Royal Mail new Chief Commercial Officer announces Inflight delivery options

Royal Mail appear to have a new Chief Commercial Officer and one of his first actions has been to announce new Inflight delivery options for Royal Mail Tracked 24 and 48 hour services.

Not before time either, during the Coronavirus lock down more consumers than ever before have been at home to receive their parcels, but as the country gets back to work people will naturally be leaving their houses more frequently again and missed deliveries will once again start to lower first-time delivery success rates. The new Royal Mail Inflight delivery options aren’t however a response to the pandemic – they’ve been working on them for some time and today’s announcement follows a successful pilot of the service in the South East of England.

How Royal Mail Inflight delivery options will work

When retailers and other customers send items via Royal Mail Tracked, prior to delivery the recipient will receive a notification including an estimated delivery window and the Inflight delivery options. Royal Mail haven’t specified how you’ll receive notifications and ultimately it will depend on the information passed to them by the retailer – but you can expect a combination of mobile text message, emails and notification via the Royal Mail app to be in the mix.

If the receiving customer knows that they may not be at home at that time, the new Inflight delivery options will enable them to request their item is delivered to a safe place or a preferred neighbour instead. The initiative is designed to offer greater convenience for recipients while increasing the number of first-time deliveries.

Following delivery, Royal Mail will also notify the customer when and where the parcel has been left in line with their selected Inflight delivery option. If left in a safe place, Royal Mail will provide a photograph of the parcel in the requested location.

Later this year, Royal Mail will be adding further Inflight delivery options and expanding the range of parcel services it will be available on. Options in the pipeline include arranging for the parcel to be delivered for collection at the customer’s convenience at a Royal Mail Customer Service Point, a local Post Office branch or arranging for the parcels to be delivered on a different day.

Nick Landon, Chief Commercial Officer, Royal Mail

“At Royal Mail we are proud to help our UK customers stay connected during these challenging times. Inflight delivery options have been the number one ask from our sending customers in e-commerce. Giving customers the option to specify where their parcels are delivered – in the event they are not at home to receive them – is just one of the ways we are helping to bring greater convenience to the lives of our customers.”
– Nick Landon, Chief Commercial Officer, Royal Mail

Nick Landon has only this month become Chief Commercial Officer at Royal Mail and now overseas all commercial and service areas for UKPIL and Parcelforce (UKPIL stands for UK Parcels, International and Letters).

Now in his 10th year at Royal Mail, Nick Landon has had various roles including Managing Director Royal Mail Parcels and most recently Chief Customer Officer. It’s safe to say that Nick will be surviving the cull of 2,000 senior leaders and senior managers which will see many of his long serving loyal colleagues leave the business.

It’s now Nick Landon’s job to drive profitable growth as Royal Mail tries to sort out an ecommerce distribution that works whilst still handling letters, so it makes sense for him to be the spokesperson on this announcement. If you have a problem with your Royal Mail account or fall foul of the Revenue Protection bods, ultimately the people you will deal with report to him. You can probably also ultimately thank him for any price changes.