Delivery data released by CouriersPlease, one of Australia’s leading parcel delivery services, reveals that demand for next-day parcel deliveries is booming, underscoring the dynamic shifts in consumer behaviours, as ‘snail mail’ continues to come under pressure. 

CouriersPlease parcel delivery volumes are up 25 per cent on the previous year for the September 2023 quarter. Its delivery data also reveals a 47 per cent growth in same-day metro deliveries. The significant increase showcases growing shopper preferences for faster deliveries to their doors.

Commenting on the results, CEO Richard Thame said: “CouriersPlease has achieved significant growth already this year, largely through the onboarding of a number of large Australian retail customers who share our understanding that customers are doing it tough and need the best-value product and parcel delivery options.” 

CouriersPlease’s extensive network of 3000 secure and convenient pick-up and drop-off locations empowers consumers to effortlessly retrieve and send parcels on their own schedule. Many of these locations are open beyond traditional retail hours, ensuring flexibility and convenience for customers.

Richard says: “Same-day and next-day metro deliveries are our core business. Our focus on increasing our agility and adaptability to market needs has enabled us to grow these priority services, giving our customers a better delivery experience.”

CouriersPlease’s delivery data also shows that in the September 2023 quarter, same-day and next-day metro deliveries were 47 per cent higher than all other deliveries. In comparison, in the September 2022 quarter same-day and next-day metro deliveries were just 38 per cent higher than all other deliveries.

Richard says: “At CouriersPlease, we are increasing the digitalisation of our services to disrupt traditional delivery models, which will help maintain our position as a top parcel delivery service in Australia and will significantly improve the delivery experience. During the parcel’s transit, parcel recipients can opt to have the package redelivered to a neighbour’s address, reschedule to another delivery date or redirect to a convenient parcel collection point.  CouriersPlease prides itself on providing choice and best value for our customers.”

With a 40-year heritage, CouriersPlease has grown to a national network of more than 1200 franchise and delivery partners, 400-plus freight handlers and 18 freight depots across nearly 850 active territories. 

Top 7 suburbs for same-day and next-day deliveries: Sydney and Melbourne dominate rankings

CouriersPlease’s delivery data has also revealed the suburbs where residents are shopping the most and wanting their parcels faster than other areas across the nation. 

Sydney dominates the ranking of top 7 suburbs for same-day deliveries in 2023

Five Sydney suburbs make up the top five in the ranking. Melbourne suburbs made up the last two of the top seven.

1. Moorebank, in south-west Sydney
2. Kemps Creek, in Sydney’s west
3. Richlands, an outer south-western suburb of Brisbane 
4. Marsden Park, in Sydney’s outer north west
5. Eastern Creek, in Sydney’s west
6. Dandenong South, in Melbourne’s south
7. Tullamarine, in Melbourne’s north.

Melbourne dominates the ranking of top 7 suburbs for next-day deliveries in 2023

Four Melbourne suburbs make up the list, which was topped by Melbourne’s Braeside. Sydney was hot on the heels, with three suburbs represented in the ranking. 

1. Braeside, in Melbourne’s south
2. Alexandria, in Sydney’s inner west
3. Dandenong South, in Melbourne’s south
4. Craigieburn, in Melbourne’s north
5. Prestons, in Sydney’s outer west
6. Moorebank, in south-west Sydney
7. Altona, in Melbourne’s south west.

The Happiest Hour, is your wingperson in the world of food & drink offers, hooking you up with the hottest specials around. The Happiest Hour’s mission is to empower people to find great offers and to eat and drink out more with family and friends, whilst supporting great local venues.

Joonas Karppinen says:“I co-founded The Happiest Hour as Australia has some of the pubs in the world, and many have great happy hours and weekly food specials, but they are difficult to find on a reliable platform. What’s better than visiting a great pub special with family or friends? 

The business was launched in 2004 well before even smartphones existed. The first version involved having an email database of people who wanted to receive a weekly email on the latest pub specials in their area. Pub managers would email us their latest offers and we’d then let our database know what they may be most interested in. 

Then in the late 2000s, the launch of the iphone as the first smartphone led us down the path of creating a user-friendly app to allow people to find the most relevant pub specials to them, and we’ve had a live app since then, with well over 250k organic app downloads over the years and over 150k monthly searches on our platform.”

COVID shut down the hospitality industry for two years. The Happiest Hour just relaunched their new platform. The Happiest Hour has over 1000 pubs in Sydney and Melbourne on board with plans to expand nationally.

Joonas concludes: “Firstly, Covid has caused a shift of over $1b of revenue from on-premise dining in pubs to food delivery. We want to support local pubs and move a large chunk of this revenue back to on-premise. 

