We've recently had a couple of situations at Eirios where something has gone wrong with a customer's order in between it leaving our warehouse and arriving with the customer, with Royal Mail seemingly to blame.
In one instance, Royal Mail left a package on a customer's doorstep only for it to vanish soon after, presumably stolen. In another, a package arrived with damaged goods and a typed note from Royal Mail apologising for this happening while the package was in their care. In both instances, the receiving retail customers asked if the direct-to-consumer brands from whom they'd purchased could follow up with Royal Mail to seek compensation.
In these types of situations, a normal reaction from one of our ecommerce clients is a) anger with Royal Mail for the quality of service, and possible reconsideration of them as a preferred carrier for future orders; b) an attempt to resolve the customer's complaint by making a claim against Royal Mail as they suggest, via Eirios as the account holder; c) suggestions of how to prevent these types of problem in future, for example, by asking Royal Mail never to leave packages at customer's front doors.
None of this is incorrect as such, though as we'll see, it is certainly incomplete from a legal standpoint. In this post, I want to suggest a template response to these situations - based on the wider context, the legal position, good customer service, and hard experience - that will allow you to respond calmly, quickly and efficiently to these types of problems, before moving on with your life.
The first step is to accept the inevitability of these types of mistakes. As long as your brand is sending out thousands of orders a year, you're guaranteed to have a certain percentage of orders 'get stuck' in some way.
For every 99 packages that Royal Mail leaves on a doorstep - thereby, let's not forget, saving customers an inconvenient visit to their local collection point and getting them their package that much sooner - there will be one that gets taken, forgotten or blown away.
For every 999 packages that Royal Mail processes through its parcel sorting machines, there will be one that gets torn open by another package, or dropped by the butterfingers of a new postie.
(The rates of error are probably far lower than this, but you get the point).
You make mistakes too. You send the wrong email, order the wrong product, forget to update the website and say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Some of this isn't even your fault, even if it looks that way to customers.
It may well be that certain couriers are 'worse' or 'better' than others in an overall sense, but to what extent is that based on their performance in a particular area, or a particular time of your life?
I had a coupe of bad experiences with MyHermes while living in London years ago, enough for me to say "NEVER AGAIN!" - but my local Evri courier today is a lovely and reliable woman who came to our door to introduce herself when we moved to Abergavenny. Talk about turning things around.
While mistakes may seem like total carelessness on behalf of a postal worker at the time they occur, they are often impacted by forces beyond their control (theft, machine maintenance, van breakdown, mail volume on the delivery route that day). Perhaps the postal worker just ran short of 'while you were out' cards, so couldn't put one through your door to let you know about the package sitting outside, or perhaps it got swept up in between all your other post or picked up by your partner.
I recommend watching the 2019 film 'Sorry We Missed You' by Ken Loach for a take on the struggles delivery drivers can face. Royal Mail workers' pay and conditions may be significantly better, but the film does a good job of opening your eyes to the kind of daily challenges courier workers can face to support our desire for fast and cheap delivery.
No matter what an end customer tells you as a brand, you can't know for sure the full story of how things have gone wrong with a particular package. Of course, you should trust your customer. But that doesn't also mean that you should assume the worst of Royal Mail or the courier.
And even if it is entirely the courier's fault, the point here is that you should expect problems to hit a certain percentage of orders. Having this expectation and accepting the inevitability of it ahead of time is, I think, the best way of resolving that initial anger you might feel when an order problem first comes your way.
Of course, acceptance doesn't fix the problem, and you still have the matter of an angry and/or disappointed customer to deal with.
With both the examples I mentioned at the beginning of this article - the 'stolen' package and the damaged goods - the customer has a problem and only you can really fix it. The customer's proposed solution of going after Royal Mail for compensation doesn't actually make it better, in the sense of resolving things to how they would be if the problem hadn't occurred. For that, only you can help by re-sending the order.
You should do this right away, without question, and at your expense. Unless the customer has themselves requested an alternative, send to the same address you sent to first time around (assuming there was no problem with that actual address as written - obviously check it with the customer if there is any doubt).
Whatever went wrong the first time around is highly unlikely to happen again, despite the 'recency bias' we all have that gives greater prominence to recent events and risks.
This isn't just good customer service - it's also the law, as per the Consumer Rights Act 2015. The contract for the goods is between you and the customer - not the customer and Royal Mail, who's service is to you the sender.
The goods technically remain in your business's possession until the point that the customer sees and opens their package, and it's entirely your responsibility to get it to that point. If a package goes missing or gets destroyed en route, that's legally your problem, not the customer's.
