DPD delivers more parcels and collects more smiles with Salesforce

DPD’s ability to maintain its customer experience goals was put to the test by the COVID-19 pandemic when parcel volumes increased by as much as 60% during national lockdowns. As well as opening 15 new sites, recruiting 1,000+ additional drivers, and investing more than £200 million in expanding its next-day parcel capacity, DPD harnessed Salesforce’s cloud capabilities to enable its teams to quickly shift to working from home.

The company also had to adapt its customer service operations to deal with an increase in contacts from both shippers and consumers. The customer service team normally handle around 660,000 queries a month via email, telephone, and web chat – at the peak of the pandemic this rose by 32%.

To help the team operate effectively on such a massive scale, DPD migrated to Service Cloud in May 2020. “We want customer service to be a competitive differentiator,” said Dan Turner, Associate Director for Customer Service at DPD. “With Service Cloud, we can resolve more queries at first contact.”

DPD uses Service Cloud’s Omni-Channel Routing to ensure the right cases are transferred to the right advisors using AI-powered insights. This has already helped the company reduce every interaction with a customer advisor by around 40 seconds – nearly three times the original target. “Service Cloud makes it easier for advisors to access information,” said Adam Hooper, DPD’s Head of Salesforce. “It empowers advisors to focus on resolution quality rather than interaction quantity.”

Using Salesforce's highly customisable console, DPD has enabled 14 APIs within Service Cloud as well as an integration with Google Maps, which has cut the loading time for a customer’s location from 17 seconds to less than one second. It has also created 200 knowledge articles and 15 bespoke Lightning components, actions, and flows, including a process that makes it easier to locate missing packages.

DPD doesn’t just want to make things easier for its advisors; it wants to make things easier for its customers too. And that means offering a choice of engagement channels. For example, consumers can now contact DPD on WhatsApp, which supports both self-service through a chatbot and the automated creation of cases via Service Cloud Digital Engagement. The WhatsApp service has seen interaction volumes double year-on-year since it was introduced.

“We want to offer maximum choice and convenience,” said Turner. “With Service Cloud, we can keep improving our services and customer outcomes.” For example, since deploying Service Cloud, DPD has reduced the number of complaints by a third even though parcel volumes increased during the same period.

By integrating Service Cloud with its consumer app, DPD can capture feedback on the delivery experience. If a driver receives a negative rating in the DPD app, which has been downloaded six million times, a case is automatically raised in Service Cloud along with a follow-up action for an advisor.

Some issues, however, such as bad weather and traffic accidents, can’t be avoided. DPD uses Chatter to ensure advisors are informed in real time of any incidents that might impact delivery schedules. It is also conducting a proof of concept with Slack to enable real-time collaboration between advisors and depots to help provide a faster response to parcel queries.

The parcels industry has become increasingly competitive – especially following the rise in online shopping, consumer subscriptions, and home testing services during the COVID-19 pandemic. “There’s a lot of potential for growth especially within the healthcare sector,” said Jonathan Pratt, Director of Sales and CRM at DPD. “With Salesforce, we can open more doors that result in new business.”

DPD account managers and business development teams use Sales Cloud to track prospects, share leads, manage customer accounts, and simplify billing. “With Sales Cloud, our teams are more efficient and more engaged,” said Pratt.

To ensure customers can start sending parcels as quickly as possible, DPD’s Salesforce team has developed a range of automated workflows. For example, standard terms and conditions can now be adapted in as little as 30 minutes compared with 72 hours previously. “It used to take multiple steps and documents to approve the shipment of certain products,” explained Hannah Hodgkins, Salesforce Manager at DPD. “By integrating Sales Cloud with Conga and DocuSign from the Salesforce AppExchange, we’ve made the process more efficient and transparent.”

DPD’s sales team also has 360-degree visibility of service interactions across their customer accounts. For example, account managers can view data captured in Service Cloud to provide shippers with an insight into consumer engagement around deliveries. “With Salesforce, our teams can have more relevant conversations with customers,” added Pratt.

DPD’s sales teams also use Chatter to collaborate on customer accounts and the Salesforce Mobile App to make voice-based updates while working remotely.

To connect with B2B prospects and customers at key relationship milestones, DPD engages across a range of digital channels. For example, the marketing team use Marketing Cloud Account Engagement to send around 250,000 emails per month with an average open rate of 22%. DPD also uses the segmentation capabilities of Marketing Cloud to develop campaigns that target specific industries, such as healthcare. In the future, DPD plans to harness the integration between Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud to automatically add leads from its website to the sales pipeline within a couple of minutes.