Darren Kowalski: Going fast and getting things wrong is going to be damaging.
Hawk Steele: We're not about packages, we're about people and we're about those customers and we're about that incredible customer experience. I guess delivering parcels is a byproduct of what we do. We're brand representatives first and foremost.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to another three in a row now very special Wednesday exclusive
[Voiceover]: episode of Add to Cart.
Nathan Bush: My name is Nathan Bush joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. And today's episode is brought to you by the team at Deliver In Person and Starship IT2 partners helping brands turn Last Mile delivery into into a powerful driver of customer loyalty. Now, we've all heard that delivery is the new battleground in customer experience. And as we hear today, the stakes are only getting higher and the competition tougher. But what if we said that loyalty is actually a brand building opportunity as well as an operational activity? Joining me today are two experts who live and breathe delivery innovation. Darren Kowalski, the the CCO at Deliver In Person and Hawke and Steel, otherwise known as Hawk Partnership, and Sales manager at Starship it. These guys have worked with everyone from big brands to emerging e commerce players, helping them rethink what their last mile delivery looks like to ensure that it doesn't just end with the drop off. Darren is focused on providing a speedy and customer centric delivery experience with Deliver In Person and they have a strong emphasis on reliability and brand alignment as that last mile delivery provider. Meanwhile, Hawk is transforming starshipit into a powerful shipping and tracking automation platform by integrating with carriers like Deliver In Person plus a whole bunch of others to streamline delivery processes for retailers and elevate customer communications. So if you're looking to keep pace with Amazon's delivery game, make returns seamless, or simply want to know how to surprise customers during the busiest shopping season of the year, you're in the right place. Let's get straight into it with Darren Kowalski from Deliver In Person and Hawken Steel from Starship it.
[Voiceover]: Darren and Hawk, welcome to ADD to cart.
Darren Kowalski: Thank you sir. Thank you very much. Really appreciate you guys having me on here. So yeah, looking forward to it.
Hawk Steele: Great to be here Nathan. Thanks for having me.
Darren Kowalski: Long time listener, first time caller.
[Voiceover]: Well, I'm glad you called the right number. Thank you for being here, Darren. Obviously Deliver In Person has been a partner of Add to Cart for our whole year as one of our primary partners. So we really appreciate your support and we are looking forward to hearing from both of you because you're both experts in the delivery space and I've known you both for a long time before you're even in these current roles. So I'm excited to get into it, Actually, Hawk, the last time I saw you, we were wearing go Kart helmets racing around at Imedia.
Darren Kowalski: We were. We were. In fact, I think, to be fair, I probably spent more time facing the wrong way on that track and looking at oncoming traffic, so. Yeah, but that was a fun memory. Yes, indeed.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, it was fun. All right, let's get into it. We are going to dive deep into last mile delivery today. In particular, how last mile delivery can help build loyalty through exceptional shipping experiences. I think everyone listening knows the impact of that last mile on how they feel about brands and as retailers, always looking at how we can get more control into that last mile because it is such an important part of the journey. So I want to kick off with a question around speed versus reliability, because this keeps coming up in a lot of research that's flying around at the moment. How important is it to prioritize speed versus reliability? I mean, a lot of the research we're seeing come out at the moment is saying that we're actually over promising on delivery time frames and delivering much quicker. That is fantastic from a customer experience, but could also be costing us in conversion. If customers are originally expecting that, it'll be a longer time frame. Where do you guys sit in that? Which side should retailers be erring? Darren, I'm going to start with you.
Hawk Steele: Yeah, look, it's a very topical piece that I think you can't talk about speed and reliability without first talking about Amazon. They've kind of written the rule book on that, so to speak. They've really changed the game. If you look at the story of Amazon, I think just in July of this year, it was about 8 million Australians age 14 and over on Amazon, you know, buying at least once a year. And, you know, the subscriber base for Amazon prime in particular is about four and a half million Australians. So underpinning that whole Amazon and Amazon effect that we always hear, you know, is a very speedy, very reliable service offering less and less. Are they outsourcing that? They are insourcing that and, you know, handling that themselves. And they're really, you know, the pace car in all of this with that level of speed and reliability that they bring, you know, you can order from Amazon, 10 out of 10, you know, it's really on point. So I would say equally, you know, speed and reliability are super important and we're seeing that more and more.
[Voiceover]: Is it realistic for Australian retailers to compare themselves to Amazon, though?
Hawk Steele: Until now it's been a challenge and it's been hard for them to level that playing field and have something that's democratized for the masses that they can use as a carrier to compete with that Amazon level of service. I think that's where we've come in to fill that gap in the market between a third party carrier that doesn't want to do it the Amazon way, but then that gap in the market where recipients are saying, look, we expect other retailers to play ball as well and do it the Amazon way. Guys, what are you doing to compete with that? How are you playing in that carrier space? That's the gap that we've filled and that's the problem that we're solving.
[Voiceover]: Okay, so if you're a retailer, are you erring on the side of speed or reliability?
Hawk Steele: I would say both are equally important. We're seeing the market move to both.
Darren Kowalski: That's a cop out.
[Voiceover]: What about you, Hawk? What have you got?
