DHL

The present

So Yvonne sent me a present for my birthday, and the package was delivered by DHL.

The day after, on Valentine's day, she asked if I liked the present. Only problem is that it's not here yet.

Apparently Yvonne was promised that the package will be delivered on 13th Feb by no other than amazon. So what went wrong here?

Amazon gets the estimated delivery date from shipping companies like DHL and Fedex, which generates a date using some kind of algorithm: depending on where it comes from, wher it's going to, how much was paid, their flight schedule, any recent holidays, etc.

If you've worked with shipping companies for any extended period of time, like I did when I was in Texas (I was working for a company that ships auto-parts to customers in the states), you'd know that shipping companies are inheritly unrealiable, like modern PCs. The further your package travels, the less accurate these estimated delivery time is. We had a customer from Hawaii yelling at us for not having her son's package, and we were at the verge of refunding when the item finally arrived, 10 days late.

So I told Yvonne the item's no here yet, and it ends up Yvonne did pay extra to make sure it arrives on time. She went to DHL's website, the front page was filled with Javascript that her browser (IE of some sort I'm sure) couldn't deal with. Routing around to the tracking page, the package was marked "initiate inquery", and she called.

It turns out that they couldn't figure out where I live, and I have to call them to give them the details. They deliver the package tonight, 8pm-10pm, one day late.

The Problem

My problem with the situation is that there really isn't a lot of reasons for DHL to not know the area in Hong Kong inside out when they have such a local presense. On their local page, the following was written on the "About us" section:

DHL Express was the first international air express company to operate in Hong Kong in 1972 providing air express service. With our experience in local and regional markets, we strive to deliver the highest level of services and solutions.

When you make such a big promise, and claim of local and regional markets experience, it's essential for you to keep up with your words.

Lessons learnt

It's just another less-than-satisfactory delivery. It's not the talk of the office. Everyone and their dog's gotten to accept that packages do arrive late. But when that happens, it just strike me of the difficulty of providing a localized service, especially for global enterprises. There are generalized operational procedures, strategies and directions in place that work poorly with localized situation in most cases.

When I was talking to the DHL representative, I was asked to tell him my address, in English. It's no big deal for me, but what if I'm like the other 30-40% of the population who doesn't know a word of English?

It's these small little details that Global undertakings like FON have a hard time competing with local efforts that really know the area. (for context, read my previous post on FON)

When you're trying to do too much, you probably won't do them well.