MrFedEx
Engorged Member
It's very clear right now that FedEx is trading-off hours for service...and service sucks. While Express might still be making it's "numbers" percentage-wise, customers are increasingly frustrated with poor treatment and terrible call center experiences. It's bad enough that customers confuse the opcos, but it's becoming readily apparent that call center agents don't know the difference. Here's an actual example.
I pull into a regular today, and a frustrated employee comes up and asks me if I can take a large package. I give a qualified "yes", and say "only of it is within our size restrictions", and I request to see the package, because it isn't with the normal pile. So this person takes me into the next room, where there is a crate about 7 feet long by about 3 feet wide. I immediately say "I can't take it", and this guy starts going off about how he first called it in 4 days ago. First, they sent FedEx Ground, then FedEx Freight, and now he is asking me to take it. When I examine the crate, it's actually Express Heavyweight, which they wanted to go overnight last week. He still wants me to take it, and I advise him to call the 1-800 number and tell them that this is an Express Heavyweight package and that they need to send someone from the Express opco to pick this up with a straight truck or CTV.
At this point, he's had enough, and says he'll ship it with a company that knows what it is doing, and I can't blame him. That was probably several thousand dollars of revenue sitting there, and because our call center people are incompetent, someone else gets the business.
And he isn't the only one. I hear complaints all the time of call centers confusing Freight with Express, Ground with Express, and vice-versa. It's very obvious that there is a big problem because most of these customers are old hands at using FedEx, and the issue is not on the shipper end.
Cutting costs has costs, which FedEx apparently doesn't understand. When you hire low-information employees, you get bad results, and time is wasted getting the right opco to the customer. How much did it cost to have 2 opcos send a truck to this shipper and leave with nothing, plus the loss of the shipment revenue itself? A lot.
I also hear many complaints on the delivery end. Reattempts are pretty much a thing of the past, and address corrections that used to take a day, now take several. I don't know many couriers who even do reattempts any more, much less indirects, because they are under so much pressure. Nobody has time to do it right any more.
In the end, who suffers the most? The customer, and they will eventually get tired of dealing with idiots on the phone, and go elsewhere. More of "you get what you pay for". De-contenting Express does have consequences, and pissed-off employees do not deliver superb customer service, even with a gun at their heads.
It's all spiraling down the toilet, and managment is hard at work figuring how they can make it flush faster because it will save money. Good luck with that.
I pull into a regular today, and a frustrated employee comes up and asks me if I can take a large package. I give a qualified "yes", and say "only of it is within our size restrictions", and I request to see the package, because it isn't with the normal pile. So this person takes me into the next room, where there is a crate about 7 feet long by about 3 feet wide. I immediately say "I can't take it", and this guy starts going off about how he first called it in 4 days ago. First, they sent FedEx Ground, then FedEx Freight, and now he is asking me to take it. When I examine the crate, it's actually Express Heavyweight, which they wanted to go overnight last week. He still wants me to take it, and I advise him to call the 1-800 number and tell them that this is an Express Heavyweight package and that they need to send someone from the Express opco to pick this up with a straight truck or CTV.
At this point, he's had enough, and says he'll ship it with a company that knows what it is doing, and I can't blame him. That was probably several thousand dollars of revenue sitting there, and because our call center people are incompetent, someone else gets the business.
And he isn't the only one. I hear complaints all the time of call centers confusing Freight with Express, Ground with Express, and vice-versa. It's very obvious that there is a big problem because most of these customers are old hands at using FedEx, and the issue is not on the shipper end.
Cutting costs has costs, which FedEx apparently doesn't understand. When you hire low-information employees, you get bad results, and time is wasted getting the right opco to the customer. How much did it cost to have 2 opcos send a truck to this shipper and leave with nothing, plus the loss of the shipment revenue itself? A lot.
I also hear many complaints on the delivery end. Reattempts are pretty much a thing of the past, and address corrections that used to take a day, now take several. I don't know many couriers who even do reattempts any more, much less indirects, because they are under so much pressure. Nobody has time to do it right any more.
In the end, who suffers the most? The customer, and they will eventually get tired of dealing with idiots on the phone, and go elsewhere. More of "you get what you pay for". De-contenting Express does have consequences, and pissed-off employees do not deliver superb customer service, even with a gun at their heads.
It's all spiraling down the toilet, and managment is hard at work figuring how they can make it flush faster because it will save money. Good luck with that.
