When will out-of-home deliveries reach their potential?

Year by year, alternative options for collecting your parcels are becoming more and more popular. Not only are they convenient, they are also more eco-friendly. This is important because of both new requirements and customer expectations. We analyse this issue and discuss when out-of-home delivery will reach its full potential.

What are out-of-home deliveries?

As the name suggests, out-of-home deliveries take place outside the home. This means that the parcel is not delivered directly to the hands of the recipient, but is left at a designated location for the recipient to collect. In practice, this involves solutions such as PUDO (Pick Up Drop Off) points and parcel collection machines. According to the latest report from Last Mile Experts, “Green Last Mile Europe Report 2023”, approximately 50% of parcels in Poland are already shipped this way.

Over the recent years, we have seen a dynamic growth in OOH deliveries. This follows from more than just environmental considerations such as reducing CO₂ emissions. That imperative is embedded in the Green Last Mile initiative, which advocates making the last stage of delivery to the recipient less harmful to the environment. The comfort and satisfaction of clients are very important here too. With a high percentage of deliveries being unsuccessful (long waiting time, parcel damage, problems with picking up the parcel within specific hours), OOH is one of the more popular options.

What does the future hold for out-of-home deliveries?

Last Mile Experts’ estimates show that first delivery success ratios typically exceed 99% for most items. The key to an effective customer-oriented delivery is the distance to the PUDO point or parcel pickup machine, which optimally should be about 350 m. Dense modern OOH networks already exist in Poland, but they are also present in Sweden, France, Finland, the United Kingdom, Czechia, Belgium, and Hungary.

The latest survey conducted by Kantar for InPost  for InPost shows that 94% of respondents choose Paczkomat®️ InPost when shopping online, and the NPS (Net Promoter Score, a tool for measuring customer loyalty) for the Paczkomat pick-up and drop-off service is 81% up 6 percentage pointson last year. The survey has also showed that 85% of online buyers believe Paczkomat®️ to be the most eco-friendly delivery option.

According to the latest Gemius survey, out of the eco-friendly delivery options, delivery to the Paczkomat parcel pickup machine was the most popular option (67%), followed by PUDO points (49%) and BOPIS, or ‘Buy Online, Pick up in Store’ (48%).

Emphasis on reducing costs as well as the care for the environment and customer satisfaction greatly influence how delivery chains work. The growing popularity of OOH justifies a claim that this type of delivery is the future of e-commerce. There is every indication that it will dominate the market over the next few years.