Deutsche Post DHL announced as part of the presentation of its new “Strategy 2025 – Ensuring Excellence in the Digital World” that it wants to invest around €2 billion in digitisation. Now the company has revealed elements of its digitisation programme in the postal and courier sector.
The new digital services of the Deutsche Post DHL Group are intended to facilitate the use of postal and courier services and make them more transparent. The investment programme is expected to last three years, but some digital services should already be available this year.
This is a direct follow-up to our Strategy 2025 announced in October, in which further digitisation of our products and services is a key element. The digitisation programme supports our quality initiative: we make our services easier to use, shipping information is immediately available and our quality is more transparent,” says Tobias Meyer, member of the board of directors of Post & Paket Deutschland Group.
Real-time parcel tracking
This year the group wants to launch DHL Live-Tracking, which will enable the recipient to track parcels on dhl.de and in the DHL application practically in real-time. After the morning loading, a 60-90-minute delivery window will be displayed to the customer, counting down with the number of remaining delivery stages and the current location of the van onGoogle Maps. In addition, the customer will be notified 15 minutes before delivery.
Letters on smartphones and parcel tracking with QR code
In future, all postage charges, including postage stamps, should include a QR code to enable better tracking and tracing of letters.
In addition, Deutsche Post, in cooperation with GMX and WEB.DE, has developed the shipment announcement service. Recipients will be informed about incoming shipments in GMX and WEB.DE mailboxes according to German data protection and security standards. In addition, a picture of the envelope in the mailbox will also be sent to the specified e-mail address on request.
But that’s not all – from 2021 onwards, recipients should also be able to receive digital images of the contents of the letter via a secure and encrypted e-mail, with appropriate permission.
Parcel machines will become small post offices
Within the framework of the digitisation programme, the company also presented a new type of machine intended to act as a small post office. Customers can use Post & Paket 24/7 machines to send and receive letters and buy stamps, as well as receive and send parcels. For the time being, as part of the pilot project, customers are also to be able to get advice and use the video chat functionality to order services.
Photo: Deutsche Post