4 Do’s and 5 Dont’s – An experience with UPS

This is the story of an inconsistent customer experience delivered by UPS, that made me go from frustrated to relieved, from pleasantly surprised to annoyed, and back to satisfied but exhausted. Something that I feel could be avoided easily. Below I try to contribute to the fix.

I bought a pair of sneakers online from New Balance, to deliver at my home address. As soon as I submitted the order I got and immediate “Thank you for your order” email, followed by a clear and concise “Your order has been shipped” email 12 hours later.

The hassle started 24 hours later when I received an email from UPS saying they’d missed me and would try again the next day. I wanted to advise I wasn’t home and they should leave it at the concierge office, but…

Improvement opportunity #1 – the email didn’t have a how-to or a direct link to the page where I could “change delivery” or advise where to leave the parcel

I went to the UPS website, navigated to the tracking page, and entered my tracking number. The option to “change delivery” was there, so I clicked on it, but…

Improvement opportunity #2 – I wasn’t allowed to do it without having a My UPS account, so I was required to sign-up, and had to fill in a web-form

I provided all my details, waited for the confirmation email to land in my inbox, clicked on the confirmation link, and was able to login.

Went back to the tracking page, entered my tracking number and clicked “change delivery“, where I had to fill in another web-form in which I had to populate the delivery address.

Improvement opportunity #3 – I would have assumed that if they already had my delivery address then they could have pre-populated it in the web-form, saving me time and effort

The web-form had a mandatory “State” field which listed USA states only. I live in the UK, hence wasn’t able to progress my request to “change delivery” and left it there, hoping that they would figure it out for themselves or contact me.

Improvement opportunity #4 – the pre-population of the address could have avoided this, but there could be situations where customer does want to change delivery address, so the UPS web form needs to be developed and tested to cater for customers worldwide

24 hours later I got another email from UPS saying they’d missed me again, and would try once more the next day. I decided to tweet @UPS_UK

Continue doing #1 – An agent responded to my tweet, publicly, within 1 minute. Asking me to DM tracking and phone numbers

After providing my tracking and phone numbers, I was expecting Alex (the agent) to give me an excuse, justification or explanation, and ask me to go and try again, but…

Continue doing #2 – Alex sorted it out internally (by updating the system advising that they could drop the parcel at the concierge) without asking me to (re)do anything

I was finally re-assure and happy. The next day, first thing in the morning (9:12 AM) I got a call from UPS…

Continue doing #3 – It was a courtesy call, advising the parcel would be delivered at the concierge as per my request, and re-assuring me it would be delivered the next day

But exactly 29 minutes later, I receive an email from UPS saying they’d miss me one more time and they would attempt a final delivery the next day.

Improvement opportunity #5 – Any other person could have been confused and attempt to contact UPS again. Having worked in the implementation of technology platforms all my life I knew this was one of those cases where there isn’t a unified platform or process, so the message had not reach the system that automatically sends the notifications

The truth is, the next day I got a call from the UPS driver, advising he was on the delivery address and was going to leave the parcel with the concierge.

Continue doing #4 – This was something the UPS driver didn’t necessarily have to do. If he had delivered, I would have got the notification, but he was kind enough to re-assure me by calling

A few minutes later I got the final email notification from UPS, saying my parcel had been delivered. There, I was happy and relaxed now… even though a bit exhausted from this roller-coaster of emotions and hassle.