Dwain McDonald

Category: Retail

  • Ryanair isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom of something bigger.

    Ryanair isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom of something bigger.

    My recent flight home from Tenerife with Ryanair left me wondering: when did customer experience in the UK fall so far?

    I’m not talking about gourmet meals or luxury lounges. I’m talking about the basics: A smile when you board, a seat that doesn’t feel like a punishment, or a hot drink that doesn’t cost more than it does at a five-star hotel.

    Instead, what I experienced was staff who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else, passengers treated like an inconvenience, and a culture that felt devoid of care or connection.

    Now, I get it. It’s a budget airline. But it wasn’t even a cheap flight. And more importantly, it reminded me of something I care deeply about.

    Customer experience.

    During my time as CEO of DPD UK and now as a Strategic Advisor, I’ve seen firsthand that putting the customer first isn’t just a slogan. It’s the reason we succeeded. We built a culture where service mattered, gave customers real control, and invested in our people because happy teams deliver better service.

    This Ryanair trip felt like the opposite of that. And it’s not just them. Across so many UK industries now, from retail to transport to public services, there’s a worrying trend. We’re cutting costs at the expense of care. Stripping out everything that makes an experience feel human.

    And we’re getting used to it.  We shouldn’t be.

    Customers are not just data points. They’re people. And when you treat people like they don’t matter, eventually, they start looking elsewhere.

    So this post isn’t really about Ryanair. It’s about something bigger. A quiet erosion of standards. A race to the bottom.

    I believe we can do better. I believe we must do better.

    If you’re a business leader, ask yourself: when was the last time you experienced your own product or service like a customer would? Felt the pain points, faced the silence, or sat in the waiting room.

    If the answer is never, then you’ve lost connection with the people who keep your business alive.

    We talk a lot about innovation in the UK. Maybe the biggest innovation we need is a return to care.

    Let’s talk. What’s the best or worst customer experience you’ve had recently?

    Have we let standards slip too far?



  • Let’s plan early for the November rush

    Let’s plan early for the November rush

    Former DPD UK CEO Dwain McDonald explains the upsides of having a ‘Cyber Fortnight’

    I had just finished taking part in a virtual ‘This is Us’ event – the welcome event held every six weeks for the hundreds of new starters joining Team DPD. During my session, I talked a lot about the company’s six core values: Honesty, Accountability, Flexibility, Passion, Hard Work and Respect. 

    These aren’t just nice words on a wall, they define what the company stands for and what the team cares about. They’re the qualities desired when recruiting new people and they describe the attitude you need to have a long career with with the company. In short, the 6 values are DPD’s DNA.

    During the event, a new starter said: “Can you give me an example of how you bring the DNA to life?” In this post, I wanted to answer that question by sharing with you just how much these six values matter to the whole team. Not only in terms of how everyone worked together internally, but also in the way the company communicated with customers during these extraordinary times to prepare for a monster Cyber Weekend and Christmas.

    Flexing up for Peak – why it’s time to plan for the November rush 

    We only had 74 working days until the start of Cyber Weekend on Black Friday (27 November). This annual four-day retail extravaganza marks the start of the holiday season and sees Brits spending an estimated £7billion in a bid to bag a bargain for Christmas. 

    Last year more than 75% of these purchases were made online for delivery to home addresses by DPD and its competitors, and this year, because of the pandemic, I had expected that figure to rise even higher. That’s why DPD predicted carrying 400,000 more parcels on Cyber Tuesday than on the same night last year.

    74 days might have seemed a long way off but the truth is that we had been planning for Cyber Weekend since January and fine-tuning plans with customers since May – this is partly how we held ourselves accountable. 

    Because of a surge in online shopping caused by lockdown, we had 9,000 delivery drivers – 3,000 more than the previous year and we worked hard to recruit another 3,000 before October. the company had also recruited 500 new managers, spent £100m on new vehicles plus another £60m to open 12 new depots and a further £40m on technology.

    Despite this unprecedented investment, our Honesty value meant we had reminded retailers that the UK parcels sector still did not the have infinite next-day capacity in the November-December Peak. 

    That’s why I urged all our customers to plan ahead as far as possible and resist the temptation to leave their logistics until the last minute or to hope that Christmas would save their year.

