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When the people of the Middle East are also enjoying the convenience of online shopping, the courier brother has contributed. In the Middle East, what is the difference between a day of express delivery and a small courier in China? How was the last mile delivery in the Middle East achieved? What are the little-known characteristics of the Middle East logistics?

With all kinds of questions, Xiaobian followed the express brother of iMile, a Middle Eastern e-commerce logistics company, and experienced a day in the Middle East in Dubai.

“All addresses are in my mind”

8:00 am Warehouse Access

Dubai in November is still a bit hot. The bright sun heats the earth. At 8 o’clock in the morning, the courier brothers came to the warehouse one after another, ready to start a day’s work.

The package to be delivered was sorted the night before. Razz from Pakistan pushes the sorting frame to his car, picks up a parcel, quickly scans the information above, and simply sorts the parcel into the compartment.

Courier brother is loading the package

After half an hour, Razz loaded the courier package and drove to his own dispatch area. The company assigns a fixed delivery area to each courier, and Razz is responsible for the delivery of the Al Quoz area. Razz, who has been in Dubai for three years, is very familiar with this area. It is an “old driver” who knows the streets, the residential buildings and the address of each office. “All addresses are in my mind.” Razz smiled and seemed to have scored a perfect score for his confession skills.

Know that in the Middle East, the address is always a pain point for the end. Because the infrastructure is not perfect, the regional division of the Middle East is blurred, and the local house number and address are also very complicated. This leads to residentsWhen writing an address, it will be unclear, and it will bring a lot of difficulties to the courier brother, resulting in a low rate of proper investment. This problem is particularly evident in Saudi Arabia.

It’s not easy to send a piece of money: it has comforted the customer and responded to the police

9:00 am: Successful delivery

Dubai is a highway, with yellow sand on both sides of the suburbs. Razz drives 120 speeds and goes straight to the first dispatch. At around 9 in the morning, I called the customer. “Good morning. I am a dispatcher from iMile Logistics. You have a parcel from XX to be signed. Can you pick up the item downstairs now?” After confirming with the customer, Razz picks up the parcel and trots all the way to the community. downstairs.

Razz takes the parcel and sprints upstairs.

Razz was filled with a smile when he was sent back. It can be seen that he is welcoming the “open door” and successfully sent the first package today. At first, Razz was slightly worried about this COD piece. After all, COD is a big pain point in the Middle East.

On the one hand, the Arabs prefer to use cash, 80% of online shopping is cash on delivery; on the other hand, there are many foreign workers in Dubai, most of them do not have credit cards or local bank cards, and can only pay in cash. .

The more people use cash on delivery in online shopping, the more COD parcels enter the Middle East. COD parcels have many problems of high refusal rate and high return rate. The customer can refuse to sign for a long time, or he or she suddenly refuses to sign the package. Compared with online prepayments, COD customers refuse to sign a refusal, do not need to bear any payment risk, and do not need to go through the trivial refund process. Pickpockets, customers can place orders to buy other things.

There is also a situation where a customer will repent on the spot and force a return. The payment was taken to the parcel, and the dismantling was unsatisfactory. The courier brother was stopped directly, the parcel was forced to be stuffed, the COD fee just paid back was taken back, and the door was closed. Only the courier brother left in the big sun.

Because of the high rate of express delivery and the KPI, Razz will try to appease customers who want to return the goods on the spot. Let the customer find the seller to confirm the return, and then go back to the door.But this kind of appeasement doesn’t work every time. The savage customer will directly threaten the courier brother. If he doesn’t agree, he will call the police:

“You don’t give me a return, I will call the police to catch you!”

“You broke my things, I want the police to send you to jail!”

“There is one less piece of clothing in the parcel. I have to tell the police that you must have stolen it!”

“This quality is too bad, it must be fake, I have to report it to you by alarm!”

······

Express my brother’s heart OS: I am too difficult, I am just a courier brother.

This may sound a bit ridiculous, but in fact, there is a courier brother who was sent to the police station by the client. “We can only tell the police clearly why. We are only responsible for delivering this package. We are not sellers. We don’t know what products are in this package. We don’t know what the quality is. After the explanation is clear, the police will let us leave,” Razz said. After a smile, continue driving to the next dispatch location.

Because of the “zone”, I have my own way of sending it

10:00 am continue to send pieces

Around 10 in the morning, Razz came to a neighborhood again. After stopping the car, Razz took two packages directly from the trunk and went upstairs.

As an old acquaintance of this community, the long experience has allowed Razz to identify which addresses customers need to call to confirm information and which can be sent directly. “Every time I come to this residential area, there will be people at home, usually women or nannies who bring children at home. Even if I don’t sign it, he can ask the family to sign for it. I ask her to show my ID card, then I will The parcel was handed over to her.” But if it is a residential area of ​​labor, you need to call and confirm again. They are divided into white and late shifts, and during the day, not necessarily someone can receive the courier at home.

Razz is very successful in this community. An hour later, he has successfully sent 7 packages. But soon, Razz ushered in today’s first “closed door.”

