Branding
Brand builder
How Hans Hickler delivered on service to make DHL a contender in the express shipping industry
By Mark Scott
Smart Business Broward/Palm Beach | February 2007
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At its core, the job performed by employees at DHL Express USA is a simple one: Take a package from Point A and deliver it in a safe and timely manner to Point B.
But as DHL executives assessed the landscape of the express shipping industry, they decided that this simple process had developed a hitch.
CEO Hans Hickler says finding a strategy that eliminated that hitch became the focal point of an initiative to bolster the company’s standing in the express shipping industry.
“We start with the premise that customer service is not alive and well in the shipping industry,” Hickler says. “We actually believe it’s not alive and well in the U.S. in general. The business community in the U.S. has strayed from the path of putting the customer at the center.”
The notion that customer service had declined to such a degree became an important component of the new strategy and how it would be conveyed publicly.
“We’re not saying that DHL is here, and therefore, customer service is back in shipping,” Hickler says. “What we’re saying is that what we stand for is, we won’t rest until this industry is known
for its customer service and responsiveness, and we’re going to be the ones introducing it in this industry. You really put a stake out there.”
It’s all part of a customer-service focused brand-building strategy for the company that employs more than 22,000 people and delivers more than 1.2 million packages a day.
“It’s not always about who we are,” Hickler says. “It’s about what we’re about and that we’re relentless in going about achieving that. Your internal initiatives to get there are one thing. But how
you position your brand out to the customers is the same thing. We tend to do it in a way that is a little brazen. It’s the opposite of apologetic. It’s, ‘Why wouldn’t we do it that way?’ I think that’s
hit a chord.”
DHL’s ultimate goal is to solidify the company’s standing in the express shipping market as a solid alternative to the duopoly of FedEx and UPS. However, while DHL wants to be the flag bearer for bringing customer service back into shipping, Hickler says the company couldn’t just come out and rip its primary competitors.
“We’re a distant third, and frankly, we’re OK with that,” Hickler says. “We couldn’t come in and say the other two guys don’t have the basics right and we’ll have them right. The other two guys
have the basics right. This is the most competitive express market in the world. You have to come in with something that customers value beyond that.”
Making a promise
DHL was founded in 1969 in San Francisco, but it has done most of its growing outside the United States. Now owned by Deutsche Post World Net, the global DHL brand is the world’s leading
express delivery and logistics company, with global revenue in 2004 of more than $32 billion, and U.S. revenue of $4.4 billion. In 2004, the company launched a $1.2 billion investment in its U.S.
operations to better compete with FedEx and UPS. While increasing physical infrastructure is one part of the plan, rolling out a strategy to differentiate DHL from its competitors was the other.
It meant changing the way customers perceive DHL. It didn’t want to be just another shipping company, so it created the Customer Service Initiative, a strategy that would help solidify with both
employees and customers who DHL is and what values the company represents. But rolling out any strategy requires careful planning and even better execution.
The goal of the initiative is to provide a superior customer experience across all DHL touch points. Hickler says that such a strategy must have a foundation of data that supports its need for
implementation.
“In the early heyday of the express business, it was all about innovation and how do you move a customer’s goods from A to B as quickly as you can and address clearance issues and international issues,” Hickler says.
Research found that developing an approach that was focused more intently on the complete customer experience while at the same time delivering on-time service was something that was
needed in the market.
“We literally analyzed the 82 touch points that our customer comes to in our organization or that we extend out to the customer,” Hickler says. “We worked with our customers through surveys
and focus groups to understand the relative importance of those touch points to changing the customer’s experience.”
When embarking on a large-scale strategy, Hickler says it is important to use both mathematical and analytical data to gain a true understanding of what the strategy needs to encompass. It is
also important to know where your company is positioned in the marketplace with its brand.
“Your brand positioning has to be really tied heavily to your brand promise,” Hickler says. “So, ‘Hey, we’re here,’ doesn’t cut it for more than about a year. Effective branding says what am I about,
not who am I.
“It has to be rolling out your brand promise and communicating to your customers that this is what we stand for.”
That means presenting a consistent message to employees, to customers, to shareholders and to analysts who monitor your company.
