winter 2010

750 National Press Building, 529 14th St. NW, Washington, DC 20045

Messenger Courier World n Winter 2010 n 19

“What gets measured gets done.” It may have been management guru

Peter Drucker who coined that phrase, but Ensenda lives it. The 8 year-old last mile logistics provider is responsible for millions of deliveries to markets across the US and Canada. The company credits the metrics of customer satisfaction for their success.

“We pride ourselves in being extremely analytical,” says Chris Miller, Ensenda’s Vice President of Carrier Services. “As a third party logistics com-pany we think a significant portion of the value we provide to our customers is

data. Data gives visibility and clarity to our customers about what they are pay-ing for. We firmly believe that 50 per-cent of logistics is about information.”

Ensenda is a leading last mile logis-tics provider servicing North America. The company manages a nationwide network of the local delivery vendors and offers world-class delivery quality enabled by a cutting-edge technology.

“We have to be really data-driven,” says Miller. “We’re not the ones who are purchasing the vehicles. It’s not our drivers who are on the road. We don’t have direct operational control of what happens on the dock and what happens

in the truck. So we have to find ways to capture and analyze and communicate data about what’s happening out there. And we believe what makes us unique is that we do that primarily from the cus-tomer-facing-perspective.”

What are metrics from a customer-facing perspective? “We track how our operation is performing in terms of meeting customer expectations,” he says. “We break it down both quali-tatively and quantitatively, but we put heavy emphasis on the qualitative because this is essentially a measure of customer satisfaction.

For EnsEnda It’s thE CustomEr-FaCIng mEtrICs that makE thE dIFFErEnCE

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Ensenda’s CRM system is designed to help them evalu-ate the significance of every communication the company has with a customer. “We use a CRM system that captur-ers all interactions we have with the client that are spe-cific to an individual shipment,” he says. “Any time there is an email or phone call to call a call center or field opera-tion concerning a specific service issue we capture that and that creates a case. At the same time, we also capture tracking details, order information and even the specific issue involved. That might be anything from ‘My delivery is scheduled between 12 and 4 and it’s 3:00. Are you going to be here?’ to ‘I was supposed to get a delivery, but my house is on fire’ (yes, that’s a true story).”

The company’s system captures all those interactions in a case. Whoever takes the call on that case is respon-sible for evaluating how well Ensenda and its partners are meeting that individual’s expectations.

“It’s all about the tone of and the expectation of the customer,” points out Miller. “It’s not necessarily related to a specific service commit (those are easy to measure) or any other set-up process. It’s all about how that cus-tomer reacted to what we’ve done. We look at that and every time that we have not met a customer’s expectation we resolve it and then review it for information. We ask things like ‘For this local delivery partner this week how many of these did we have?’ We go through each one of these with their management to find out what happened. It may not necessarily be their fault. We look at the root analysis of what drove the issue. We then put a corrective process into action and follow-up to see if it resolved the issue.”

What is Ensenda looking at when they study trends in qualitative metrics? They are looking for the root causes, where they point to the need for systemic changes, whether they indicate basic problems with the kind of delivery or location or whether it’s a problem with a spe-cific local delivery partner. “We’ll ask ‘how many of these do we see coming out of a particular carrier?’ ‘Does it have to do with a particular type of delivery’” If, for example, these incidents happen more frequently with residential deliveries, that gives Ensenda a particular perspective because they often see a higher incidence of issues with residential activities than business-to- business activities. “This is highly understandable,” he says. “Direct consum-ers have a more personal stake in their deliveries than b-to-b customers do in many instances.”

They also look at the information to determine if there are more such instances with particular clients. If that’s the case, they will review customer expectations. “The expectations may be very different from what they out-lined for you originally,” he points out. “That’s because

the responsibility for sourcing logistics services is in the hands of a few individuals. These people have their own ideas about what makes for success in this arena. But the users of that logistics service may have a very different perspective. The people who are exposed to and affected by your service -like the office managers or guy on the docks - are dealing with the end consumer. When those deliveries don’t come through, these are the people who are going to hear from the customers. They’ll call the cus-tomer service number, or dial their 800 number. These are the people who get those complaints. If you ignore them at some point they will create so much noise that the dis-trict manger will blow and you’ll lose that job. You need to listen to everyone out there. There are a lot of folks out there that are buying your services even though there’s only one individual signing your contract.”

What else do those cases tell Ensenda? The company’s managers ask questions like:

Where do I have a customer issue?•

Where do I have a higher incidence of labor input •because of the nature of the client? Miller points out that for some client or areas they will see 10 percent of total number of deliveries in which someone has to get involved to make it right. He calls that “labor input”. It might mean Ensenda has to take a phone call or pro-cess an email related to a problem. He contrasts that with other areas where 45 percent of the deliveries require labor input. “If the problems continue to show up, Ensenda will have to ask how they will cost effec-tively to deal with these issues. It could be the nature of the clients they serve or the nature of business they transact. Because Ensenda is so date-driven, we can evaluate those costs relative to others in our network and spot problems early.”

How can we cut down on these cases?•

Could the customer benefit from more information •that would compensate for excessive demands for re-delivery or rescheduling? “If this is the nature of the area or the business that the customer serves, we will give them access to the information that allows them to track and reschedule deliveries. We’ll then put that system in place for redelivery the following day and increase rates to capture that cost,” he says.

Miller points out that this data-driven approach helps Ensenda work with their clients to be more cost-effec-tive. “We use the data to help our local delivery partners run things better and more efficiently,” he remarks. “In some cases we’re able to identify where we are seeing a high incidence of issues. For example, these issues could be within a given carriers’ route structure. If we’re see-ing a continued high incidence cases, that could be tied

for ensenda it’s the customer-facing metrics that make the difference

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to an individual driver. Our data gives our carriers visi-bility to a driver problem they may not even know they have. Because we make this level of information available to both the client and the local delivery partner they can review the communication and information about what’s happening. They can understand better what’s going on in their individual operations. There could be problems with individual drivers, dispatchers or even a customer service person. We know that that quality carriers really like to have immediate feedback relative to any type of issue. Our data give them real time information so they are able to react quickly to that and make changes in their operations before problems develop.”

Ensenda’s emphasis on qualitative metrics is coupled with careful attention to the more standard quantitative metrics, which they also track. These include answers on everything from ‘Did we update the receipt at dock on time to did we deliver to our commit to the client’.

gEttIng thE most out oF mEtrICsThe qualitative piece is more critical to a customer’s satis-faction than the other more traditional metrics, according

to Miller. “Couriers traditionally focus on the quantitative metrics like ‘Am I 98% on time?’ or ‘Am I entering all my data in a timely manner?’ because they are easy to mea-sure and understand. But, in terms of true customer sat-isfaction the ability to measure the level of contentment or discontentment within your client base is really more critical. It allows you to reach your goals in terms of pro-viding the highest customer service. Ultimately, the best metrics enable you to measure and improve customer sat-isfaction.” MCW

About Ensenda

Ensenda is the leading provider of outsourced last mile deliv-ery solutions throughout North America, making millions of deliveries a year to 120 local markets. Ensenda’s customers include retailers, industrial suppliers, distributors, manu-facturers and 3PLs. The company facilitates the delivery of everything from small packages to big screen TVs by lever-aging their own carrier network or those of their customers. Ensenda manages a network of the top local delivery firms in North America, linked through the company’s proprietary web-based technology. For more information, see www.ensenda.com.

for ensenda it’s the customer-facing metrics that make the difference