own questions in our survey. This has enabled some of our retail clients to change their service offering to help drive customer loyalty and improve their bottom line.

“Retailers are no longer buying on price alone. This is a value added service, and it is essential that we work in partnership with them to deliver the service and the experience that their customers’ desire.”

Derek Eccleston, commercial director at eDigitalResearch, added; “Listening to the Voice of the Customer really is so key these days if brands want to improve and cement their leading position in the market. The great thing about the Yodel feedback programme is it shows that listening to customers really does work. By utilising real-time dashboards, every member of Yodel’s customer-facing workforce is able to understand how they can make a real difference to the company’s performance and really engage in the business they work for – and the daily changes they’re making are working, as proven by Yodel’s fantastic rise in customer satisfaction.”

 

*Customer satisfaction. Measured as the number of customers who have been satisfied / very satisfied with their experience.