Darren Kowalski: So I am going to go on. I agree you're both very, very important. But going fast and getting things wrong is going to be damaging. So you, at the very, very core, at the very minimum, I keep coming back to doing what you say you're going to do and being reliable, being the one that you can count on is going to build the trust. And because no one wants a fast delivery when it's actually the wrong thing or the wrong size. And because that delivery may not have, in fact, it's worse than the delivery not even coming because they're going to have to return it. There's going to be a whole lot of comms and then it's two weeks later than it could have been anyway. So, yes, getting it right with as far as accuracy goes, but doing what, at the very bare minimum, doing what you say you're going to do, having an expectation set. So that would be my. If I'm going to fall on one side of the fence, I'm going to say reliability, I guess there's another one that comes in as well. Because we've always talked, well, long have we talked about free shipping being king, right? And then we, we came down to, well, fast shipping being the king. And I think both, of course, are not going away. And I think the next part to that, free and fast go together quite poorly when it comes to business. Right.
[Voiceover]: Profitability is great.
Darren Kowalski: Profitability is a really, really nice thing. So I think having choice is what is going to give convenience. Right? Convenience is now the ultimate and having a convenient delivery method is a winning formula. Right. And that comes with choice as well.
[Voiceover]: And when you're talking about choice, are you talking about choice of carrier, are you talking about choice of delivery time frame, are you talking about choice of cost, where's the choice?
Darren Kowalski: All of the above actually, and that's a really interesting one. So a lot of retailers in Australia in particular go towards the outcomes, right, the delivery timeframes. Okay, you can get Express, you know, one to two days overnight, click and collect whatever it might be. But the other way to look at it, and I've actually flip flopped on this a couple of times, but the other way to look at it and we're seeing more in America in particular is you know, actually naming the carrier in those choices because there, there's a lot of trust that goes into some of those brands. You look at the likes of FedEx, UPS, DHL, Express, those are some of the most trusted brands in the world. And I also think there's something to be said for the person paying for shipping giving them an option of actually selecting who's going to be doing that, that delivery because everyone has different preferences and you know, you might have a really great delivery driver that you know on a regular basis and that sort of thing. So you do have an affinity or sort of a loyalty patch towards a particular carrier as well.
[Voiceover]: That's really interesting because I hadn't thought about it too much that customers also have a loyalty towards carriers. Darren, obviously deliver in person is an alternative to some of the traditional carriers that Australians have experienced. How are you seeing that play out with your customers in having the delivery experience that you've designed at deliver in person?
Hawk Steele: Yeah, look, I think as far as deliver in person goes, we are sometimes pushed to the forefront as a brand and sometimes we're kept as their best kept secret. I think what really underpins it going back to the original thing of speed and reliability, probably reliability, just thinking about it is probably a bigger piece of. But we're seeing dye fots and deliver in full on time, you know, on time performance, we're seeing that as low as 60%, 80% is pretty much the norm for a lot of the clients we work with. When we bump them up to 99.6%, you know, die fight and a first time attempt success of 98.6%. That's where we really shine and that's where we differentiate ourselves. I think for us, a lot of brands are not choosing to push our brand out there. They're just saying, look, the market is next day as a standard. That's what Amazon prime does, that's what we're going to do, who we use and how we service that. We're kind of their best kept secret in the background. But that's where we find that the market is shifting, that it's no longer this premium, it's this level of expectation and a lot of retailers are looking to standardize that. Why? Comes back to the Amazon piece, they're the pace car, they set the trend. People are trying to pay catch up and you know, as they expand in Australia and they have quite considerably since they've been here, since 2018, you know, they're encroaching into a lot more retailers categories, they're broadening their offering and they're more of a formidable threat. And there's quite a few studies out there, you know, naming some of the biggest retailers as more and more of a threat that Amazon is posing on them. So they really need to kind of level up that last mile if they are to compete.
Darren Kowalski: I think as far as the Starship at deliver in person partnership goes, this is actually really key as well because we obviously want to work with really trusted carrier partners and have a whole suite of the best and all sorts of different ones. And when delivery in person came on the market with D scores like that, we obviously sit up and pay attention and, and we see, you know, the likes more delivery in person as, as becoming one of those really trusted brands that I was talking about in the Australian market. And it's, you know, that's going to be, that's going to be happening, you know, very soon, if it's not already. I mean it's, I think it's going to be one of those things that's, that's imminent.
[Voiceover]: Awesome. And I really like your point. Hawk around convenience is the thing, and this has come through a couple of times in conversations that we have moved from free to fast to convenience. Darren, when you talk about Amazon and obviously their goalposts are shifting, especially in metro areas, your focus is on next day delivery and being able to do it at an affordable rate for retailers in those metro areas to be able to give that choice, do you foresee that next day is kind of where we need to be at with convenience? Do you see yourself moving towards same day? Is there a big demand on same day or is it kind of an edge case for most people?
Hawk Steele: So we actually dialing it back, we entered the market as same day only. And you know, like any good business, we've pivoted and evolved based on, you know, the nuances. In the Australian market. We are probably a less mature market than other regions. So you know, we had to spawn very quickly into the next day offering. That makes up probably 90% of our business at the moment. But based on our observations in other regions, it will mature more towards same day. And we've already seen that with Amazon. You know, they came out with Amazon prime in 2018. It was a slow start, but you know, next day became this mainstream expectation over the last six years. And just recently over the last few months, Amazon's now introduced same day for Amazon prime members. So that Amazon effect will cascade into the market and it will force, you know, a level of change in a lot of retailers looking for those solutions. But they're looking for those solutions at scale, same day and next day, particularly out of a warehouse where the majority of E commerce orders are dispatched from to do that at scale. There's not a lot of choice in the market and that's the gap that we're filling. Same day and next day. Next day, certainly for now, that same day as the market matures, we kind of have two seats at the same table, so to speak.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. And Hawk, as part of that convenience, I can imagine people living busy lives bit all over the place, that transparency around both cost but also tracking will be really important. The communication throughout the journey. What do you see as kind of the benchmarks or the must haves to be able to fill that convenient promise for customers? Because I could imagine it goes beyond what options are available on a checkout.
