Ivy: One of the most important things a small business can do in order to be competitive in the market place is to provide great customer service. And with me today is the Vice President for e-Commerce Marketing for the world’s largest small package delivery company, UPS Jordan Colletta is joining us. Thanks Jordan for making it.

Now how can a company like UPS help small business owner with customer service?

Jordan: Sure. We think about customer service. What we believe is really important is to used the information and put it to good use in the name of customer service, and what I mean by that is so often when someone is waiting for an order. But they really try to do is anticipate if everything is okay, is it on truck, when am I going to receive it? So, the idea of using information for those purposes really helped enhance customer service for the end customer.

Ivy: And UPS offers online trucking for the small business customers, but the small business so they can also give their customers access to that as well, is that right?

Jordan: Yeah. There’s a number of different ways to do that which we should talk about.

Ivy: Okay.

Jordan: Let me start by talking about just trucking and how trucking is really evolving and really has become a really important business store. Like for instance at UPS.com customers go to the tractor shipments and it’s growing significantly like an example in 1995 we had a 100,000 trucking request a month. And now a days that is growing to 18 million trucking request a day.


Ivy: Now do that popularity is doing part I would imagine to small business owners and other users wanting to save time?

Jordan: Absolutely it save time and communicate, enhance customer service, so all of those things really wrap together. As I think about your earlier question, what we really think about is how do you know when you get that information in usable form. We know the small businesses are kind of time deprived. They don’t have enough time in a day to do the things to do and how can I really enhance customer service. So we like to think about this.

There’s a couple of different manners and what you could use this information.

Ivy: Okay.

Jordan: One is you could go directly at UPS.com or you can have your customer go to UPS.com 24/7 availability. That maybe the right solution for you, but it may not be. Here’s an example, if you have to wait for the call or the email to come in and as a small business owner now you’re trying to run down things that may not be the best thing for you, so there we would recommend that you take advantage of point of view you notify. That’s the solution that UPS makes available where you, as the small business owner could generate and quantify notify notification to your customer which tells them items have been sent, and then as it goes to its progress it gives them the updates so it’s kind of they’re in control of the info and they’re really get that experience that is coming. It’s going to be tomorrow or we’ll have you.

Ivy: All those notifications are sent by email I guess right?

Jordan: That is correct.

Ivy: Okay, what other technology tools do you have as far as tracking, is there a signature component also?

Jordan: There is and that’s part of that whole reconciliation.

Ivy: Okay.

Jordan: I shipped something I want to make sure some received it. I can in fact see the signature has it was captured by the UPS driver as well.

Ivy: Alright, I want to just throw out another scenario here. What if all of the sudden that shipment needs to be stopped and rerouted? Is that possible through this technology?

Jordan: It is.

Ivy: Oh wow! Perfect!

Jordan: You know because we know things change. You shipped the item you didn’t realize that maybe their credit came in late and it’s indicated there’s problem and you don’t want it to be delivered or maybe the wrong item is on the envelope. Maybe you’ve responded to an RFP but the copy that you put in the envelope isn’t the right answer, right? It’s a former iteration.

So we have a service called UPS Delivery Intercept. And what that allows small business to do is to take and give information to UPS it says go ahead and do something different with my shipment. It could be stopped it and return it.

Ivy: Okay.

Jordan: Right, that’s one option. It could be stop it and hold it for a period of time and it will have you delivered on another day.

Ivy: Okay.

Jordan: Maybe timing goes of an issue. There are two examples as a couple all these I can give you.

Ivy: Well, describe to me that this shipping cost or service might change as far as cost goes if you have to reroute it or send it back, but there’s no cost a to truck it or sign up for quantum view notify or to put a stop on that. Is that right?

Jordan: But with the way it works there’s all the trucking solutions we have or provided as a value add for our customers.

Ivy: Wow!

Jordan: Services like UPS Delivery Intercept. There is a charge for that but again the key here is, is to manage that shipment so that basically it does what you needed to do because the outcome will truly be better if it gets in the right person’s hands at the right time.

Ivy: Yes it is just like putting stop payment on that check. Jordan Colleta, the Vice – President of e-Commerce Marketing for UPS. Thanks for being here with us. If you want more information on any of the things we talk about here with Jordan you can go to UPS.com.