Once upon a time, not that long ago, there were only a couple of mail services in the market, the traditional post office service and perhaps one or two specialist courier firms. The birth of the nationwide courier changed that; going from having a couple of postage options, consumers and businesses now have multiple courier firms to choose from. With all of this choice available, what sets a dedicated courier service apart from a traditional mail company?
Traditional post services
A traditional post service tends to cater primarily to the domestic market, available for customers to send letters, cards, parcels, packages to other domestic customers. These parcels or letters tend to be quite lightweight, so can be carried and delivered by hand, and anything that is much larger will have to be referred on to a courier service.
Traditional postage also tends to be the more inexpensive option for smaller items, but this lower price can come at a cost, a time cost. Same day delivery is not the norm – a 2-5 day delivery time tends to be more the expected timescale, depending on the service paid for. If you want something delivered more promptly, it will come at a higher cost, and even more for tracking.
Most traditional mail services will also expect the customer to deliver the item to their local collection point where it will be collected for delivery, even if they’ve paid for postage online. This service tends to be included, and a collection from a home or business will cost extra.
Courier services
Unlike traditional mail services, couriers cater for both markets, B2C and B2B indiscriminately. If a parcel needs to get from A to B then that’s what the courier is there to do, although some, like us, do specialise in one sector or the other. We pride ourselves on our B2B courier services!
With this flexibility of customer access, there is also increased flexibility on the size of parcels being accepted. Most courier services use cars, vans or lorries to deliver items so they can carry larger items, as opposed to a person walking around with a mail bag. That being said, not many people use couriers for letters or cards.
Using a courier service may (not always) have a slightly higher price point for delivery, but in general this tends to include some sort of tracking facility, and a quicker delivery speed. Some companies, like us, even specialise in same day delivery services.
Courier services will collect from a home or business address (sometimes included in the cost and other times for a small fee), but a lot do now offer a drop off option with places in many local areas accepting parcels.
Direct door to door courier services are the best option though (in our opinion anyway) – this is what we offer, so you know that your parcel has been collected and will be going directly to its end recipient. After all, Efficiency is Everything!