Secondly, Covid instigated antisocial stay at home habits which have lingered on much longer than many anticipated. We want to play a role in getting people back out to local venues with family and friends, fully aware that social connections are the key to happiness.*

Finally, the reality of the current economic climate and the cost of living pressures associated with it, are that the two factors mentioned above are further reinforced. Our users tell us that our platform enables them to get out more with family and friends, while supporting local venues. “

Reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adriangostick/2023/08/15/harvard-research-reveals-the-1-key-to-living-longer-and-happier/?sh=1bd90e2cf718). 

Workplace collaboration platform, Dropbox has just revealed Australia has ranked second globally in the greatest number of hours and dollars lost, due to work distractions each year.

Titled the ‘Economist Impact Study: The Cost of Lost Focus’, the report, commissioned by Dropbox, highlighted Australian knowledge workers are losing 600 hours, equivalent to USD$19,156, annually, placing us just behind France (608 hours), in terms of the impact on businesses.

The report sheds light on the challenges faced by knowledge workers today, revealing that 42% of survey respondents struggle to work productively for more than an hour without interruptions. To this, the study indicates knowledge workers are increasingly turning to automation tools, including AI, for assistance. Of those surveyed who use such tools, 79% reported increased productivity, while nearly 75% noted improvements in work quality and time spent on repetitive tasks. Additionally, almost 70% mentioned improved organisation.

Work Distractions key findings in Australia:

• Primary work distractions leading to lost focus include:
  • Work-related chat messages (166 hours)
  • Personal activities (146 hours)
  • Work-related emails (82 hours)
• Australians spend an average of 131 hours annually trying to regain focus, tying with the United Kingdom.

Head of APAC at Dropbox, Pia Broadley “People are experiencing information overload and disjointed workflows at unprecedented levels, leading to a waste of brain power on ‘work about work.’ The research highlights that distraction has become a common problem for knowledge workers and this is costing Australian businesses. We’re building products that have the potential to help solve this problem by automating routine tasks, increasing productivity, and freeing up mental space so people can get back to doing work that matters most. The updates we’re launching today are just the first step on this journey.”

Please find full Economist report here.

Westpac has launched its first third party Android terminal app, Presto, as part of new cloud-based integrated payments solutions for merchant customers to help make it faster and easier to run their business.

Developed in collaboration with payments fintech mx51, the Presto app is available on Westpac’s fleet of Android-based EFTPOS Now terminals and allows for key point of sale features to be seamlessly integrated with payments on the one device.

Using the app, businesses can wirelessly connect their terminal to more than 100 major hospitality and retail point of sale systems. In addition to speeding up checkout times and reducing the chance of keying errors, the app also provides access to a real-time dashboard to track sales and business performance.

Westpac Managing Director of Cash & Transactional Banking, Mandy Rutherford, said: “We know how important it is for small businesses to serve their customers as quickly and efficiently as possible, particularly in retail and hospitality.

“The Presto app and our new EFTPOS Now terminals will allow businesses like restaurants and cafes to take advantage of integrated terminal benefits like simplifying the end of day reconciliation process, while also getting access to all the innovation we are bringing to market on this new device,” she said.

“It will help to reduce the chance of keying errors and speed up the checkout process, which can be a great time saver particularly during rush hour,” Ms Rutherford said.

“This is part of our continued commitment to support the evolving needs of our customers,” she said.

CEO of mx51, Victor Zheng, said: “Westpac and mx51 are both passionate about redefining the hospitality and retail payments environment. This latest innovation cements our commitment to bringing the best merchant experiences to life for our customers.”

In addition to the Presto app, last week Westpac launched EFTPOS Connect with Linkly Cloud, which enables business to wirelessly connect their terminal to a tablet for a neater countertop and increased flexibility to take payments anywhere in store.

Westpac is also now in pilot with EFTPOS Flex, a solution to allow businesses to integrate their terminal with a self-serve checkout or kiosk to reduce queueing and improve the retail customer experience.

For more information visit the Westpac website.

Xero, the global small business platform, today announced it has implemented a Generative AI (GenAI) solution in Xero Central to help deliver accurate support answers faster for its millions of customers and users.

In partnership with Coveo and powered by GenAI, generated answers are available in Xero Central – Xero’s customer support and learning site – and the feature is just one of Xero’s GenAI experiments announced recently at Xerocon Sydney. Xero’s recent Future Focus AI research also found that small businesses believe that support systems (customer service, chatbox and help desk tools) will be the second biggest area (36%) impacted by AI in the next five years, only behind content creation at 38%. 

The use of GenAI-driven search in Xero Central leverages Coveo’s platform and works by integrating generative answers so when customers enter a search term or question, they will receive an answer as well as a list of other relevant content articles. The answers are generated from Xero’s extensive support content articles, written by the Xero team. Customers get the information they need faster, as they don’t have to keep scrolling through content to find the relevant articles they need. Customers can also filter their searches – based on whether they are a small business, or an accountant or bookkeeper – to get the most relevant answers.