Darren Kowalski: Oh yeah, for sure. So when it comes to that sort of thing, you know that, that period between you placing an order and getting confirmation and you're receiving it can be a really anxious time as well. Because if you've got a deadline for it, and I keep coming back to this, you know, success in business is how you're making your customers feel. And is that feeling during that period an anxious one? Is it a frustrating one? Is it, you know, full of, full of anticipation and that sort of thing. So I think obviously the real time tracking that delivery in person is providing is the, is the utopia. And I think, you know, having that sort of thing, especially on an express service is going to become really, really important for a carrier to sort of survive and to deliver on those Those promises. But you know, I think also just using that time, if it's, you know, over a few days, using that time to really build your brand and engage with that, that customer over, over those, those tracking updates but doing it in a really engaging way. And I think you see companies doing this really, really well. The likes of Aussie here in Beauty actually just, they nail this to such a great extent and you know, when it comes to open rates, you know, no one wants to hear from a retailer more than they do after they just bought something. Right. And you know you've got a tracking page, you could, yes, you could send it to, you know, carriers tracking page which is going to be refreshed two or three times a day. Massive wasted opportunity. If you've got your own brand in front of them two or three times a day, especially closer to the weekend that they're opening that, that is actually just, that is gold. Right From a, from a marketer's perspective and then just driving them back to your, back to your website is going to, is going to play into your favor so, so well. But it, but it also, not only is it playing into your favor, it's actually just, it's relaxing that consumer, it's giving them some certainty around that and yeah, it's just going to be a win win.
[Voiceover]: I think such a key time to build trust and loyalty just by keeping everything under control, saying, yep, we've got you, we're all good.
Darren Kowalski: Exactly.
[Voiceover]: We know what's going on.
Hawk Steele: Yeah.
Darren Kowalski: And it's also the matter of removing uncertainty. Right. And stepping out of ecom for a second. I think the other really good example is train platforms and the countdown. You know your train's coming in two minutes. If you can't train people are happy to stand on a platform if they know when the train's coming. Right. If it's when they don't know and they're not informed and it's just dead air, dead silence, then that's when you get those feelings of anxiety.
[Voiceover]: Darren, I can imagine that this is extra important for you guys with that next day promise because if you think of customers mindsets, why are we choosing next day? It could be, oh, I've left a birthday present to the last minute. I'm going on holiday days. It's a extra high value good that I want to make sure is delivered by a specialized carrier. There could be all these reasons but they usually have a higher expectation than your standard delivery that you're like, ah, this can just go through standard post. It doesn't matter that much. I can imagine a lot of yours would have come with higher expectations. How do you manage that process in between pressing the buy button and arriving?
Hawk Steele: Yeah, look, I think during that period we recognize people are very anxious, you know, have they been scammed? Parcel loss won't arrive in time. Things change, you know, that element of control for the customer so their mind runs wild. And to mitigate that, you know, we give them that certainty and that reliability that if it was same day next day, it'll be their same day next day. You know, there's no three to five business days or five to seven business days with us where the customer is left guessing. They know when they're going to get it, on what day. I think that resolves a lot of the anxiety and pressure. I think, you know, there's a lot of question from the average recipient, you know, why can I track in real time my Uber or my pizza, but I can't my E Commerce parcel? Why? And even some of the largest carriers, when you look at them, they were built for 20th century B2B and they're being retrofitted with E commerce and legacy tech where they're just quite constrained to provide that level of live tracking. Some can and don't want to because it will make things even more confusing with the customers. What we've done early on is we've identified that some of the data that came back was 76% of consumers expect real time updates and only 18% of brands communicate effectively during that delivery process. So, you know, real time live tracking is really where it's at. Obviously it's supplemented by the milestone tracking events, but very common. The problem was outbound for delivery and they don't know much else. And hours go by, days go by and their mind runs wild with that live tracking. You know that Uber like live tracking, you're putting control in the recipient's hands. You're giving them all the power that they need through technology to really identify where it is, when are they going to get it? If anything changes, how can they make those requests and the customer is in control of that. And you know you're seeing flow on effects of reduced customer service inquiries, you know, of up to about 50, 60%. Why 50, 60% of those were delivery related Wismos, you know, where is my order? Things need to change. It resolves a lot of that anxiety. Self serving.
[Voiceover]: Is there such a thing as too much communication is annoying during this time period?
Hawk Steele: We've a B tested that. Where is that balance of enough but not too much. We feel that we've struck that balance because sometimes if you give customers too much information and too many updates, it upsets them. We work collaboratively with the retailer on that. You know, everyone wants their customers communicated in a different way, different cadences. We have best practice kind of that Pareto 8020 rule. But certainly we have a collaborative approach with retailers where we can mix and match that, you know, depending on how well they know their customers and what their customers respond to best.
