FedEx: Under-promise and Over-deliver

March 03, 2008Customer Service Experience, Little Things, Big Differences, Specific Companies 1 Comment

I realize there is a slight pun in the title, but I think it is appropriate.

Today, I received my MacBook Pro (liking it so far!) — two days early. FedEx did the classic customer service trick of under promising and over delivering. They told me I wouldn’t get my computer until Wednesday at 10:30 AM and I ended up getting it Monday at 9:30 AM. I’m not 100% sure if FedEx meant to under-promise and over-deliver, but it seems odd that they don’t know how long it takes to get a package from point A to point B when they have done the route thousands of times. Regardless, though, they did better than what they said they would and it ended up with making me (the customer) happy.

Something that FedEx could have done better, though, is keep their employees in the loop about what’s going on. I called FedEx to ask if my package might come early and was told that it wouldn’t. Obviously, they were wrong and one would think that they would know better. If they hint at the possibility of over-delivering and then actually do it, that works well. The point is to publish a date or a benchmark that you are pretty sure you can, and almost always do, beat. That way, you don’t have to stress yourself out too much and the customer doesn’t have to be disappointed if you cannot deliver.

Today is a quick post because I do need to get my computer configured for my daily use tomorrow. Also, I apologize for the lack of tags and pictures; I haven’t installed my blog editor on my new computer yet and messing around with the HTML takes too long.

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One Response to “FedEx: Under-promise and Over-deliver”

  1. Andrew Miller said:

    Mar 11, 08 at 11:49 pm

    I’ve actually seen this with FedEx before — I think what happened was that a slot on a plane probably freed up so they bumped up your box onto it (probably a slightly less full plane than would be seasonally normal).

    The customer service reps probably didn’t even know because it was an automated backend thing partway through the shipment (i.e. fill plane until full by priority) rather than someone planned in advance.

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