Nigel Piper, Executive General Manager – Customer Experience at Xero said: “Xero strives to be at the forefront of innovative customer experience, and this is a significant step towards our goal to build a support model which brings together the best of digital experiences powered by human capability. It’s really about making it as simple and intuitive as possible for customers – whether they’re small businesses or accountants and bookkeepers – to find the information they need to solve their problem so they can get back to running their business or supporting their clients.

“The feedback we’re getting already on the generated answers has been hugely positive. We understand customers like to have a choice too, so customers can continue to raise a support case for one-on-one assistance, or request a phone call from one of our hundreds of customer support specialists based around the world, if that is their preference.”

Louis Tetu, CEO and Chairman at Coveo, said: “Xero understood early the AI-experience advantage when it comes to creating a best-in-class customer experience. Xero is a forward-thinking organization, together we are exploring the possibilities that semantic search and GenAI can bring – or will bring – to digital experiences.”

Recently, Xero also rolled out more powerful, AI-powered bank reconciliation to all Xero customers globally, following the announcement at Xerocon Sydney. This means that AI is now being used to recognise and predict new contacts in customers’ statement lines even without having the business names in their contact list, which can reduce manual data entry and further save customers time. This is in addition to Xero already being able to use AI to predict a contact and account code for transactions only where the business already had a relevant contact.

There are a number of other areas AI already powers across Xero beyond bank reconciliation and Xero Central. It’s embedded in products like Hubdoc (with document capture and data entry), Xero Expenses, Xero Go, and cash flow forecasting in Xero Analytics Plus.

Xero customers can try the GenAI-driven search today in Xero Central search. 

Australians are proving their commitment to supporting local businesses as they tip more generously, despite economic pressures and the rising cost of living. Zeller, which supports over 35,000 Australian businesses with next-generation EFTPOS technology, analysed tipping trends from millions of transactions processed with Zeller Terminals across the country. The findings are compiled in Zeller’s latest Tipping Trends Report which reveals significant increases in both the average tip value, and how frequently Australians are tipping, reflecting a community dedicated to acknowledging outstanding service and supporting local businesses.

The data shows that the average Australian tip has grown 12% year-on-year (YoY), from $16.05 to $17.93. Notably, Australians are also tipping more frequently, with the volume of tips as a percentage of total transactions processed by Zeller increasing an impressive 132% since January 2022.

In the Sydney vs. Melbourne rivalry, it’s the hospitality staff in Melbourne who came out on top. Melbournians are leading the way in tipping, with the average tip value on a meal in Melbourne surpassing Sydney by a remarkable 57%, totalling $18.57 compared to $11.81.

“We’ve observed a significant increase in the tips we’ve received at Trattoria Emilia recently. This can be attributed to the streamlined customer experience offered by Zeller Terminal, as well as the growing trend among Australians to tip more frequently. We are grateful to our customers for recognising and rewarding our exceptional service by tipping our dedicated staff,” explained Matteo Neviani, General Manager of Trattoria Emilia in the Melbourne CBD.

While the generosity of tippers is more pronounced in metro areas, a trend is emerging in regional Australia. On average, diners in major cities tip 12% more than those in regional areas, with metro diners averaging $18.08 compared to $16.07 for regional diners. However, diners in regional Australia have increased their average tip value by an astounding 79% YoY, growing from $9 to $16.07, demonstrating a growing appreciation for the businesses and staff servicing regional areas.

“Recently at La Tabella, we have observed a significant upswing in tipping. This can be accredited not only to the influx of tourists but also to the seamless and user-friendly nature of our Zeller EFTPOS Terminals. The Zeller Terminal employs a subtle approach in guiding customers through the tipping process, enhancing the overall experience for both our valued patrons and dedicated staff members,” said Brittany Yanapa, Venue Manager at La Tabella, an Italian restaurant in Airlie Beach, Queensland.

The Australian tipping culture is also diversifying. While table-service diners continue to be the most generous, with an average tip of $19.98, marking an 8% YoY increase, servers at takeaway venues are now also being rewarded for great service, with average tips totalling $7.52, reflecting a 6% YoY growth. However, bar, club, and cafe patrons appear to be tipping less generously, with average tip values declining by 23% and 19% YoY, respectively, in these hospitality settings.

“While tipping isn’t for everyone, we’re impressed to see a growing trend of Australians adding a gratuity to their bill to reward an outstanding customer experience. Zeller Terminal’s built-in tipping feature, which can be turned on or off on the EFTPOS device, is a small but important feature that nurtures a culture of generosity, and incentivises servers and staff to elevate their customer service experience,” said Joshua McNicol, Director of Growth at Zeller.

Australians are demonstrating their generosity in a variety of other customer service settings. Beauty and hair appointments lead the pack, with an average tip of 21% of the total bill, surpassing all other categories and experiencing a remarkable YoY increase of 121%. The average tip percentage in the hospitality sector also grew by 11% YoY, while it remained stable in the taxi and transportation industry.

These findings underscore the importance of business owners being armed with technology to assist them in taking advantage of this growing trend, visit the Zeller Business Blog to learn more.