With the holiday shopping season approaching, United Parcel Service Inc. is expanding a service aimed at making it more convenient for shoppers across the country to pick up online orders.
Less than a year after unveiling its UPS Access Point network in five major markets the United States, UPS said today it will roll out the service to an additional 2,400 sites in 100 markets across the country in time for the 2015 holiday shopping season.
The program, available at all 4,400 The UPS Store locations nationwide and 1,200 other locations, such as grocery stores, convenience stores and dry cleaners, lets consumers pick up packages when home delivery is not possible or convenient.
When a UPS driver is unable to deliver a package, the driver can leave a note on a customer’s door notifying them of the designated access point. While all UPS customers can take advantage of the Access Point service, thoseustomers enrolled in UPS’s free My Choice program can reroute their packages to an Access Point site in advance. MyChoice allows customers to receive email and text alerts telling them when a package will be delivered. Competitor FedEx offers a similar service which allows customers to log onto its website, enter their tracking number, and opt to have their package delivered to and held at a select FedEx location.
Access Point is available now in the Boston, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas. Over the next few months, UPS will roll out the program to other markets starting with eight major cities, including Baltimore, Dallas and Philadelphia, by the end of August. The plan is to have all 100 markets up and running in time for the holiday season.
“They’re primarily major cities but not exclusively major cities,” says Stephanie Callaway, vice president of product development for UPS. “We look for clusters of consumers that are having a hard time getting deliveries on the first attempt and where they don’t already have convenient access to UPS.”
Callaway says UPS has emailed all 16 million customers enrolled in the My Choice program to notify them about the Access Point expansion.
UPS data shows that 33% of its customers want to have a package shipped somewhere other than their home. The program originated in Europe. When it expanded to the United States in October, UPS president of product development Geoff Light told Internet Retailer one of the goals of the service was to cut down on the number of returns to e-retailers.
“In the areas where UPS takes packages to the UPS Access Point location following an unsuccessful first delivery attempt, we do monitor the pace at which consumers pick up those packages, and the vast majority are picked up,” Callaway says. “What we’re aiming to do is to get packages into consumers’ hands as soon as possible. The sooner they get it, you can prevent them from having to replace it with an in-store purchase.”
Expanding the Access Point program to 95 new markets inside of a four-month window is no small undertaking. UPS is searching for new pickup spots, with the goal of having 2,400 additional independent Access Point locations operational by December.
Callaway says customer convenience is key for a new Access Point network site. “We look for businesses that have a secure area to store the packages,” she says. “We look for businesses with extended weekend and evening hours. We look for businesses that have extensive foot traffic.”
Top500Guide.com data shows UPS is the shipping carrier for 413 retailers in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 1,000. Once the additional locations come online, UPS will have 22,000 total Access Point sites around the world.
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