Darren Kowalski: I think the other, the other thing that comes into that as well is using different channels. So if you're hammering them by email, it can become too much. So we also enable SMS notifications. So we see a lot of retailers using email initially and then as the delivery gets closer, when it's literally out for delivery in sms, it really increases the chances of that shop of being home to receive that package on the first attempt. So, so I think, you know, open rate to an sms, especially a delivery, one's gotta be a hundred percent. Right? So again, another great opportunity to actually get, get your brand in front of them.
[Voiceover]: It's a really great point around time sensitivity, isn't it? The choosing the right channels for the right time sensitivity. So actually you need to know this the hour before it arrives. Why would I give you an email?
Darren Kowalski: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And yeah, you know, we know SMS is having a real moment at the moment, so yeah, this is a great chance to use it.
[Voiceover]: I want to pick up on something you said there, hawk before around opportunity as for branding, because we're all talking about how we can use this last mile delivery to build loyalty and building strong brands is a big part of this. You mentioned our friends at Oz, Hair and Beauty, Anthony and Guy, who have been on the show before and they do a phenomenal job. But I'm keen to explore any other brands that you've come across that you think do a really good job at not just delivering, hey, here's where your parcels at, here's when to expect it, but delivering their brand message as part of the experience. Anything come to mind?
Darren Kowalski: Yeah, yeah, I think there is a few that do come to mind actually. So it's an interesting one. We've actually recently partnered with Klaviyo, so obviously very, very powerful marketing automation tool and we see we're seeing customers pushing a lot of those tracking events through to their Klaviyo account where they can manage their flows and things. And I look at the, the customers that have got real loyal followings and I'm looking At thinking about the likes of LS kd, those guys are just savage loyalists. Right. They do a great job in that community. Really great job in the community. So, you know, but I think a lot of that functionality around Klaviyo is around segmenting and, and, and the hyper personalization that they can do in those follow up emails at the time. And you know, who else is doing the likes of High Smile, Meshki, another power user of it. So I think those are really, you know, brands that you kind of think of as having a real loyal following and they do it really, really well.
[Voiceover]: Because I suppose you've got to be careful when you've got a key message to deliver, which is obviously the tracking or the parcel information or the returns information. You've got to be careful to make sure that gets across. But you might also want to drop in some other experiential messaging as well.
Darren Kowalski: No doubt, no doubt. Yeah, yeah.
[Voiceover]: Darren, what about yourself? I know that you work with some really premium brands as well. You've got a mixture there. But you do have a lot of premium clients. Are you seeing them use Last Mile as an, as an opportunity to extend their brand?
Hawk Steele: Yeah, absolutely. Look, we early on were forged in the fires of the world's largest luxury brands. One of those key reasons was branding. They felt that any carrier that they'd outsourced it to, and they had tried pretty much everyone, you know, it wasn't representing the brand in the right way, you know, and if you look at the luxury recipients, you know, they command the highest levels of customer centricity and brand identity. So this really formed kind of the backbone, every aspect of what we do, tech operations, customer service, just to provide that really high level of customer experience. So for us, branding has always been at the backbone of what we do. Fast forward to today as we democratize this for the masses. You know, we've taken a lot of those learnings, particularly from the luxury space and we still run that luxury fleet. But you know, we, for brand centric retailers, the common brands, you know, we're actually doing a lot of that across all aspects of what we do because people often get confused. You know, we're not about packages, we're about people and we're about those customers. And we're about that incredible customer experience, you know, that makes the customers want to fall in love with the brand and keep coming back and buying again and again and again. And branding is a key part of that. A lot of it gets lost in the carrier networks where you're just a Little itty bitty parcel. But we have a brand centric approach and then that is nuanced for different brands depending on how they want their brand represented. I guess delivering parcels is a byproduct of what we do. We're brand representatives first and foremost.
[Voiceover]: Okay, I like that line. You know, we're about people, not parcels. Can you give us some examples of obviously so important that the product turns up on time to the door undamaged? That's, that's the job. That's the parcel job.
Darren Kowalski: Right.
[Voiceover]: When you talk people outside of that, what are some of the uncommon things that you see brands do above and beyond in that last mile to do the people side of it, to get that brand across?
Hawk Steele: Look, I would say a lot of the time it's kind of use who everyone else is using and things just get lost. And they feel that that level of trust to outsource it to a third party must be done right, because that's who their competitors are using or that's who they've always used. I think for us, you know, our drivers, that culture is very important to us. And then obviously we are a tech led carrier, so everything we do in the communications, the emails, sms, the tracker, that branding comes through to preserve kind of that brand essence in every aspect of the delivery. So, you know, from click to knock at the door, that branding comes through in keeping the customer updated. And then the physical element, you know, the last mile is the only physical interaction in the customer journey that the recipient has with that brand. Is that done in a way that the brand would like or not? And we can personalize that to the luxury end of the spectrum or to the very economical end of the spectrum and everything in between. So it's tech, it's physical, it's communications. How much or how little of that do you want dialed up or dialed down?
[Voiceover]: And when you talk about that knock at the door experience, are you training up your drivers in how they speak, how they dress to kind of differentiate it from other carriers?
Hawk Steele: Again, it's that spectrum. If we're talking about luxury, you know, we have dialed it all the way up, you know, in a way that no other carrier does in the country. So the way they dress, the way they speak, the way they're recruited as well, that if you're talking very economical, very price driven, still injecting a lot of the brand elements and customer centricity, but it still has to be done at a very commercially competitive rate. Ultimately there's a value exchange in how much you have to strip away from that, to make that economical, that certainly still stands head and shoulders above other carriers in the space because that's what differentiates us at the end of the day.
