A long day at work is over. I reach home to find a familiar yellow note in my mailbox: My long-awaited package has arrived, and a neighbor has kindly kept it for me. I was relieved to get my package safely – many others have had pretty bad experiences!

This package was placed under a bucket.

And this one was left in the bin.

No @YodelOnline, thank you. New low in #customerservice for ‘the UKs leading parcel delivery company’. Pls RT #fail pic.twitter.com/q0shCMcNxG

— Russ Avery (@sustyruss) January 29, 2014

Although amusing, these stories raise some questions. Why is there no easy way to receive your packages? Do parcel companies have trouble completing their deliveries within limited time windows? What other challenges do they face?

We can see that they work hard to improve customer service and deliver innovative services. Deutsche Post DHL has been offering the Packstation service for several years now. It allows customers to pick up their packages around the clock. This new concept was very well received but there were bottlenecks – capacity was limited and some parcels were delivered to the wrong Packstation due to technical issues. As a result, customers had to make another trip to pick up their parcels at other stations or at the store.

Nevertheless, competitors see opportunities to improve their services too. Happy customers equal more orders. Companies like Zalando and Amazon are starting their own delivery services. While companies such as DPD promote their short 30-minute delivery time windows, several other companies began a pilot project in Berlin called PaketButler.

PaketButler is a joint venture between DHL Paket, Zalando and Deutsche Telekom. So how does the service work? The customer first attaches the PaketButler to his door. When the delivered package is dropped into the box, it will be closed via M2M technology. The system also works in reverse, where the parcel company can pick up returns. Innovative, isn’t it? Amazon caught the most attention when they talked about deliveries by drones, although it’s still a rather unlikely scenario in the near future.

There are plenty of ways to deliver parcels on time. Let’s take a closer look at the parcel companies:

A parcel carrier delivers an average of 200 parcels each day. This requires a well-planned tour while avoiding major disruptions that will impact reliability. But the reality is that the parcel carrier faces challenges every day. A traffic jam can affect the entire daily plan. Sometimes the parcel carrier has to spend time trying to find a neighbor who will accept the parcel when the intended recipient is not at home. Other times, the parcel carrier is suddenly called to pick up an urgent package from a customer. The planned tour will be disrupted and at the end of the day, the parcel carrier may fail to deliver all its packages.

An average of 5 million parcels need to be delivered every day. Can you imagine the pressure on planners to create accurate and profitable plans? They need to work with an enormous amount of data and be prepared for disruptions and last-minute changes.

Everyone within this supply chain has their own expectations:

• Customers want to receive their parcels at their desired location quickly
• The parcel carrier wants smooth operations with minimum impact from disruptions
• The planner wants to create efficient plans that maximize the use of resources
• The parcel company wants to keep customers satisfied while keeping costs low

Sounds like an unsolvable puzzle, but it’s not. My colleague, Francois Eijgelshoven, will reveal the secret at the European Post and Parcel Services Conference (March 24-26, Vienna). In his presentation on March 24 at 10:40am, he will explain how companies can rely on intelligent planning and optimization to solve all their planning puzzles, and at the same time, align human expertise with this technology. We look forward to seeing you at our booth where our team of experts will be available to discuss your specific business challenges and offer valuable insights.

What kind of experiences have you had with parcel companies? Leave a comment below or drop us a tweet @Quintiq.