PostNord and Posten Norge (Norway Post) are seeing dramatic growth in home deliveries as Swedes and Norwegians working from home due to anti-coronavirus restrictions turn to online shopping.
PostNord said today that it has seen a 50% rise in home delivery volumes over the last few weeks, with 70% surges on some days. There is also a 20% increase in deliveries of small packages into mailboxes. Normally, PostNord delivers about 550,000 parcels and mailbox packages on an average working day.
“It feels incredibly good that we can help people who can't go out to get important goods at a time of isolation. Now that many are forced to stay at home, I hope that more people discover what a great service it actually is,” said Peter Hesslin, the company’s head of Logistics and E-commerce.
Customers appear to be satisfied with the service according to recipient ratings of the delivery experience in the PostNord app. Over the past week, customers submitted 30,700 delivery reviews and 89% of them were satisfied with their delivery. PostNord uses the rating function to review operations and services.
“We have received indications from both e-retailers and recipients that consumption behaviour has changed due to the ongoing crisis. These figures confirm this, and we can confirm that PostNord has been able to adapt to new needs,” Hesslin concluded.
The picture is similar in neighbouring Norway where people are ordering many more goods to be delivered to their door, generating a dramatic rise in parcel volumes.
The largest increase has been in Oslo and Akershus, where there was an increase in home delivery of almost 450%, compared with the same week last year, according to Posten Norge.
“We have never driven more goods home to people than we did last week and yesterday we set another record in our area. People do not want to visit large crowds in these times, and therefore want the goods delivered to the door,” commented regional director Hans-Øyvind Ryen.
In terms of products, Norwegians are ordering large quantities of everyday goods, such as food and medicine, but also children’s toys, items for pets and computer supplies for people working from home.
In response to this huge increase in home delivery, Norway Post has changed many of its working practices and different departments have collaborated in new ways.
“These days, we need many more employees for home delivery. I would like to commend the employees who are flexible and take the challenges straight-on. They face a demanding time, and are proud to help the community,” Ryen commented.
The Norway Post director believes that the current trend to more home deliveries will continue even after the corona crisis is over. Previously Norwegians had got used to picking up parcels from the nearest post office or agencies.