[Voiceover]: So it's about being flexible with what that delivery experience looks like, depending on your brand and the level. Level of experience that's expected by your customers.
Hawk Steele: Exactly. Exactly right.
Darren Kowalski: And I think there's a couple of examples that spring to mind. And this potentially could be because I'm a warehouse nerd and I love, love these videos, but I have heard it's actually got some really good, good results. So. And it's particularly at this time of year. Well, certainly when we're recording this around, you know, coming up to the sales season, you see the likes of. In business, we talk a lot about obviously, storytelling. Right. And you're the absolute master of this bushy. But I think bringing a customer on that journey with you around fulfillment and you see the likes of Chopo and even Princess Polly do this really well around this time where they. They'll, you know, have Jane Lou picking a few orders and. And going through that. Obviously they're having a laugh and stuff at the. The same time, but I think that that's just engaging with the brand and the customers actually really like seeing that journey. Some do, of course, some will ignore that, but it's around that storytelling and it is kind of unique in that approach. And I think they do it really well. Personally, I love watching it because like I said, I'm a warehouse nerd, but I think it's effective.
[Voiceover]: It is such a good point, isn't it? It's like, give us a peek behind the scenes on where this product comes from, what, what the team are doing along the way, because it shouldn't be. You know, obviously I love the showpo example that you gave. There is like, not every day will be a Jane Liu packing day,
Darren Kowalski: but
[Voiceover]: it is an opportunity to have a bit of fun and to give people an idea so that when they're in that state of anxiety, they can kind of picture where their parcel might be going or where it's at or the team kind of team that are working on it to make it happen for you. So even if it does get to a customer service level, there might be a little bit more empathy there if they can connect who's behind the scenes.
Darren Kowalski: Agreed, Agreed. I will add another, actually a counter to that as well, which I have heard as well, which just if you are thinking about doing any of these videos, perhaps worth considering is, you know, if someone has just dropped, I don't know, $500 on, on an order. And then they see a video. So they're feeling very special. They're feeling, this is unique, this is great. And then they see a warehouse full of 10,000 of those things, those particular items. All of a sudden they're like, oh, okay, maybe I'm not that special. So just keep that in mind, perhaps just right.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. I'm not such a special snowflake after all. I'm really keen to understand metrics around how we know if customers have actually had a good experience. So, Darren, I know you talked about DYFOT there, which is deliver in full on time, which is a really straight down the line measurement of did we deliver what we said we were going to deliver to a high quality on time. Great. Yes. No, like, great. To measure. We can put that in percentage. How do we know from a loyalty perspective if customers have, you know, that Last Mile has contributed to the customer's overall experience with the brand, that then they're a raving fan. What did you call them before, Hawk? What did you call it? Lskdp.
Darren Kowalski: Savage Loyalists.
[Voiceover]: Savage Loyalists. How do we know we've been able to turn them into Savage loyalists? Is there anything in a metric sense, from the Last Mile perspective that helps you get insight whether customers will turn into Savage Loyalists?
Hawk Steele: Yeah, look, I think we always follow the data and follow the studies that we've commissioned and others have in the industry. I think a big kicker there is, you know, 90% of customers are likely to repurchase from a brand after a positive delivery experience. But then 65% would avoid a brand after a negative experience. So, you know, it really highlights, particularly for first time shoppers. You have one chance to make a first impression and it sets you up on if you've got that customer for a second one or if you've turned them into a loyal customer or if you've lost them. So for us, customer lifetime value and shipping are linked unquestionably so. And if you look at Amazon, this is effectively what makes Amazon prime very sticky. And I know I keep referring to that, but Amazon really does do delivery for a reason. They're not just choosing to do it because it's a great idea. There's a method behind their madness. So building up that loyalty is key, particularly for the delivery side. And, you know, when you look at the market, it's quite fragmented. You know, you've got point to point carriers and you've got, I guess, large legacy carriers and that loyalty piece is Quite essential. And building out that level of customer lifetime value, you know, that link between that and delivery, it really holds true.
[Voiceover]: What about you, Hawk? You see feedback from all a big range of carriers. Do you get any sense from the data or the feedback that you get around carriers that are really exciting customers, first ones that are just ticking a box?
Darren Kowalski: Yeah, I'm not sure I've got any hard data on that. But I tell you what is really interesting is the use of social media around this. And I see and I hear a lot about customers just going back to, back to social media in both cases, the good and the bad. And you can quite, you can get a really good gauge of things. And I think the delivery experience obviously goes a long way towards building loyalty, but it can go the other way very, very quickly if it's done wrong. And that first place, if you've built your business on social media, built an audience on social media, that's the first place they're going to, they're gonna turn. So I do see, you know, a lot of loyalty programs that will reward customers for posting after a social, a good delivery experience if they're posting, you know, on a social platform. So that's, that, that's often a really good indication of sort of experiences that are happening out there.
[Voiceover]: It's a good tip. People love using social when it's really good or really bad and there's not much in between. If you tick a box, it's rarely gonna be mentioned.
Darren Kowalski: Yeah, and I keep coming back to the fact that with this type of thing I would really hammer down. You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to complain to you. So making sure your phone number is there, making sure you answer the phone because if they can vent to you and you can actually at least go halfway to resolving their problems, they're going to stay off social. So you've seen this done really badly in the past, you know, unreactive and just blows up. And you know, they could do everything right. Product amazing, everything right. They get that one piece wrong at the end where they're just not answering the phone or something and it just, it's all for nothing. So that's a big, big tip.
