DHL 2008 Annual Report Download - page 86

Deutsche Post World Net Annual Report 2008
Express services driven by customer satisfaction
 e overriding goal of our quality endeavours in the  eld of express delivery is
to satisfy our customers. Our Group-wide First Choice initiative ensures that we meet
customers’ high demands for speed and reliability. We are focusing above all on oper-
ating performance and customer contact.
 e ability to deliver on time is an important quality indicator in the express
business. Our central quality measuring programmes allow us to determine the punc-
tuality of deliveries, to analyse delays in individual process stages and to seek ways of
accelerating delivery to customers. For this purpose, we have set up global, regional
and national teams that work closely together.
For a global network operator, it is equally crucial to maintain a consistently
high quality of service. We therefore regularly monitor compliance with our work-
 ows in the quality control centres that we have established worldwide, and we have
developed a quality shipment monitoring system that we use to measure and improve
our service quality.
In , we made the following quality advances:
• We increased transport capacity on trans-Paci c routes thanks to our stake in Polar
Air Cargo, a  airline.  is raised our on-time arrival performance to more than
  for shipments within this network.
• Since our new European hub commenced operations, transit times have been reduced
for more than , city pairs between Europe and  – for , routes by a
full working day.
•  e Global Trade Lane Programme was continued, further optimising performance
in key trade lanes. For example, transit time –a key quality indicator – was reduced
by one or more days along more than , origin to destination lanes. Especially
from Western Europe to Asia we have seen document transit performance improve-
ments by more than three percentage points.
• Further improvements were made in transit time: An average of .  (previous year:
. ) of all shipments were delivered by the appointed time.
• In terms of customer service,  Express signi cantly improved performance indi-
cators for orders, complaints and enquiries made by telephone by   over the previous
year and compared with competitors.
• Standardised systems and work ows enabled our sales force to increase productivity
by more than  . Customers were called and visited in person more frequently.
In terms of safety, we have long been at the fore in Europe, and now we are
also leading in the implementation of safety-relevant processes and installations.  e
Transported Asset Protection Association  has certi ed  of our locations, more
than any other of our European competitors. Globally, over  of our locations have
already been certi ed.
EXPRESS in fi gures
• Countries and territories: 220
• Main hubs: 6
• Servicepoints: 30,000
• Customers: 8.2 million
• Vehicles: 72,000
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