    We had never experienced Christmas in a pandemic year (well not that I can remember) and so any kind of ‘copy-paste-repeat’ approach from 2019 simply would not have worked in 2020. For a start, we had delivered the kinds of volumes in August that we usually didn’t see until November. 

    And you just couldn’t put all your 2020 eggs in a 4-day (or even a 4-week) basket, cross your fingers and hope for the best in terms of on-time delivery and customer experience.

    Why? Because for DPD, 2020’s Cyber Weekend was already a more finely tuned operation than ever before. 

    Two years ago, in order to ensure we could deliver the best doorstep experience, we had asked customers to make volume forecasts three months in advance – and then stick to them. The vast majority were supportive, appreciated our Honesty, and realised it was the best way to give their own customers a reliable service.

    Next level planning

    This year, because of the pandemic, the company decided to take planning to the next level. 

    So for example, when we discussed forecasts with customers, instead of just saying ‘you can send me 10,000 parcels on Cyber Monday’, we now said: ‘We can deliver to your customers on time as long as you can send me 6,000 parcels before 7pm. Of these, we need to receive 3,000 between 11am and 3pm. Then we can handle the final 4,000 after 7pm.”

    In order to meet retailers halfway, we were flexible and rejigged our operations so that delivery drivers went out in waves, with the first wave hitting the road at 7am.

    Again the more forward-thinking retailers loved our Honesty and saw the whole Cyber project as a partnership based on Respect, where each party aimed for a win-win by sticking to their side of the bargain. We believed this was an accountable approach to the challenge we faced together.

    Of course, forecasts can and do change. And thanks to our Intelligent Operations Centre (real-time ‘mission control’ for Peak…) we were still able to offer Flexibility. 

    For example, if ‘Customer A’ decided they needed less volume than forecast on a given day, the spare sortation capacity could be switched immediately to ‘Customer B’ – who had just requested more of our resource, perhaps because a promotion had gone better than expected.  

    Facebook fans and the final mile

    We know that many of our customers on the doorstep really value the relationship they have with their local DPD Driver. In fact, dozens of them set up Facebook ‘fan pages’ dedicated to the drivers who deliver to their homes. 

    I’d like to think that this is because we recruited and retained people who showed a genuine Passion for the DPD brand. But in these challenging times, DPD drivers also had to be super-flexible: I asked 2,000 of them to switch to a different route and often a different depot from their usual one. This is because 22% of our postcodes were moved from one site to another this year to handle the impact of COVID-19 and better manage the ‘fall to earth’ – i.e. the areas that received the highest volumes during Peak.

    Can we have a ‘Cyber Fortnight’ please?

    One of my more forward-looking friends recently asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I replied that I’d like a Cyber Fortnight instead of a Cyber Weekend. 

    The team is passionate about giving customers a super-consistent performance across the whole of Peak so it would be great if retailers could ‘flatten the curve’ – by going early with their discounts and spreading them over two weeks instead of four days. 

    By working together to set customer expectations and move volume a little earlier and a little later than normal,  then we could keep everyone happy.

    Delivering a Dazzling Peak

    Back to the ‘new starters’ event. The question I was asked by a new member of DPD, plus the whole experience of preparing for Peak since the outbreak of COVID-19 made me think long and hard about discussions with customers and all our other stakeholders. 

    So in summary:

    • We were 74 days from our biggest ever Peak, and knew it would be Hard Work!
    • Flexibility of our team was more crucial than ever before
    • It’s a crucial part of DPD’s DNA to set expectations and then be accountable
    • We had the Passion to go the extra mile and get it right for the customer
    • We must respect each other and treat people how we would like to be treated ourselves
    • Honesty is absolutely paramount: providing we shared information and worked together on the common goal of delighting the consumer then it could be a win-win for everyone

     

     

  • The Retail Bounce-Back: Preparing for a Post-Pandemic World

    The Retail Bounce-Back: Preparing for a Post-Pandemic World

    During my time as CEO at DPD UK,  and as UK plc was gradually emerging from lockdown, I asked our retailer customers how they were preparing for life in a post-pandemic world. How much of the old normal will their customers go back to?

    How much trust was there in the consumer journey – both in-store and online? And of the new buying behaviours triggered by the pandemic, which ones would be temporary, and which were here to stay?

