Spotlight on Deutsche Post

How are customer expectations changing?

They have changed, and they will be changing dramatically. I think it’s what we experience as users, as consumers of e-commerce related services but it is also what our customers tell us. So it is the ubiquity of services, the timeliness, reliability, low cost, efficient interaction and interfacing and from the consumer side I want it where and when I think I want it. So, we as service providers, and it also holds for the marketplaces and for the e-tailers, we have to be very, very flexible and we have to continuously change our business models in order to be fit for these new expectations.

How are you meeting customer demands?

It differs from country to country. Like I heard from the Baltics, that they don’t like neighbours to receive their parcels. So, either it is I am at home or I want to have it at a parcel locker. In Germany, it is the other way around. But then there are the not so obvious things where you get the maybes from your customers and it this is about trial and error. So, we tried drone delivery, we tried to sell our own parcel lockers, we tried overnight delivery, night delivery, early morning delivery, so whatever we think the market could like and that is also a trial and error with our customers.