!rigs you wish stomers ouldn't do
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The quickest way to raise a chuckle from even the most harassed haulier is to ask what winds them up about their customers By Lucy Radley
IT'S A NATTY old problem. When any other part of your working world causes problems, you can usually do something about it: staff can be disciplined; maintenance back-up can be tendered elsewhere; computer systems can be updated; and vehicles can be repaired or replaced. Customers, however, are a different kettle of fish. We won't insult your intelligence by explaining why, but we're sure you'll understand why those intrepid few who helped us with this little chestnut did so on the understanding that they would remain anonymous. So without further ado, we present (as ever, in no particular order) our list of the top 10 things you wish your customers wouldn't do. 1. Send us an email The first thing everyone we spoke to complained about was customers who never answer their phones. Most of the other gripes are aggravated by this one bad habit — after all, it's bad enough having unnecessary hassle without it then being impossible to get hold of the cause
and sort it. But in this modern logistics world of ours, it's become worse than that because of the use of email. "Most of them don't just not answer
the phone," sobs our secret Humberside haulier. "They won't answer the phone. Once upon a time, if you had a problem, you'd
make a quick call and it'd be sorted. Now you send an email and wait. Do they think I've got nothing better to do than sit here and look at emails, for crying out loud?"
"That and texts," pipes up his right-hand man. "It's just so much easier to talk!"
And our brave northern representative agrees: "It's when they don't reply clearly as well. The other day I had an email from one asking when we would deliver, so I told him 8am on Friday. The lorry was planned, all was on track when another message arrived saying: 'You misunderstood our question, what we really meant was can you deliver at 8am on Monday?' That kind of mix up doesn't happen by phone." 2. Vague and late
"It's all about the quality and timeliness of information customers provide me," says our East Anglian associate after just three seconds' thought.
"The less notice you have, the more accurate the information has to be. We've got some customers who are logistics-orientated and know exactly what we need, but others expect us to just know, then kill us when we get it wrong because they haven't told us!
"We're a consolidator, so all I need to know is how many pallet spaces they need on my truck. It should be simple, but they can't translate. Say it's a factory making widgets, all they can think about is the number of boxes or cartons. Or if it's a half or three-quarter pallet, it confuses them." And then, of course, they won't answer the phone... 3. Unplanned plans
Keeping drivers waiting for paperwork; not booking trailers onto the dock; holding vehicles up for hours; loads not being ready when we try to collect, or stand trailers still not dealt with when we come to pick them up. The list goes on. Our man in the North East sums it up: "A general failure to plan," he says. And by the weariness in his voice, we thought it fair to assume he was dealing with the aftermath of just that. Here is another man who consolidates, and high on his list of headaches is the state
of what he's supposed to get delivered. "Goods not secured to pallets properly is a big one for me," he says. "Slack shrink wrap, bad banding and poor stacking," he continues, "or you'll get things on pallets that are already broken. It all takes time and money to sort out." 4. Concealed explosives
But there's another, much worse sin this shipper has to watch out for: "Packing hazardous goods on pallets and not informing anyone." 5. Small diversion
One brave northerner says: "One of my worst ones has to be when the destination is changed at the last minute. They'll arrange the delivery, so we plan the work, then they'll email and say they want it in Cornwall instead of London. OK, so that's an exaggeration, but not much. Some of our customers with several DCs can change the direction they want the load to go at the drop of a hat. Of course, the booking time and day stays the same."
We bet the time it takes them to answer an email doesn't alter much, either. 6. Too late now
And his next big bugbear follows on nicely. "Another major headache is when a customer changes the delivery point then refuses to pay the extra. Nothing is said at the time when they want the cargo, they'll wait until after it's done and then knock back the invoice. They won't accept that a short-notice change means we might have sent a lorry from the opposite end of the country to do the job, so there are going to be extra costs as a result. If they'd known that's where they wanted it in the first place, we would have been able to do it a better way."
Insert your own inevitable phone/email-related comment here, reader! 7. A deal's a deal
Our proud parcel purveyor has payment issues of another kind high on his list of aggravations. "One of my greatest headaches is customers trying to renegotiate the rates when there's a big job on. Apart from the fact that it's not our problem they haven't planned everything properly to start with, these people have been working with us regularly, so they know we don't do rate negotiations, as a carrier we simply don't work like that."
With the run up to Christmas under way, we bet that's one repeated email exchange that's running thin by now.
8. Terms, what terms?
Since the lack of phone contact is a universal irritation, our Midlands-based mission was inevitably going to suffer as well, but not being able to get hold of a customer when there's a mis-routed vehicle involved has to take the prize for knock-on potential.
"I've got my vehicles contracted out to various companies, and they know the terms and how they need to be using them. But there's one who, no matter how many times we tell him the truck is available for day runs only, persists in trying to send it out to tramp. So my driver rings up to let me know they've done it again, which in turn could screw up the night run. But the planner won't answer the phone to explain what's going on. The customer doesn't care what they've agreed to as long as their job gets covered."
9. But we promised! "Ah," we hear you say, while nodding in a sage and worldly wise manner. "That's why it's always better to plan the vehicles yourself." Or is it? At face value, yes, it is better to be in at least nominal control of the day-to-day running
of the fleet, but only if you reckon without our northern outpost's other nightmare customer habit. "They promise their customers things we can't deliver," he says. And guess who gets it in the neck when things don't go to plan? There's not much you can do when put in a fix like this, except grit your teeth and play the fall guy — after all, you'll be the only one in the chain answering the phone. 10. Putting it succinctly
We like it when a man has a way with words and can encapsulate a situation nicely, and our Humberside haulier's right-hand man is always reliable for that. The same man who told us his main trouble with drivers was "they come to work" was equally to the point on the subject of his customers.
"What would I rather they wouldn't do?" he asks, raising one eyebrow and fixing us with the cold, hard stare of a man who's been asked a pointless question. "That's easy, that one. They breathe. And they don't pay enough. That's it really." That's it? "Yeah. Apart from not answering the phone." And with that, he hangs up. •