“I need to be able to look at it and I need to be able to show it to my employees and to the analysts and say, ‘This is where we’re going, and this is what it’s going to look like when we’re done,’”
Hickler says.
Companies must also reach customers in a deeper way to continue to receive their business.
“Customers don’t just do business with you for one year in this business,” Hickler says. “They’re buying in to your strategy, especially in our business, which is a very global and international
business. People don’t switch easily, and so they need to understand that what you stand for is there.”
Hickler says a strategy must have the depth to address changes that may occur down the line so that the company can respond to these shifts quickly and promptly. There is danger in being tied
too closely to assumptions or deliverables that restrict flexibility.
“A strategy shouldn’t be a finished painting,” Hickler says. “We have to have the latitude to put the touches on in a sequence that makes sense relative to the external environment, the internal
environment and everything else. ... You can lock yourself in way too tight on a strategy.”
Hickler says this ability comes down to being able to distinguish between the things that most likely won’t change and those that may shift as time goes on.
“It is hard to do sometimes, especially when things like capital investments or organizational design are involved in that,” Hickler says. “You have to understand your no-regrets moves versus
things that are more fluid within a given strategy. You can’t decide to buy an airplane one day and decide not to buy it another day. Certain things, you jump in with both feet. You know what those
are. Other elements of the strategy have to have more flex.”
Engage your employees
Once a strategy has been drawn up in the board room, it must be conveyed to the employees who are charged with carrying out its components. Hickler says this conveyance needs to seep
through the entire culture of the company, from the way employees are recruited or trained to the ways they are expected to conduct themselves when working with customers.
DHL developed a program called “I’m On It” to help in the development of the culture throughout the company.
“All of our recognition events, all of our talk about the hero, the legend stories that we have in our company relative to how we deal with customers or respond to customers are tied to this ‘I’m
On It’ tagline,” Hickler says. “It’s really the essence of the culture change we are doing. So we have ‘I’m On It’ awards and ‘I’m On It’ pins, and we have hero stories and videos at our leadership
meetings.”
Hickler says the process of getting employees to buy in to a new strategy geared around customer service is made easier because of his belief that employees truly want to center their work
around the customer.
“There is an intrinsic desire to satisfy the customer,” Hickler says. “I actually think it’s an unnatural course of action for a company to become internally focused. It happens, and it sort of happens by osmosis once it starts. But when you move the ship back toward the customer, typically your employees rally around that.”
At the same time, employees want to feel as though their individual needs are being addressed based on which area of the company they work in. Employees who work in the information technology department, for example, need to know how their work fits into the strategy. The same also applies to the sales department or those who work in operations or any other department.
A strategy also needs to have building blocks that serve as its foundation.
“The core building blocks for us are customer, people and performance,” Hickler says. “One is the customer centricity of everything we do and creating a business that puts the customer experience first and therefore creating an organization and business processes that can deliver to that one. Two, on the people side, how we create an environment and how do we hire, how do we
recruit, retain and develop employees that can thrive and contribute in that environment.
“So you have talent management commitments, you have employee satisfaction commitments, health and welfare, safety — all of those cornerstones. You tie your strategy to how does that matter to the employee.”
Hickler says constant communication between the leader and the employee is vital in creating a culture that will thrive under a new strategy.
“I’m a real believer in the effect that grassroots initiatives can have on an organization,” Hickler says. “Employee engagement is what delivers that brand promise.”
While he says leadership can be learned, people either have the ability to be good communicators or they don’t. Those who can do it are a step ahead when it comes to strategy implementation.
“I do believe that people follow an example,” Hickler says. “If they see leadership behaving according to the norms and values of the company, then they will follow suit. When I start in a new
position, I communicate what I stand for and what my nonnegotiables are. Those have to get filtered into the organization because they are part of the culture like anything else.”
Hickler says his calendar is filled through the end of 2007 with employee town hall meetings and presentations meant to keep those communication lines flowing.
“It’s really getting in front of people,” Hickler says. “We already have hundreds of employee customer action teams that are addressing issues germane to the employee, specifically as it relates
to how do they improve their work processes and improve their experience with the customer.”
HOW TO REACH: DHL Express USA, www.dhl-usa.com