    One of the most striking comments came from the Head of Logistics for a major fashion retailer who said to me: “I can’t imagine a million people will be walking through the doors of the Trafford Centre this November.”

    “People visit stores for an experience, not just a transaction, but how are they going to feel if they can’t use the toilet, can’t try on clothes and have to walk one way around the store? And who knows, they might even have to pass a temperature test before being let into the car park.”

    Another commented: “People will still go to supermarkets for food, but who wants to risk infection for the sake of a non-essential shopping trip, when they can buy online from the safety of their own homes and then get a non-contact delivery?” Meanwhile, figures from a DPD customer whose stores have re-opened in Asia show that footfall is only 40% of what it was before, whereas their online traffic remains super buoyant.

     

    New consumer behaviour

    Obviously DPD wanted the UK high street to survive and thrive again, not least because deliveries to store were a major proportion of pre-COVID B2B volumes.

    The company hoped to see a string of innovations that made the in-store experience as engaging, safe and convenient as possible. But the fact is that during the last three months there has been a step change in the move to online shopping and a huge surge in B2C traffic – several commentators have said that e-commerce leapt forwards four years in just three months.

    Perhaps the most dramatic stat, is that according to research consultancy Retail Economics, 45% of consumers bought something online for the first time that they’d only ever bought in-store before.

    DPD data reflected the same story, because since the start of lockdown the company delivered to 500,000 addresses for the first time ever. Downloads of the DPD App – where individuals can manage their delivery preferences – grew 28% quicker than before lockdown, reaching a total of 7.3 million users.

     

    The new online and mobile shoppers

    There was definitely a segment of new ‘silver surfers’ who because of lockdown, became more tech-savvy, overcoming reservations about e-commerce transactions to buy essentials such as food and health supplements.

    But here’s the thing, they’ve then realised that clothes, craft and leisure items were also available to buy with a simple swipe or a click of the mouse and they will arrive safely the next day on their doorstep. In a similar vein, online shoppers who previously bought only fashion and leisure items were now using websites to buy essentials as well.

    Is the massive weekly food shop a thing of the past? It looks that way at the moment, as consumers made shorter and more frequent supermarket visits, supplemented by deliveries from subscription services such as Mindful Chef and Hello Fresh – all of whom ship with DPD, sending 300,000 parcels per week with the company.

    It looks like people who used to buy six or seven days worth of food from the supermarket have replaced around a third of this with food subscription services. And if they’ve relished the new experience, why would they go back to the old way of doing things?

     

    Preparing for a post-pandemic world – planning for the Christmas peak

    Understandably, throughout the current crisis, retailers were very focused on immediate challenges and on getting through the next day or week. But to maximise their chances of bouncing back post-pandemic, we have encouraged them to plan further ahead.

    I wouldn’t normally mention Christmas to customers in the middle of June, but this year it would be irresponsible not to. Why start preparing for the post-pandemic world early? Quite simply because the UK parcels sector will not have limitless next-day capacity in the November-December peak.

    To help maintain retailers’ margins, parcel carriers have learned to run very lean operations in the UK’s ‘just in time’ supply chain. And although recruiting extra drivers and adding new vehicles is easy enough, carriers can’t magic up extra hubs and depots overnight.

    Normally we would have asked customers to nail down their festive volume forecasts by the end of September. But as I write this on Wednesday 10 June, there are just 122 working days until Black Friday (27 November). That has focused minds on planning further ahead than usual. If forecasts are locked and loaded by the end of July, customers can be sure of having enough space in the DPD network.

     

    Trust – an invisible but crucial commodity

    None of us knows how retail will look a year from now, but one thing is certain: whether people return to the high street or stick with online, trust in the consumer journey will be the most crucial factor.

    Trust is the invisible commodity that we all depend on. It’s only because new silver surfers are learning to trust the online experience – from browsing to ordering to delivery (not to mention returns) – that they’ve now become repeat customers.

    Meanwhile, in-store, a whole load of other factors will affect trust levels. For example, because of contamination fears, people will probably feel much less comfortable about trying on and buying shoes in a confined space than about buying plumbing materials from a big DIY store.

    However things pan out post-pandemic, DPD will have to monitor retail trends and buying behaviour both at home and abroad.