GPS ROI — Map That Package

There are lots of cool things you can do with maps. Some are “cool” only to geography teachers, but let’s face it, most of us find useful ways to use maps in our daily life.

Package shipping companies, among a few others, have learned that tracking packages is a great boost to their business. It let’s the customer perform lot of the “donkey work” that was always done by expensive help desk agents in the past.

There’s an old saw also that says a picture is worth a thousand words. So which of the “big 4″ in packages was quick enough to show their packages on a map to their customers? If you answered “none” then you have a good understanding of just how badly corporate America still misses the usefulness and the tried and true value-added (need I mention ROI, here?) benefits of using the web to disseminate information?

http://www.packagemapping.com/ is an outfit that does realize that if giving customers text-based web access to the information they need, then giving pictorial (map) access is even better.

Here’s a nice sample screen shot: (sadly the actual tracking lines are missing from this shot … weekend difficulties on my part, not the web site’s fault)

Now of course the big “secret” that a site like this is going to reveal to the casual observer is that U.S.P.S., UPS, FedEx and DHL do not actually “track” their packages with GPS as many people think they do. All of the big players are evaluating different approaches to doing this, but in case this is news to you, Mr. GPS just told you … they don’t.

Whet the big players so do is track a package into and out of gateways using the bar codes on the labels, hand-held or forklift-mounted readers and a rather rudimentary database system that says, “Oh package number 8,8888.5? That package last checked in to Cincinnati and hasn’t checked out from KCVG yet, so, there it sits.”

Obviously this represents a little less than the “:state of the art” sort of tracking many of us might have been imagining, but that’s where the situation sits today.

Meanwhile, Package Mapping dot Com provides one useful function the likes of which you would have expected other package shipper web sites to have done before … it takes a tracking number that you typed in and maps it, being smart enough to understand the unique numbers assigned by each shipper instead of waiting for the customer to accidentally type a UPS code into the FedEx web site, just so FedEx can “get even” with the hapless client by telling them, “don’t know that number, go away, stupid.”

Ever order something on the phone or on a web site with a credit card and have to go through the totally unnecessary step of having the “distant end” ask if it’s a Visa or MasterCard? And you having to explain, “neither, it’s American Express? It’s as if they didn’t want your business in the first place. The credit card numbers are all uniquely tied to their company so they merchant/merchant’s bank already knows what kind of card it is … just more time wasted and another opportunity for error.

Customer Service instead of customer hurdles, what a novel thought.