[Voiceover]: That makes sense. And Darren, can you talk us through that part when things do go wrong. You mentioned some amazing die fault rates there that you've got with delivery in person. But nothing is infallible and there will be occasionally times where things happen. How do you manage that with your retail partners? How do you get on, you know, get ahead of that and be proactive rather than responsive.
Hawk Steele: I think for us it's. It's probably less of an issue than it is for others. Very rare situation because for us we've built things very proactively and putting the customer front and center and empowering them with that technology to really maintain visibility over where their order is. But also if things need to change, how they can communicate that to us. I think tech for us has really been an enabler there. You know, they can correspond directly with our customer service team and with the driver directly in seconds and minutes rather than hours, which become days. And that builds the frustration. So I think that is that flywheel effect that we get because if anything is starting to look like it's going awry, they can quickly resolve that themselves or through our team. So very little actually gets back to the retailers. I think there was a case study we released recently with Samsonite where I think their customer service team was spending 13 to 14 hours a month and it became a matter of minutes after they made the switch with us. And the reason for that is a lot could be self served by the customer or could be fronted by our team. So if you think of it like a funnel, very little distilled down to them at the bottom of that funnel. But I think for us, look, we have a very strong die fight of 99.6 and that first time attempt success of 98% plus. And if you look at the customer satisfaction, the next element, it's that NPS of plus 93 and 4.9 out of 5 stars, very little makes its way to us. But when it does, we resolve it in a three pronged approach. We have proactive obviously as I mentioned, the tech, all of that customers resolving it themselves and then the reactive side. So the recipient being able to correspond with the driver, with our customer service team. And then we close the loop by also having that kaizen continual improvement in everything we do. So we meet very regularly and we basically analyze all right after every delivery, which ones did we not get rated 5 out of 5. And we pick every single element out of that. You know, where did it fail? Was it operationally? Was it the tech? Could we have done more? Let's plug that gap because when you're delivering parcels there's a lot of rinse and repeat and you can identify those holes in the boat and plug them very quickly. We like to think we iterate that more than other carriers do to the point where if anything, those numbers will keep increasing over time, even with volume. Added because there's only kind of so many circumstances that can go wrong in a delivery. But yeah, it's very much a combination of proactive, reactive, underpinned by tech and people.
[Voiceover]: The ability for a customer to talk directly to a driver is a really interesting one and obviously not offered by everyone. I think we've all had that experience of having that parcel note left on our door and missing the delivery driver by 2 seconds and wishing we could just quickly call them and either meet them or get that first time delivery sorted right there at that point. Darren, how much is that used by your customers, the ability to talk directly to your drivers?
Hawk Steele: Very little is it needed. A lot of the time, you know, by putting that customer in control they have that visibility. You know, with the milestone tracking events, the live tracking, the email, the sms, the certainty of the day, next day, same day, they very much know what's going on. And then if it needs to escalate to the driver, you know, you're effectively opening a portal to that driver to communicate with them. You know, if it's an address where they can't get access or there's a dog that needs to be put away or a parcel left in a specific location, it's very nuanced and we have ways of resolving that very, very quickly. And speed is key. You know, time kills delivery success. So the longer you leave it, the more it's going to become a futile delivery. And for us, we operate on very short runways, same day, next day. It's not for the faint hearted. You have more carriers trying to get away from that fast delivery than trying to enter it. And for good reason. We have to run a very tight ship. It's very obvious if we fail and for that to happen it needs to go through a lot of layers and those layers result in very little communication with the driver because it's safeguarded further upstream than downstream.
[Voiceover]: And hawkeye, you seeing the carriers that you're working with have that direct conversation with the driver, is it becoming more common or most carriers trying to protect their drivers from having to do any customer service?
Darren Kowalski: Yeah, it's not common. It's not common. That certainly that I'm aware of this is really unique and I think it's, it's fantastic. You know, one day it probably will be, but for now it's. Yeah, I think there is a lot of examples of retailers being indirect contact with the driver and I think there's a lot of lots to be said for that. You know, you make friends with your, your local driver you, you like, you know, can you just quickly whip around the block again and pick them up? I've got another three orders to pick up and they'll do it, you know, case of beer at Christmas and make friends with them. And that's great, but not from the other side, from the consumer side. I'm not seeing it at all. But, you know, it's a really good point that Darren's sort of raising. But we've also done a lot of work in that, in that area at Starship, around the customer service aspect, because the first part is to prevent all those inquiries.
Hawk Steele: Right.
Darren Kowalski: But yes, shit happens. So we've built a lot of functionality around enabling retailers to, to speed up or to answer those wsmo inquiries a lot easier, a lot, a lot faster. So we've built integrations with the likes of Zendesk. We've also built chrome extensions to meet the retailers where they are, the customer service teams in the tools that they're using every day, so they're not having to go bounce around to, you know, an Australia Post website into Starship and to this and that, to be able to answer that order. So all this information is being pulled directly from the Starship account. You know, the status of their orders, what's happening, and so the customer service agent can answer those queries on the fly. And, you know, that's. That stuff's getting some really great, great feedback this year. Yeah.
[Voiceover]: One area that we haven't mentioned, which is really important for loyalty in the last mile, is returns and reverse logistics. How are you seeing this play out at the moment, Hawk? Are you finding that most retailers are actually making it harder to return items to protect margins, or are you finding most retailers are trying to streamline the process to make it easy for customers?
