Some customer service tips for couriers

I find couriers one of the hardest of service organisations to deal with, so here are some suggestions to substantially improve their customer service.
  1. The reason you had to leave a card is because I'm not available during the day. Thus if you are going to leave a contact number, make sure it's available AT NIGHT
  2. It's all very well leaving a card to arrange web redelivery - but the whole benefit of this is that you can relieve yourself of responsibility of my parcel sooner & more reliably. So it's not acceptable that I can't arrange it for the forthcoming day, especially when you can still have at least 24 hours to organise it. You managed the logistics in <24 hours when it was sent, so why not again?
  3. If you're going to leave something in a safe and secure space, at least leave a card to say so. I'm indeed grateful for your trouble, but it could be there for weeks because you've hidden it so well. Just a card will do.
  4. Why not answer the phone once in a while? Some of us customers are actually friendly and we're actually trying to help you discharge your duties. Oh, and being able to call the LOCAL branch is kind of more helpful since that's where you have my parcel. 
  5. Get your driver to wait more than 8 seconds after knocking on the door. Once in a while I'm on a call, in the shower, or just plain on-the-top-floor - it's silly for him to miss me, or for me to fall down the stairs getting to him. 
This is real basic stuff - driven by customer experience and customer satisfaction - not targets and KPIs and time-based metrics. Of course, if you follow these above rules, you'll actually deliver more parcels more successfully anyway. Win-win wouldn't you say?