Yahoo Finance Royal Mail to offer choice of delivery time to customers
Royal Mail will offer timed delivery slots next year as it attempts to fend off growing competition from Amazon.
Customers will be offered the ability to pay extra for a premium service that allows them to specify time windows for receiving parcels.
The delivery windows, set to be launched next year, are part of a planned overhaul of Royal Mail’s services which will include the introduction of three tiers of Royal Mail delivery, according to an internal video seen by the Mail on Sunday. The current base service will remain but two tiers of premium parcel deliveries are expected to be added for an extra cost.
A middle tier, expected to be named “My Choice” when it launches, will reportedly allow customers to choose which day their items will be delivered. Only the most expensive delivery tier would allow customers to choose a specific time slot for their delivery.
Royal Mail also plans to cut down duplicate services to avoid bewildering customers with choice.
It aims to offer “one product for each customer need across our different brands”, chief commercial officer Nick Landon reportedly said in the video.
“We’re looking at [whether there are] some products where we’ve got different variants which probably had a very good reason for being launched at the time, but we can now simplify that product set down,” he added.
Last month, Royal Mail announced that Sunday parcel deliveries are set to be launched within weeks to help the company capture a larger share of online shopping deliveries. Royal Mail experienced a surge in profit during the pandemic but faces an ongoing struggle as it competes with Amazon.
Earlier this year, the company revealed pre-tax profits hit £726m during the year to March, a fourfold increase on the year before. Revenues also rose 16.6pc to £12.6bn as lockdown shop closures meant that the company benefited from a rise in demand for online shopping during the pandemic.
This recent boom in demand for Royal Mail’s services has been a welcome change in fortunes for the company after it experienced a rapid fall in letter volumes a year ago and chief executive Rico Back departed after a breakdown in relations with union leaders. Its share price has almost trebled in the past year, proving it was a shrewd investment by Daniel Kretinsky, a billionaire investor known as the “Czech sphinx” who owns a 15.6pc stake.
The rise in Royal Mail shares over the past year has netted Mr Kretinsky’s company an estimated £450m paper profit, equivalent to £1.2m a day.
