Study: How many holiday packages had a problem in 2018?

1/10/2019
Data from last-mile delivery technology provide Convey indicates a spike in delivery issues during the 2018 holiday season.

According to Convey analysis, 14% of all holiday packages had some type of delivery problem in 2018. While approximately 22% of shipments for the year occur during the six-week holiday period, the holidays accounted for 28% of the shipping exceptions (such as delays and incorrect addresses) and 21% of the total annual resolutions.

Convey also found that this spike in shipping exceptions during the last six weeks of the year drove a parallel increase in shopper tracking page interest, as well as customer feedback. Forty percent of all shipments tracked in 2018 were tracked during the holiday period, accounting for 30% of total tracking page views and 35% of the negative feedback, which directly correlates to elevated exception rates.

Despite these generally high percentages of holiday deliveries with shipping exceptions, Convey found that the three largest delivery providers – DHL, FedEx, and UPS – had on-time holiday shipments in the high 90th percentiles.

Not every analysis of the 2018 holiday shipping season found as many issues as Convey’s study. Ninety-three percent of retailers successfully processed and accurately delivered orders to customers on their last guaranteed shipping date before Christmas, according to the 2018 Holiday Shipping study from Kurt Salmon, part of Accenture Strategy. Kurt Salmon determined that retailers achieved holiday delivery success by building out appropriate capacity in their network, successfully implementing alternative fulfillment methods – such as ship from store and BOPUS – and having the right order routing capabilities.
X
This ad will auto-close in 10 seconds