MrFedEx
Engorged Member
The now infamous YouTube video has 5 million views and over 17,000 comments, not to mention national TV exposure on Letterman, GMA, and almost every local news program. FedEx is the laughing stock of the world right now, and it begs the following question. Will this force changes at FedEx Express? And I don't just mean Damage Control. Will there actually be meaningful changes to the Express business model?
My first response would be an emphatic "NO". I fully expect that there will be some new program (with the required acronym) that increases monitoring and discipline regarding package handling procedures. That's a given, but I seriously doubt that any consideration wil be given to reducing workloads and re-examining what couriers actually do out there on the road.
In the glass bubble that is Memphis, they still would have tagged this guy (the tosser) with a "gap" delay if he had taken 5 or 10 minutes (OMG!!!) to call the customer, call dispatch, or try and indirect the package. As far as a cubicle-bound MEM engineer is concerned, he still should have had it delivered in a minute, regardless of the fact that his dispatcher was probably ordering something on Amazon instead of monitoring the phones, or that he probably had a huge overload of stops compared to his usual "almost" huge overload of stops. It's "expected" that we would use our personal cellphone to try and contact the customer and/or try and get a neighbor to sign for it rather than doing a release.
Here's the deal. If this courier had actually done it by the book, he'd probably be sitting in his manager's office this morning explaining why he took all of that extra time and didn't make SPH. Simply put, our system doesn't allow us to do the "right" thing and provide the customer with a "Purple Promise" experience. If you are a good courier, your face time with the customer is a view of the rear end of your vehicle as you speed down the street headed to your next stop. In the ruthless pursuit of efficiency and profit, the customer has largely been left out of the equation.
I haven't had time to read very many comments, but many of them are misguided. For instance, some say that they hope the "union" doesn't protect this courier from being fired. What a laugh. Others seen equally clueless, which indicates to me that the FedEx PR machine still has most of the general public bamboozled. MT3's apology speaks directly to maintaining the facade instead of actually solving the root problem.
This courier did a really dumb thing, but it should really get Memphis to re-examine the expectations it has of it's employees. My guess is that there will be a lot of people fired and disciplined over the coming months, and that absolutely nothing else will change for couriers. That's just sad.
My first response would be an emphatic "NO". I fully expect that there will be some new program (with the required acronym) that increases monitoring and discipline regarding package handling procedures. That's a given, but I seriously doubt that any consideration wil be given to reducing workloads and re-examining what couriers actually do out there on the road.
In the glass bubble that is Memphis, they still would have tagged this guy (the tosser) with a "gap" delay if he had taken 5 or 10 minutes (OMG!!!) to call the customer, call dispatch, or try and indirect the package. As far as a cubicle-bound MEM engineer is concerned, he still should have had it delivered in a minute, regardless of the fact that his dispatcher was probably ordering something on Amazon instead of monitoring the phones, or that he probably had a huge overload of stops compared to his usual "almost" huge overload of stops. It's "expected" that we would use our personal cellphone to try and contact the customer and/or try and get a neighbor to sign for it rather than doing a release.
Here's the deal. If this courier had actually done it by the book, he'd probably be sitting in his manager's office this morning explaining why he took all of that extra time and didn't make SPH. Simply put, our system doesn't allow us to do the "right" thing and provide the customer with a "Purple Promise" experience. If you are a good courier, your face time with the customer is a view of the rear end of your vehicle as you speed down the street headed to your next stop. In the ruthless pursuit of efficiency and profit, the customer has largely been left out of the equation.
I haven't had time to read very many comments, but many of them are misguided. For instance, some say that they hope the "union" doesn't protect this courier from being fired. What a laugh. Others seen equally clueless, which indicates to me that the FedEx PR machine still has most of the general public bamboozled. MT3's apology speaks directly to maintaining the facade instead of actually solving the root problem.
This courier did a really dumb thing, but it should really get Memphis to re-examine the expectations it has of it's employees. My guess is that there will be a lot of people fired and disciplined over the coming months, and that absolutely nothing else will change for couriers. That's just sad.
