DHL's team constantly innovates with technology with a view to delight customers. Source: Shutterstock

DHL’s team constantly innovates with technology with a view to delight customers. Source: Shutterstock

DHL’s investments in technology are a case study in ‘customer delight’

SPENDING on technology products is soaring across the world — with companies spending billions on artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and other new and emerging solutions.

However, despite aiming to improve customer delight and overall experience, many organizations struggle to think out of the box and help customers in new and interesting ways by leveraging digital.

DHL, somehow, seems to be bucking the trend in that regard. Over the past year or so, it has launched a number of features in a number of markets that boost customer delight by creating new opportunities or attacking customer pain points directly.

Most recently, for example, the company’s air and ocean freight division DHL Global Forwarding launched a new offering it calls myDHLi Analytics to help customers access and analyze their business data.

The online platform displays all relevant details about spend (invoices), volume, service quality, and customs activity via dashboards.

The myDHLi Analytics service gathers data on one screen so that customers can explore all relevant information on their shipments. Filter options allow users to deep dive into expenses and trends in their data.

Further, customers can break down their information by aspects like country, shipper, consignee, trade lane, and more, and downloadable reports offer shareable insights right down to the shipment and invoice levels. The new service goes beyond the operational focus of prior tools.

The platform also boasts of a carbon calculator in light of the fact that demand for sustainable transport and logistics solutions is steadily growing.

To support its customers in reducing their carbon footprint and achieving their individual sustainability targets, the calculator displays the carbon footprint for the shipment, comparing between air and ocean freight. In the next step, shippers can either choose a clean-burning fuel for ocean freight or an offsetting option for any transport mode.

Overall, through the tool, it is expected that customers will be able to neutralize the carbon emissions of their shipments, allowing them to meet statutory requirements and commitments to customers and partners.

Both features make DHL seem like an attractive business to anyone looking for a logistics partner — especially for small- and mid-sized enterprises who struggle to build smart and intuitive platforms of their own.

Overall, DHL, through its various initiatives, does seem to have a leg up on the competition when it comes to digital. However, the German company must stay on its toes as competitors in various markets are working on embracing digital transformation and produce products and solutions that delight customers as well.