I will be using different techniques to identify perceived quality gaps for a selected service/product.
Parcelforce is a delivery company and they are part of the royalmail group. In terms if Parcelforce
has always been a successful division of royalmail; they have not because in 2000-2001 they had a
huge loss of profit which was £193m.Parcelforce had strong grow in 2010-2011 in those years they
made an high amount of profit even after the high loss they had in 2000-2001.Parcelforce revenues
grew to 420m and their volume in terms of how much they were delivering did rise by 15%.They
have popular customers which are BT, harrods, John Lewis and Amazon etc.2003-2004 is when
their profit started rising and that was close to the time around they had a huge profit loss.
Parcelforce had a few changes which allowed them to start making profit again, which was reducing
the cost of running their business as this will allow them to have more money for other aspects of
the business such as improving service, they improved their service so no more delayed deliveries,
they increased the cost of their prices and this is because they improved quality , so if they improve
their quality which they done they can charge more because they know it is worth it,Parcel force
lowered the amount of packages they delivered because when they had that huge profit loss they
were delivering more than they can actually handle , they reduced their amount of employees from
10,200 to 4,500 because they will not need a lot of employees because they are not delivering
many parcels and these changes worked for them because their market share grew from 14% to
16% and their quality of service for their next day delivery improved by 97.7% because they are
delivering fewer parcels they will be able to make sure those are delivered correctly and on time.
In terms of “Does parcel force know what needs to be fixed?”; benchmarking which is what
Parcelforce used to improve and grow their business. Benchmarking is when a business will
compare their self to similar companies and learn from the best companies to improve. Parcelforce
will also use benchmarking to copy competitors success. The way Parcelforce benchmarked; they
will compare themselves with other companies for example their volume was 16% and their revenue
was 5%, in the international marketplace Parcelforce has just 9% of the international marketplace
whereas DHL has 17% so parcel will compare themselves and try and be better than this. In terms
of the revenue Parcelforce has just 5% revenue out of the total of the delivery companies whereas
yodel has 8% so Parcelforce will compare themselves and try and improve and be better.
Parcelforce could learn from DPD by benchmarking as DPD has very fast delivery and customers
have a one hour delivery window and they can choose the time they want the parcel to come within
a certain hour and the customer can track the driver to see where their parcel is.In term of how
satisfied customers are with delivery companies; Parcelforce has a percentage of 75% whereas
DPD has 83% so Parcelforce can compare themselves to DPD and learn from them. Parcelforce
delivery cost for sending a 10kg box is £20.90 whereas hermes is cheaper which is £7.48 so
Parcelforce can assess to see how expensive they are. Parcelforce has won awards such as
ftse4good and they score 4.1 out 5, BITC CR index and carbon trust standard and Parcelforce will
compare their awards to other business to see how they are doing .
In terms of what gap analysis has identified at parcelforce, gap analysis is what the business needs
to do in order to move from where they are now to where they want to be and what they need to do
to achieve that and how they will do it.Parcelforce wants to improve their customer service and they
have done a gap anaylsis in order to do that.In parcelforce customer service has an impact in main
areas of the business such as deliveries to customers they aim to provide delivery on time, re
deliveries aim to be done properly, making claims easy for customers if they want to make a claim,
collections from customers aim to be on time, customer contact; communication is being improved
as help can be accessed on the web or telephone and parcel tracking allows customers to track
their parcel; this is what parcelforce wants to improve in order to achieve good customer service
Parcelforce’s contact volumes and performance in 2014 was that 11% lost calls when calls are
made to the call centre, emails were 2000 per week and the emails answered were n/a because
parcelforce was not measuring the response.
1
Parcelforce is a delivery company and they are part of the royalmail group. In terms if Parcelforce
has always been a successful division of royalmail; they have not because in 2000-2001 they had a
huge loss of profit which was £193m.Parcelforce had strong grow in 2010-2011 in those years they
made an high amount of profit even after the high loss they had in 2000-2001.Parcelforce revenues
grew to 420m and their volume in terms of how much they were delivering did rise by 15%.They
have popular customers which are BT, harrods, John Lewis and Amazon etc.2003-2004 is when
their profit started rising and that was close to the time around they had a huge profit loss.
Parcelforce had a few changes which allowed them to start making profit again, which was reducing
the cost of running their business as this will allow them to have more money for other aspects of
the business such as improving service, they improved their service so no more delayed deliveries,
they increased the cost of their prices and this is because they improved quality , so if they improve
their quality which they done they can charge more because they know it is worth it,Parcel force
lowered the amount of packages they delivered because when they had that huge profit loss they
were delivering more than they can actually handle , they reduced their amount of employees from
10,200 to 4,500 because they will not need a lot of employees because they are not delivering
many parcels and these changes worked for them because their market share grew from 14% to
16% and their quality of service for their next day delivery improved by 97.7% because they are
delivering fewer parcels they will be able to make sure those are delivered correctly and on time.
In terms of “Does parcel force know what needs to be fixed?”; benchmarking which is what
Parcelforce used to improve and grow their business. Benchmarking is when a business will
compare their self to similar companies and learn from the best companies to improve. Parcelforce
will also use benchmarking to copy competitors success. The way Parcelforce benchmarked; they
will compare themselves with other companies for example their volume was 16% and their revenue
was 5%, in the international marketplace Parcelforce has just 9% of the international marketplace
whereas DHL has 17% so parcel will compare themselves and try and be better than this. In terms
of the revenue Parcelforce has just 5% revenue out of the total of the delivery companies whereas
yodel has 8% so Parcelforce will compare themselves and try and improve and be better.
Parcelforce could learn from DPD by benchmarking as DPD has very fast delivery and customers
have a one hour delivery window and they can choose the time they want the parcel to come within
a certain hour and the customer can track the driver to see where their parcel is.In term of how
satisfied customers are with delivery companies; Parcelforce has a percentage of 75% whereas
DPD has 83% so Parcelforce can compare themselves to DPD and learn from them. Parcelforce
delivery cost for sending a 10kg box is £20.90 whereas hermes is cheaper which is £7.48 so
Parcelforce can assess to see how expensive they are. Parcelforce has won awards such as
ftse4good and they score 4.1 out 5, BITC CR index and carbon trust standard and Parcelforce will
compare their awards to other business to see how they are doing .
In terms of what gap analysis has identified at parcelforce, gap analysis is what the business needs
to do in order to move from where they are now to where they want to be and what they need to do
to achieve that and how they will do it.Parcelforce wants to improve their customer service and they
have done a gap anaylsis in order to do that.In parcelforce customer service has an impact in main
areas of the business such as deliveries to customers they aim to provide delivery on time, re
deliveries aim to be done properly, making claims easy for customers if they want to make a claim,
collections from customers aim to be on time, customer contact; communication is being improved
as help can be accessed on the web or telephone and parcel tracking allows customers to track
their parcel; this is what parcelforce wants to improve in order to achieve good customer service
Parcelforce’s contact volumes and performance in 2014 was that 11% lost calls when calls are
made to the call centre, emails were 2000 per week and the emails answered were n/a because
parcelforce was not measuring the response.
1
