For customers who want a delivery made but aren’t home to
receive it or do not want to collect it from a depot or store, delivery lockers
are emerging as a good solution.
Currently InPost, a Polish HQ’d business, has lockers in 848
UK locations with plans to increase that number to 1000 by June, and to 1500 by
Christmas 2014.
Already successful in Europe and regularly used by customers
for everything from laundry pick up and return to online shopping, each
location houses a bank of lockers which are each about the size of a typical
microwave oven. Accessible only by PIN for a limited time-span, locker
facilities are available to accommodate both order deliveries and returns. Each
bank of lockers is monitored by CCTV as most are placed outside buildings to
enable 24 hour access and are typically be found at railway stations and convenience
stores. A number of UK retailers are currently, testing the locker option offer
with their customers as it offers yet another convenient option in the battle
to offer customers the ultimate convenience.
Andy Taylor, recently appointed as UK managing director for
the InPost business told Direct Commerce that whilst the current offering works
well for ambient goods there may well be refrigerated lockers introduced to
accommodate food deliveries and that there was considerable scope for using
lockers for spare parts deliveries for mobile engineers so that they can pick
up required parts on their way to jobs. Experience to date shows that a wide
spectrum of people are keen to use lockers and that there is no shortage of
potential sites as the incremental income from renting is attractive to site
owners. Businesses already using the lockers include Avon Cosmetics for
deliveries to its agents and Samsung for deliveries to its field service
engineers.
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