Make Your Courier Business More Appealing To Customers

If you run a business offering courier work, in order to be successful and remain relevant in the ever-changing delivery landscape, you need to give customers what they’re looking for. If you want to stay ahead of the game you also need to be able to adapt, diversify and react in a timely manner to clients’ needs.

That’s all well and good, but how can you give people what they want if you’re not actually sure what it is? Allow us to share some qualities that will help make your courier work business more appealing to existing and potential new customers.

Reliability

Common sense, sure. Common place, certainly not. You need to commit to a certain level of customer service and stick to it – end of story. Trust takes time to earn, but if you can build a solid reputation for getting the job done on time, every time and with complete transparency, you’ll be able to attract and retain a loyal customer base.

Tracking and Transparency

One of the most important aspects of modern day courier work that customers look for is tracking: aka being able to see where their goods are in transit at all stages of the journey. There are plenty of hi-tech tracking systems you can implement that allow for complete transparency, so that even if there are unavoidable hold-ups, customers know not to expect the goods on time – which is highly preferable to the deafening silence of an unanswered phone call or email.

Professionalism and Friendliness of Drivers  

Research shows that, for customers, the human face of their delivery service is extremely important. For a one-man owner driver operation it’s easy to keep track of one’s own behaviour, but for larger fleets it may be necessary to put in place training and accountability measures. As the representatives for the business, well-dressed, polite drivers can do wonders in terms of word-of-mouth marketing.

Insurance

Having the correct insurance policies in place to run a courier work business is not only valuable for your own peace of mind, but also your customers’. Speak to an expert broker to ensure you’ve got every aspect covered, and then shout about it as loudly and as often as you can on marketing collateral, your website and even on the side of your vans.

Customer Support

Another big-ticket item customers want is the promise (and follow-through) of support should something go wrong, or if they just have a query about your courier work services. The rule of thumb is to make it as easy as possible for them to find information, track their goods, speak to a ‘real’ person, or get an answer to an online or telephone query. It’s really not hard: say what you mean, mean what you say and remain scrupulously honest and transparent in all your day-to-day business dealings.

While the qualities covered above certainly aren’t the only ones you’ll need to make a success of a busy courier work business, they certainly will help make you more appealing to potential customers. Put these in place and good things will follow!

Author Plate

Norman Dulwich is a correspondent for Courier Exchange, the world's largest neutral trading hub for same day courier work in the express freight exchange industry. Numerous transport exchange businesses are networked together on their website, trading jobs and capacity through what is now the fastest growing Freight Exchange in the UK.