Coronavirus Updates (COVID-19) - Protecting our Customers & Community

Both Shippit and all our partners are working closely together to ensure minimal impact to our shared customers and ultimately our community.

Ensuring delivery to customers.

We have enacted our business continuity plan to ensure our operations will be uninterrupted. We are also working with our courier and technology partners to ensure they also have continuity plans in place.

We will keep you updated on important changes such as the impact of containment zones as these will present new challenges that will make pickup and delivery in those areas difficult.

Maintaining delivery transit times.

We have seen an increase in support requests over the past week. Whilst our operations team are working closely with our partnered carriers to ensure delivery times are upheld, there will no doubt be challenges and we appreciate your patience with so much uncertainty ahead.

You may also want to advise your customers of the same at checkout to ensure expectations are aligned - a great example is PetCircle who have done this well.

Safety is critical.

As we work with businesses in the retail community, caring for the health and safety of our team, partners and customers is our highest priority.

We have proactively embraced social distancing as a measure to protect our people, our community, our partners and our customers; as such, we have globally moved to 100% remote work for at least the next two weeks.

Contactless Delivery with Authority to Leave.

Delivery drivers are among some of the most exposed workers and face great risk as they go about their daily jobs. To reduce potential spread, we recommend minimising contact where possible.

We encourage merchants to opt for Authority to Leave on deliveries during this time and advising your customers of the same but appreciate this may not be possible for high-value goods.

How our Partnered Carriers are Preparing.

Proactively, carriers have already started implementing and/or reinforcing Hygenic precautionary measures amongst staff, fleets, in depots, and shared facilities. All in the aim to reduce the risk of the virus being contracted or spread at any point of the delivery process.

Measures include but are not limited to:

• Strict hygienic measures have been enforced amongst all staff, drivers, and the partners they work with.

• Some carriers have started segregating areas within their depots to minimise the spread of the virus should any packages travel through that have been in contact with the virus.

• Several satellite depots have been set up around the country and will be used in the event of an outbreak in other mainstream depots or facilities.

Operationally, carriers have already made some changes to their standard processes and will continue to update us should process require change again.

• Authority to leave deliveries will be left with a photo where possible but this won’t always be available. If you have trouble locating a package we encourage checking all surrounding safe areas before escalating a complaint. It’s also advised to check with neighbours as the driver may have left it with a neighbour.

• If a delivery requires a signature, the driver may no longer ask for a physical signature on their PDA device. To reduce contact, driver’s will have authority to only note the full name of the customer instead of obtaining a signature.

• If no one comes to the door and the franchisee considers the location a safe drop, ATL will be followed.

• If no one comes to the door and the franchisee does not consider the location a safe drop, they
  will follow the standard failed delivery card process.

We want you to know that we are here to support you during this trying time. Our team is ready to talk through any potential challenges or concerns you may have around disruption to your own business - whether it be saving costs, driving revenue, how to cope with increased demand or simply improving how we can support you best, please don't hesitate to get in touch. ️

Our support team remains fully staffed and accessible via email and live chat in-app.

Realtime Carrier Service & Support Updates

Wed 18th Mar 2020

• CouriersPlease has needed to shutdown their customer service phone lines until further notice and will be supporting their direct customers (Shippit) via email only. Please note this will cause delays with all support requests and push back resolution times.
• We urge Shippit customers to please be conscious of the current impact on support staff at this critical time and only email support for urgent issues.
• Delivery delays of 1-2 days are to be expected at present, we request that you allow this buffer on delivery times and please do not lodge an enquiry until after this period.