Courier Failures – Could they disrupt your peak trading?

With the temporary suspension of FedEx and TNT services last week, it’s a salutary reminder that courier failures do happen and it’s important to have back up plans in place. No one knows this more than Patrick Gore, MD of Hampers.com, who was caught up in one the biggest courier failures of recent times in 2014 when CityLink went bust on Christmas Day, leaving them with no way to deliver orders just as everyone jumped onto their new devices to go shopping as soon as Christmas dinner was over.

Peak is a crucial time for Hampers.com and it’s their busiest time of the year so courier failures are simply something they can’t afford to risk. That’s why we’re holding a live webinar interview with Patrick from Hampers.com and GFS on Thursday the 4th of November at 2pm, during which we’ll be discussing their secret to protecting Peak and how they have been protecting themselves from courier failures ever since 2014.

You might think the outlook for carriers isn’t that bad this year and that the FedEx TNT disaster last week (for which they quickly put recovery plans in place but still left customers scrambling for alternate couriers when UK domestic deliveries were suspended) could have been a one off. The reality this year however is that the jobs market, especially for drivers, is tighter than ever before in the past.

Royal Mail normally recruit some 33,000 seasonal workers over the Christmas period and this year there’s already a shortage of labour and many will have found highed paying jobs and so won’t want to jump into a Royal Mail warehouse. Plus, Royal Mail will find it exceptionally hard to recruit a couple of thousand drivers this year as they’re already swapping jobs with the likes of Tesco who are offering £1000 bonus for driver that join as a permanent colleague before the 30th of November 2021 on top of a very healthy permanent salary.

And that’s just Royal Mail who will struggle to recruit staff, every carrier is in the same boat and will be paying over the odds to attempt as drivers and workers are able to pick and choose where and when they’d like to work.

Peak could be bumpy this year, so join Patrick Gore of Hampers.com at 2pm on Thursday the 4th of November for tips and the secrets of how to protect peak including:

• Top 3 delivery pitfalls that retailers need to avoid over Peak
• The moment delivery let Hampers.com down and led to a new delivery approach
• The ‘must-haves’ for preparing and protecting delivery over Peak