Darren Kowalski: Not a straightforward answer. We are finding retailers definitely are starting to charge for returns. So in that respect, yes, they're making it harder. And I think that was probably led by, I guess, the iconic, you know, who live and die on their returns. So they did introduce small, you know, returns fee and everybody's followed, so everybody hates returns. And I'm going to say consumers included, unless you're those sort of shysters that were returning fakes all the time that's been happening. But yes. So making it harder, yes. Increase a cost. Of course, there are still outliers there doing free returns and things, but there is still some of the big ones that are making it really hard. But I think that actually is hurting their customer acquisition as well. So I think making it really seamless and a to get customers across the line initially. But if they do have to return it and it's hard, they're not coming back to you a second time. But if it is easy, you could have another shot at that customer for sure. So not a straightforward answer, harder in the introducing, but yeah, got to make it simple and straightforward and seamless.
[Voiceover]: Darren, do you include a returns process at all in the deliver in person model or are you purely let's get
Hawk Steele: the product to the door look for us, we're both so just like Amazon, going back to that delivery experience, communication experience and returns experience. That full loop is part of what we do. And when you look at returns, you can't not address it. And if you're doing things very well to the customer's door, well, you can also do things very well from the customer's store. And we play in that space. So when you look at the returns rate, I believe it was a Shopify report published last year, it was about 18% of returns across the board. So out of every product 100 products sold, 18 will come back. But it's higher in other categories like fashion, it's around 30%, I think there's an SMH article just yesterday where they were saying that iconic, it's around 30%. And they've been a bit of a victim of their own success with the returns rate, which is particularly prevalent in fashion. You know, people don't know what size they are, particularly as a first time buyer. There might be one size in one brand and another size in another brand. And bracketing comes into play. You know, am I small, medium, large, let me buy all three, I'll work out which one I am, return the other two. And that return can be a massive pain point for the retailer and the recipient. But for the retailer, you know, the returns process takes three to four times longer than the sales and that's to process back in. And that can affect inventory, turnover, stock turn, etc. Because you can't sell what you can't have until it comes back. So we play in that space by introducing a suite of services. We have one called wait and try, deliver today, try on today, keep and return tomorrow. We have another one called pickup, return, deliver today, return tomorrow, and then we have swap, return new delivery and return the collection in the same time. So with those three services we can resolve a lot of this bracketing that's happening.
[Voiceover]: So the driver automatically comes back the next day to pick up the return. Is that how it works?
Hawk Steele: It depends. The driver can wait in the van for the customer to try it on. Alternatively, if they want more time, they can come back the next day or they can swap it over at the same point. Let's say a customer bought a pair, you know, of something and they want to swap it on the doorstep with something that they know that they want. We work with retailers with those three very innovative solutions.
[Voiceover]: It's going to be awkward for underwear,
Hawk Steele: I think for the retailer. It gets the bracketing problem resolved and it a very innovative, innovative way to resolve returns. And it also gets the return items back quicker so they can get it back on the shelves quicker and that improve that stock turn so they can sell a lot quicker with the inventory that they have, rather than wait days or weeks for it to come back, which can become very problematic if, you know, 30% of your items are being returned.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. What a way to increase loyalty if you're able to offer that as a service for customers who are, you know, they're time poor as well. Hawk, I love what you said is that customers don't love going through this process either. So, you know, no one's enjoying this. If we can make it easy and profitable for everyone involved, you know, happy days.
Darren Kowalski: Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, with, with our solution, you know, at the forefront is that customer journey that they're going through to make it really, really seamless and really easy to do. Having said that, you know, we've got a. I'm just going to step outside of Australia for a second. We've got a customer in Iceland that's using our returns portal that really, really well. And they, they were spending so much time just dealing with returns, they could have done so much more with their business ages ago. They're just dealing with returns and. But having a simple process from the retailers in, in the back of the house operationally, that actually got back 70% of their time just by using the right, right technology to a, you know, manage their policy or returns policy that they're sort of presenting to their customers. But any back and forth emails around when they're going to be accepted, when they're not sending shipping labels here and there. So it's both sides from the consumer's perspective, but also operationally from a retailer's. I think, yeah, there's so much, so much savings to be headed for the right solution.
[Voiceover]: Brilliant. Guys. We have covered so much ground today on that last mile experience and how it can build loyalty and have customers coming back again and again. So we've obviously, we've gone through Tracking, we've gone through speed, we've gone through a bit of personalization, brand building returns, the whole lot. We are coming up to peak season as we alluded to recording now at the end of October. Might be hearing this during November. You're going to most retailers will be having a lot of first time customers come through during Black Friday Cyber Monday. If you had one tip from a last mile perspective for those retailers, for them to be focusing on in that last mile to turn a one time customer into a returning customer because they've had a shit hot delivery experience, what would that tip be?
Hawk Steele: Darren, Work with the most customer centric delivery carrier you can and the most scalable. I think for us we're very much seeing this narrative in the market that Q1, 2 and 3, everyone performs well. When it gets to Q4, the floor falls out from most carriers performance wise. We've operationally structured ourselves to perform all four quarters and we've been through this will be our third peak period and we found that our performance stats hold true irrespective of the quarter. During peak. It gets very emotional. You know, people's minds were unwild of what could go wrong is probably going wrong and that level of anxiety probably around, you know, gifting a large portion of these items are gifts but for us it's that reliability piece. You know, we're really trying to build a relationship with the recipient and the brand and the best way to do that is a rock solid delivery.