If a customer has assumed their only recourse is complaint to Royal Mail, they're probably not aware of their own rights, or have had a bad experience with sellers in the past, and it's up to you to set the record straight.
There is in fact a great opportunity here to turn a bad situation into a positive and memorable experience for your customer that they want to share with others.
Ordering something online and having it arrive without incident is unremarkable. Having something go wrong, losing hope but then having an ecommerce brand resolve things quickly and easily by taking responsibility and re-sending your order? That's remarkable.
In the words of Taylor of Sirene Chocolate, one of our clients here at Eirios:
"I have found almost without exception that problems like these actually improve relations with the customers... that interaction with a human really gives you the opportunity to help the company image."
There's no need to hope for problems of course! But good customer service gives a buyer something to talk about in their 5-star review, so don't regret the chance to fulfil your legal obligations as an online seller.
So now you've established a zen-like calm for yourself and fixed things with the customer. Now what about revenge?!
At first glance it makes complete sense to follow up with Royal Mail and seek compensation of some kind for the two examples we're talking about: the stolen/missing package, and the damaged goods. After all, in the case of the latter, Royal Mail even seem to have acknowledged responsibility by leaving a note apologising. An admission of guilt, your honour!
Claims are made through the sender's Royal Mail business account, so in this case via Eirios. In the case of any untracked services, Royal Mail will only return the cost of postage (assuming a claim is successful). Compensation for any missing or damaged goods can only be claimed up to £150 for tracked services (up to £2,500 for Special Delivery).
There's a claim form to complete online, which involves entering a series of details about the account making the claim, then details about the package, including a tracking number, destination, the price paid for postage and value of the goods. Royal Mail then requires that you upload 'evidence' to support your claim, which might include photos, and assuming you're claiming compensation for goods, then you'll need an invoice showing the manufactured value of the goods (not, sadly, the retail value that the customer paid you).
In our experience, processing this form for a single claim takes at least 15 minutes, assuming that things like photos and purchase invoices are readily available. Eirios charges for this service - we have to because it takes time. You may need to factor in additional time yourself if you need to follow up with a customer for photos or hunt around for documents.
The point here is that making a claim, even if successful, may simply not be worth it for the value of the goods and postage in question.
Note my wording above: "even if successful". Don't forget that Royal Mail are defendant, judge and jury in your claim for compensation.
In the case of the package which went missing from a customer's front door, with a photo of the package in front of the door shown in their tracking information, why would Royal Mail accept any responsibility for what happened to it after that? They could easily say, as the customer assumed, that a third party had likely taken the package - which I suppose makes it a matter for the police.
The customer's claim that Royal Mail had failed to leave a 'while you were out' card to notify them that the package had been left at the door may well be true, but I suspect this argument would be lucky to receive a 'sorry!' from Royal Mail even if it could be proven.
The case of the damaged goods package seems more straightforward. Royal Mail's own delivery photo showed the goods sticking out of the package, and Royal Mail even included a note on the package apologising for the damage which had been incurred as the goods travelled through their network! We duly submitted a claim to Royal Mail on behalf of our client.
That claim came back to us within a couple of weeks - rejected due to 'insufficient evidence'. Whether this was insufficient evidence of the damage caused, or insufficient evidence of the value of the goods, we're still unclear. But at that point our client - probably wisely - chose not to pursue the matter further, given the relatively low value of the goods.
While frustrating and seemingly unjust, I can see why Royal Mail don't make it easy to claim. They're handling millions of packages a day. Things inevitably go wrong. Often it's not their fault. They have to be strict about what they pay out for and what they don't, and discourage frivolous or minor claims, in order that they can devote more resources to actually running and improving their service.
This may seem like an overly kind interpretation of Royal Mail's own responsibility to provide good customer service. But they're taking a strategic view - and so should we as ecommerce operators.
Another human bias of ours is the 'action bias': our instinct that doing something is better than doing nothing. We desperately want to do something in response to the courier's mistakes, something that corrects the injustice and 'teaches them a lesson'.
Other than for larger packages or higher value goods, your action bias may simply be compounding a problem by wasting your time and increasing your frustration.
To recap, when something goes wrong with an order and it seems to be Royal Mail (or other courier)'s fault:
Resist the urge of responding to the voice inside your head saying "but it's the principle!" or "someone has to let them know how bad a job they're doing!" Just fix the problem, accept it as "the cost of doing business", then move on with your life.
Best of all, go and grow your business with more customers.
