I was in a meeting at Fedex German HQ in Francfort and I was pleased to see a poster on the walls with the company’s goelas for the next 5 years. Among them was an improvement of the customer experience.

Well, it doesn’t surprize me really. The marked is pretty much divided between 3 players : Fedex, DHL and UPS. A myriad local players are trying to get into this market and rip off some benefits. The 3 giants pretty much compete on the same technoloical basis: they have the same technology a majority of manual hubs and gateaways, and one automated hub each). The competitive landscape suggests that competition will not be based on time in the near future but rather on other atributes such as … customer experience. It is however not clear to me what customer experience means in such a business. Online tracking was certainly a major revolution which improved customer experience. Since then however the end-customer hasn’t seen much happening.

I’m curious to see how the market will evolve…. global ? certainly. But with how many players. There aregreat synergies between DHL and Fedex (especially since DHL stopped its activities in North America). Don’t you see the next move coming ?