At DHL, understanding what customers value is key to delivering exceptional service. But as consumer expectations shift, businesses need to be more agile than ever.
In our webinar, Tracy Hodges, Head of Product at DHL, answered questions from attendees to share how they’ve adapted to meet these evolving needs: from embracing customer feedback to driving innovations like sustainable delivery.
How has customer value evolved in your industry, and where does feedback fit into what you’re doing?
I’ve been in the logistics carry industry for a number of years. When I first started, it was very much about the business account customer who would open the account with you to send their parcels. Over the years, that’s changed so our customer isn’t now just the person who owns the account; it could be you as a private sender sending a parcel, or it could be me as an individual receiving a parcel.
So for us a customer is anyone who interacts with our services at any point in that parcel journey and that’s quite a big shift. What’s important for us is the power of the review. Although there’s an argument that says ‘are you purchasing from DHL?’ You may not be, but the delivery company who is being used by the retailer you’re buying from may well influence your decision, and we want that to be a positive influence… That’s why we partner with Feefo and collect those reviews, whether they are good or bad, from the people that we're delivering parcels to..
How do you see customer value evolving for your business beyond this year, and how do you approach that?
That’s tricky, isn’t it, because who knows what the future is going to hold? So we understand what we’re here to do and what it is that we’re going to deliver, then we will evolve.
So yesterday DHL announced their Strategy 2030, which is about adding sustainability and it’s a fourth pillar. We see that sustainability is really an element that consumers and retailers are looking for, moving forward. And that isn’t just about electric van deliveries, it’s anything that happens through that supply chain. So there’s lots of things that we can do as a logistics partner to help people either choose a sustainable delivery option or for a retailer to have a sustainable supply chain.
The other areas are the added value that we can have. By adding things in to make our interactions as digital as possible, but by recognising, you know, the answer isn’t AI. The answer is making sure that you’ve got a variety of channels that mean, that means that people can contact you in the way that they want to contact you is really important to us.
So that customer experience strategy for us over the next couple of years is going to be really key.
We had a few questions on a similar theme around review fatigue. How do we ensure that it’s still a meaningful thing for a customer to do to leave a review?
It’s about appreciating the fact that consumers have taken time to leave you a review. Replying to that if you can and then in some way being able to communicate back to consumers the changes that have been made as a result of that feedback. That’s obviously much easier in smaller businesses and it takes longer to do in larger businesses, but also it’s looking at collecting feedback at touch points wherever your consumers are.
Shoppable social is increasing all of the time. If we think about our own behaviours – for example, if I’ve purchased something on Instagram on the spur of the moment -, I don’t want it to take longer to leave feedback than it did for me to make the purchase in the first place.
So it’s looking at using different channels to collect feedback and collecting smaller pieces of feedback which aggregate up to a better view of what’s happening with consumers.
How does DHL prioritise customer feedback and action and how you connect all of this with business outcomes to show value?
So part of that is that that will feed into that into our customer centric culture. Once a month, we meet as a sort of governing body, with various representatives from around the business. That’s run by a continuous improvement team.
We take all of the voice of the customer channels that we have – the Feefo reviews, feedback from our monthly business reviews and so on. We then look to see what the trends are and I think it’s really important that we take time to do that so we don’t act reactively, it’s a considered approach… Then we agree collectively across the business how we’re going to implement that.
The trick is to then make sure that we do implement change. We do measure, but most importantly we feed back what we’ve done. We’re very transparent about that, and we’ll go back to our retailers. We’ll tell them this is what we’re going to do, then when we’ve done it, we’ll go back and say what we’ve done and the success of what we’ve done.
How do you measure the success or effectiveness of your customer interaction management strategy?
It’s the voice of customer channels. We measure those to see how they move. Then, it’s Net Promoter Score and CSAT – the good old ones that have always been there. And then the third one would be complaints. Not everything happens correctly 100% of the time and occasionally people will make a complaint. And it’s really important that we have a robust process in place for that complaint to be made, and that we understand what the complaint’s about, but also that we provide a solution to that complaint.
How would you integrate customer feedback to strengthen other marketing activity rather than having it as a standalone activity?
Don’t have reviews in isolation. If they’re sitting in isolation, I’d question the benefit of why you’re doing it. It is about bringing that data into a CRM system, or whatever system you use to collect data and then link that towards other performance metrics or KPIs that you may have as well. It really depends on the type of business that you are, but definitely don’t see it in isolation. Look at what your KPIs are and how that can support those.
Do you have any advice on how to actually ask for customer feedback?
We have a survey that we send out through Feefo. That’s really powerful for us because of course it’s verified. It only goes to people who have had a delivery from DHL. But we ensure that we don’t ask questions for the sake of asking the questions.
I think it’s about making sure that you don’t then just stay static with it. We have definitely updated our questions two or three times over the past couple of years. We have some that we keep because they give us core benchmarking, but other ones will be to deep dive more into the areas that we really want to know about. We would never ask a question just for the sake of asking it.
Do you use any unique technology methods that assist or guide with gathering feedback?
I don’t think we do. I don’t think there’s anything unique about the tools that we’re using. I think what we’re doing is we understand the tool. You’ve got to understand it.
We work with partners like Feefo to ensure that we’re using the best tools in the market. That takes the heavy lifting out of being able to digest what could be quite a lot of data and then what the output is going to be.
Is there a difference in your approach, when dealing with a complaint that the cause isn’t fully within your control?
That does happen. Customers aren’t necessarily buying from us; they’re probably buying from a retailer who happens to use DHL as their delivery agent.
We would always try to support. But equally, we have to be very genuine and honest in the answers that we’re giving. So if, for example, maybe there’s a query over the contents of the parcel. Someone’s ordered something, and something else came in the box? We would handle that, and we would encourage the person to contact the retailer directly.
I think it’s important that we understand what bits are within our control to answer and where it’s more appropriate to hand back to the retailer. We would still log the complaint and when we do regular reviews with our retailers we would provide that feedback to them… to say we have had some contact about this.
Can a business’s core value proposition remain timeless but still evolving to reflect changing consumer behaviour?
DHL is an example of a company that does this really well. DHL Strategy 2030 launched recently, which is about understanding and recognising how businesses and consumer patterns are evolving. We need to stay on top of the evolving market, but fundamentally, we’re still very much about excellence, simply delivered.
Our final thoughts
A huge thanks to Tracy for sharing how DHL is using real-time data to enhance service, improve sustainability, and strengthen customer relationships. You can learn more from Tracy and Kerry by watching the full webinar.
Customer expectations are always evolving, and DHL is a great example of how businesses can adapt by listening to feedback and prioritising customer value. See how your business measures up and receive personalised recommendations on how to improve customer experience and retention by taking our Business Questionnaire.
