The logistics sector ranked 8th out of the ten sectors included in the rankings. The absolute average year-on-year growth in the sector was 0.3%, but if we look at the six pillars of customer experience, the logistics sector is around 3–4% below market average.
An effort to improve can be seen in the Empathy and Expectations pillars, with an improvement of 0.34 points in both compared to last year. Both categories really needed the change, since they hadn’t even reached the six-point threshold last year.
Three companies managed to get in the top 100: PPL, DHL and UPS. PPL dropped from the 30th to 36th place, though such a small change can be ultimately considered insignificant. In the absolute rating, the company has seen a slight growth in all categories. DHL has moved up 34 places, coming in 66th , and improving its overall rating by 0.6 points. The improvement is evenly distributed between all the customer experience pillars, with the Time and effort pillar getting the most praise from customers, receiving 0.7 extra points compared to last year.
There are two ways these two clear winners stand out in the sector: their results are above the market average, while the rest of the sector is plainly below the average, and they both have a relatively high number of customers who would recommend their services to others (42% for PPL and 39% for DHL).
To move up higher on the ladder, the logistics sector can look to Amazon and learn from how they work with customer experience. In the past, there was always an empty chair at the meetings of the company’s top management, to serve as a symbol of the ever-present customer. Today, the empty chair is taken by specially trained employees who play the part of a customer. Furthermore, Amazon’s founder and CEO insists that every employee tries working in the call centre for at least a short time, to be as close to the customers as possible.