UPS cuts SMB on-boarding experience from 10 days to 2 minutes

UPS CEO Carol Tome said the company is looking to create more of a frictionless customer experience to attract more small business customers.

Speaking on UPS' first quarter earnings conference call, Tome outlined the efforts to digitize UPS' on-boarding experience and make it easier for SMBs to ship.

In the US, Tome said it revamped its processes to onboard the smallest businesses. The new on-boarding process enables UPS' smallest customers to answer three questions on its site and get a contract that includes pricing. The old process required SMBs to wait days before shipping.

The new customer experience process "enables them to begin shipping in under 2 minutes, instead of our old process, where they had to wait an average of 10 days to get started."

For larger SMBs, Tome said UPS moved from a manual pricing process to a digital platform called Deal Manager, which will be deployed to all US SMB salespeople by the end of the month. This system "operationalizes our data and applies pricing science to present the customer with the right price the first time," said Tome.

By leveraging data, UPS is making the sales process more efficient with dynamic pricing technologies.

The enhanced customer experience processes paid off in the first quarter.

"The enhancements we are making are resonating with SMB customers. In the first quarter, the US SMB average daily volume growth rate, including platforms, outpaced the enterprise volume growth rate. In fact, in the first quarter, SMBs made up 28.4% of our total US volume, up 140 basis points from 1 year ago," said Tome.

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Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief (former)

Larry Dignan is the former Editor in Chief of Celonis Media. Before joining Celonis, he was Editor in Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine.