Competitor Watch
Parcel delivery firm DPD has teamed up with the environmentally-friendly vehicle cleaning service Dropless, to clean its fleet vehicles at its all-electric Westminster parcel depot.
Dropless’ vehicle cleaning service claims to save more than 150 litres of water for every vehicle washed, typically using just three litres of water per wash.
Dropless customers can book their vehicle wash via an app at a time and location that suits them (currently only operating in South London). Dropless uses electric mopeds and electric bikes to get to its customers’ vehicles, saving businesses time and money.
DPD Westminster is the UK’s first all-electric parcel depot, providing an emissions-free delivery service using a fleet of electric trucks, vans and micro-vehicles for both incoming parcels, and final mile deliveries.
As part of our own commitment to reduce our environmental impact, we have deployed 100 electric vans in 17 delivery offices across the UK. We have also conducted trials of zero-emission e-trikes for letter and parcel deliveries, and using electric vehicle technology for larger commercial vehicles to move mail within our network.
Meanwhile, DPD said it is planning to introduce new services in response to feedback from the Design Space user community in its Your DPD app. In August, the company will introduce a five-minute alert service in addition to its existing Predict one-hour time window notification, as customers complained that delivery drivers do not wait long enough at the doorstep. It will also introduce a ‘green delivery’ notification showing recipients that the delivery was made by an electric vehicle or other environmentally-friendly method.
DPD said that to date 4.3 million customers have downloaded the DPD app to manage their deliveries, inform DPD about their delivery preferences, rate drivers and their customer experience. DPD claim the app has so far generated a 3% improvement in successful first-time deliveries.
In October 2018, we launched our own new mobile app to help consumers track their items from their smartphone. By providing a reference number, parcel recipients can check the progress of deliveries as well as receive push notifications about their item. They can book a redelivery, find a convenient location to post or collect an item, as well as buy postage, including Tracked 24 and 48 - a first for consumers - all via the app.
Amazon Alexa was launched on the app in April 2019, and allows customers to quickly track the status of Royal Mail deliveries, by providing Alexa with their Royal Mail tracking number. This is available through all Alexa voice enabled devices. We are working on more enhancements to make it even easier for recipients to send and receive items.
