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23 April 2020 | News

DPD pulls out all the stops during this corona crisis

By now, we are in week 6 of the corona lockdown measures. These are hard and strange times, in which people suddenly found themselves without a job or are forced to work from home. However, many of our team members still drive to work each day or are doing all they can to get the vast number of parcels delivered. This article zooms in on DPD’s enormous efforts to keep this e-commerce boom going. At the same time, our gratitude goes out to our drivers, warehouse workforce and admin staff for their flexibility and commitment, as well as to our clients for the way they appreciate our efforts. 

Extraordinary volumes require extraordinary efforts

Since we all are staying at home, e-commerce is exploding. As such, of course this is good news for DPD, however, processing and delivering such huge number of shipments is no mean feat. Moreover, because of the corona outbreak, we have had to revise our delivery procedure, which resulted in a rather significant increase in returns. In other words: we have to pull out all the stops. Not only are our warehouses fully manned around the clock, we have to take extra safety measures into account. This context understandably is far from ideal for our drivers also.

Additional measures

A number of additional measures have been put in place to ensure we are equipped to keep going despite the current situation. We work from home as much as possible and a while ago already all business trips and meetings have been replaced by video calls. Communication with warehouse staff temporarily takes place via large digital screens. For our clients we launched a ‘We Are Open’ poster and all drivers received a protection kit containing a mask, gloves and face screen.

Flexibility all round

Guaranteeing we will maintain the same service levels you are used to in these extraordinary times, requires flexibility and commitment of every member of our team: not only the drivers or warehouse colleagues, but our office staff as well. Literally everyone is fully committed. For example, our office staff also helps out to deliver parcels and to clean the depots.

Revised procedures

When delivering parcels, our drivers can do nothing but go to the address indicated on the label. That doesn’t need to imply delivery cannot take place in a safe way. We will at all times respect the 1.5 meter distance rule. With home deliveries, we promote the ‘deposit permission’ option. In case of other kinds of delivery (at business customers or in a Pickup parcelshop) the consignee is no longer required to sign off on our scanner. Our driver will do so, or the shop manager. The option to drop off or pick up parcels yourself in our depots has been put ‘on hold’ for the moment, as is redirecting parcels to a shop.

All kinds of ways to get in touch

Never before has our Customer Care department been under such pressure. The telephone simply does not stop ringing. We do however want to assist our clients as good and as fast as possible. To that end, we have deployed several channels, such as an elaborate FAQ on our website. In case you cannot find the answer you are looking for, our chatbot Phil might be able to help you track parcels or change delivery details.  This way there is no more need for our clients to contact us by telephone or the contact form on our website during this corona crisis. We also keep shippers and consignees up to date via email, service alerts, Instagram… 

There it is: DPD is united in setting all sails to keep ‘business’ going in these challenging times, always with the safety and health of our staff and clients as top priority.

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