This is his third home delivery failure. Yesterday and the day before yesterday, there was no sign. What is even more anxious is that the number left by the customer is actually an empty number. Razz took out the paper and the pen and wrote his contact information and the reason for the matter. As he wrote, he explained, “When the head of the household finds my message, he will call me, and then I will send it again.” After writing, Razz returned to the address just now and stuffed the message into the door.

Razz is writing a message to a customer

The most headaches: no phone calls, no text messages, no ones signing

12:00 am Send a “bottleneck”

Close to 12 noon, the temperature began to climb again. Razz just returned to the car and wiped his face with his hand, as if he wanted to wipe away the heat that stuck on his wheat-colored face. Think again about Dubai in July and August, the surface temperature can be as high as 50 degrees, open the door to greet the heat wave, let alone take the express on the road.

But Razz has adapted to the hot weather here and thinks this is not the hardest part of the job. “Take the car under the shade of the tree, then quickly go over and take the package to the customer for signing.” The most headache for him is the customer’s “cool appointment”, the phone can’t get through, the text message is not returned, and the appointment is still no one sign, and so on, which wastes time and energy. It’s just like the “closed door” that Razz encountered just now.

Now, Razz entered the “bottleneck period” of the delivery, and no one answered after three consecutive calls. Razz had to park the car on the side of the road, open the rider’s APP developed by the company, scan the barcode on the package, and send the WhatsApp message to the customer again to confirm if it can be dispatched today.

Razz is texting customers

If you don’t receive a response from the customer today, Razz will mark the package as a problem on the APP and record the reason, then let the company’s customer service team continue to call to confirm if it needs to be dispatched.

Hard injury: the order distribution is sparse and the road setting is unreasonable

2:00 pm Detours

“嗡嗡嗡”… When Razz was having lunch at a Pakistani restaurant, his cell phone shook a few times and popped up with new information on WhatsApp: I can get a courier at three in the afternoon.

After seeing the information, Razz frowned. Now his position is a bit far from the location of this customer. “If he can reply when I call, then I don’t have to go back around a big circle to send him a piece.” The customer does not return information will directly affect the signing rate of the day, and the customer reply message lags behind. Will affect the efficiency of the dispatch, which means that the courier brother spends twice as much time and energy to complete the delivery.

In addition, factors affecting the efficiency of sending parts in the Middle East are: The distribution of online shopping in the Middle East is uneven, and the geographical distribution is also sparse. Even in the same district, it will take more time on the road because of the unreasonable setting of the road. For example, from Zone 2 to Zone 4, it is clearly two adjacent districts, but you must bypass the traffic lights and turn around to drive to the right area.

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The “labyrinth” viaduct from the warehouse to Al Quoz

After about 40 minutes, Razz finally came to the villa area to be dispatched. Razz drove around the circle and never found the customer’s address. The villas here are almost exactly the same, and they line up side by side. It looks like a labyrinth for a long time. Come in and get out. After twenty minutes of wandering, Razz decided to call the customer a second call, reconfirm the address, and search according to the customer’s instructions.

After turning through the entire villa area, Razz finally found the right address. Press the doorbell and wait for the customer to sign the package.

Razz dispatches in the villa area

An interesting story in the dispatch, being “waiting for the rabbit” by the customer

4:00 am, send a message, and remember

Around 4 pm, Razz came to the industrial zone. The order distribution of the entire large industrial area is relatively concentrated, and Razz only knows where the specific location is, and sends a lot of packages within an hour.

Looking at the reduction of the package in the car, Razz’s mood was also a lot more enjoyable, and he actively shared his interesting things in the process of sending parts.

Because Razz often appears in this area, many customers have already remembered Razz and his delivery car. Once, Razz drove as usual to send a piece, and a passerby waved to him to stop. Waiting for Razz to shake the window, I realized that this customer didn’t want to negotiate with the seller on the Internet to go through the return process. He went straight downstairs and waited for Razz to come over. After catching him, he asked him to take this package. Take it back and return the money.

iMile’s exclusive express delivery car

Razz laughs and laughs at this “tact” behavior, only patiently explaining it, allowing customers to return in accordance with a formal process.

End

6:00 am Ending the assignment

Starting at 5 pm, the sun gradually set, and the heat began to fade. By 6 o’clock in the evening, the street lights lit up and illuminated the night of the city.

After the last parcel was sent, Razz parked the car on the side of the road, sorting out the COD fees and the remaining questions received today, and handing them back to the warehouse. At this time, a Muslim colleague from Razz passed by him. After a simple greeting, the colleague drove to the nearby mosque and prayed.

This Muslim courier has to pray five times a day, each time about 10 minutes. As soon as he prayed, he would park the car to the side of the road and go to the nearby mosque to pray. When the prayer is over, he will continue to send pieces.

Does this not delay the delivery time? “If he can’t send the package of the day, he will work overtime to deliver it.” For the Muslim courier brother, the main awe of the truth, but also the responsibility of the work.

With the sound of the Qur’an chanting, Razz started the car and was ready to return, ending his day’s work.

编 | 云晞@出海

Figure| Vision China

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