Over the summer I had the opportunity to job shadow Tony Green, a driver here at YPO. It was the hottest day of the year yet with temperatures up to 33 degrees. We delivered to 25 different customers around Castleford and Pontefract and shifted 1,972kg worth of parcels. It’s safe to say I was melting!
We were on the road for 6:30am. Whilst we were travelling to the first drop, Tony was talking me through his usual day and telling me about our customers and ‘what a lovely bunch they are’ he was right. As an office based employee, it was lovely to meet our customers and get chatting to them about YPO - they were happy to share a few stories and memories of YPO drivers through the years and throughout the day, I soon realised why our customers and drivers have such great relationships.
Our drivers’ routes aren’t always the straight forward delivery drops you’d imagine. We couldn’t make some deliveries because a number of schools weren’t open, leaving us to work around (what I can only describe as) a mountain of parcels to get to our next delivery. Some of our customers ask for their parcels to be dropped in certain places, not a problem, no matter if it’s up or down flights of stairs – I was so tired!
After we’d finished our route for the day, Tony, with no hesitation, went out of his way to try and deliver to the closed schools again. He was reluctant to give up until the schools received their goods. We managed to get 2 of the schools their goods - I thought this was excellent customer service.
It was great to see that our customers really value our drivers, it’s clear that relationships have been built over the years and that our customers aren’t shy to give feedback, either good or bad – which is exactly what we want.
I know it sounds cliché, but I soon realised how much our drivers do, not only for our customers but for YPO too. Our drivers are the face of our organisation and represent all YPO employees. They share knowledge with customers about current campaigns, report back any problems, take comments on board about the quality of our products and generally go above and beyond to help. Drivers do more than just delivering parcels, they deliver customer service at the heart of everything they do, no matter how difficult their roles can be.
The highlight of the day was when we were stood in traffic, a teacher was walking along with her class of school children hand-in-hand, and the children shouted excitably “YPO! LOOK – LOOK – YPO!” Tony pipped his horn and the children had grins from ear to ear!
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