[Voiceover]: And in terms of a timeframe there around onboarding a new carrier and we won't beat around the bush if people wanted to onboard deliver in person before peak. What's the kind of time frame you need for a good onboarding to make sure that it is done in the right way to deliver that level of service, both that you need and the retailer might need to onboard successfully, we've
Hawk Steele: removed a lot of the barriers. Obviously our integration with Starship is a key component of that. We are on other shipping platforms as well. We can do direct integrations with clients and we can operationalize quite expeditiously. We move very quickly. We work well under pressure obviously same day as what we do day in, day out. So to onboard a client quickly is not an issue for us. We are tech led so that resolves a lot of those pain points and it just becomes a case of, you know, tell us when and where and we'll, we'll be there.
[Voiceover]: It's a dangerous offer. Everyone's hearing this. I'm broadcasting this out to the World. Darren,
Hawk Steele: we're fearless.
[Voiceover]: Nathan, you're just calm. You're just calm. You're like, yeah, bring it on, let's go. Hawk, what about you? One tip. If you, if you wanted to use that Last Mile experience for first time customers to turn them into savage loyalists, what are you doing?
Darren Kowalski: Well, the first thing I would be doing is taking a really good look at your warehouse processes first. As I said before, the worst thing you can do is just get the stuff wrong. And there's obviously working with really trustworthy carriers, but there's a portion. So once the parcel's in their hands, there's a certain portion of control that you lose. Right. But part at the beginning, before it's in those hands, you've got really good amount of control over. So stress testing each part of that process, validating every item that's going into a satchel before it goes out and just making sure that, yeah, you can handle these volumes, but what happens when it's double? Okay. And so talking to your warehouse managers and your operational staff, make sure you've got enough hands on deck and then, yeah, just, just absolutely, just smashing that, that period where, where they can start shouting about that delivery experience and shouting about the brand and, and I think, yeah, all of what we talked about just comes into play there.
[Voiceover]: That's awesome. Hawk, if people want to get in touch with you or learn more about Starship it, what's the best way for them to do that?
Darren Kowalski: Yeah, well, certainly feel free to contact me through LinkedIn. Of course we've got, you know, you can book a call through the website starshipit.com and love to speak to anybody.
[Voiceover]: Lovely. And Darren, what about you and the
Hawk Steele: Deliver in person team, deliverinperson.com we have a web form there that's one can complete or. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn so feel free to reach out to me there.
[Voiceover]: Beautiful gents, awesome discussion around that Last mile fulfillment, especially with the focus on not just delivering the parcel, but looking after the people and turning those people into loyal customers long term. So thank you very much for joining us on ADD to CART today.
Darren Kowalski: Thanks, Pushy.
Hawk Steele: Thanks.
[Voiceover]: There we go.
Nathan Bush: Some people just do not find Last Mile interesting, but I think it is a fascinating area because of the level of improvement that you can get by making small tweaks to your operations and to your experience. They really add up, both from a customer experience perspective, but also from a profitability perspective. And we heard some really, really great opportunity ideas there from Darren at Deliver in Person and Hawk from Starship Here are my top three ideas that I took from that conversation. Number one Reliability over speed or both? Darren and Hawk tackled the age old question of speed versus Reliability kind of sitting on the fence at times, but where we got to was that while speed is important, they emphasized that reliable reliability often makes the biggest impact on customer loyalty. Darren explained how Deliver in Person prioritizes getting it right on the first delivery attempt with an impressive 99.6% on time rate. Hawke added that if customers can trust the delivery will arrive as promised, it builds long term brand loyalty, making reliability a key driver for repeat customers. Number two the Power of Real Time Tracking in the world of E Commerce, transparency is key all the way through the customer journey. Darren and Hawk point out that customers expect the same delivery they get from tracking on other experiences even outside of retail such as Uber or food delivery, as it does when it comes to their packages. Deliver in Person offers live tracking to give customers full visibility and control, while Starship, its platform which integrates with Deliver in Person, enables real time updates, reducing that dreaded customer anxiety at the critical point in the customer journey. This focus on transparency creates a frictionless delivery experience and give real confidence in the brand. And number three, bringing brand into the home. Finally, Deliver in Person isn't just a picture about dropping off parcels, but creating a brand experience at the door in person. They are even offering wait and try services where drivers can wait for customers to confirm that they're happy with the purchase. I don't hear a lot of last mile providers doing that, from uniformed, well trained drivers to customizing delivery communications. Darren shared how Deliver in Person helps premium brands deliver that white glove experience even after checkout. That's pretty special. Hawke highlighted how brands using starshipit can keep their brand front and center with custom brand tracking and updates, creating a cohesive customer experience from the time they discover you all the way through to when they get their pass through. A huge thank you to Deliver in Person for sponsoring this episode and for supporting us all the way through 2024. If you are looking to turn last mile delivery into a powerful launch loyalty building tool, be sure to check out Deliver in Person for a seamless delivery experience that keeps customers coming back time and time again. Before you go, we'd love to invite you to join our free e Commerce learning platform Add to Cart Campus, meet other professionals and learn from e commerce experts to take your business and your e commerce career to the next level. Register to join campus@addtocart.com now. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague. Or even better, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple. It really makes a difference.
