As deliveries are a crucial element of the customer experience in e-commerce, Parcel Perform was founded to address this problem and assist e-commerce merchants in delivering a positive post-checkout experience. Established in 2016, they offer the most comprehensive parcel tracking data for e-commerce businesses to track, analyze and optimize their e-commerce delivery experience.
The story behind Parcel Perform
Despite being the fastest-growing e-commerce region, 34% of the consumers in Southeast Asia are dismayed with their e-commerce delivery experience, where a large majority of customer complaints and negative feedback are linked to late delivery and a lack of communication on delivery statuses.
Before starting Parcel Perform with his co-founder Dana von der Heide, Arne Jeroschewski had worked in leadership positions across various e-commerce companies. They noticed that many retailers left their post-checkout delivery experience in the hands of their logistics carriers, which results in them having little control of their post-checkout experience nor visibility on their carrier’s performance.
As consumers view the delivery experience as the responsibility of the retailer, their expectations have risen. Arne expressed that they started Parcel Perform to address such a significant gap in the market; in attempts to improve the customer experience after checkout and provide more transparency in logistics.
Aside from his founding role at Zalora, Arne held several senior roles across multiple prominent organizations in the e-commerce industry which includes Singapore Post and DHL.“I’m a strong believer in taking time to understand and know the space that you’re operating in. It helps you talk to your customers, understand their pain points and the nuances of the industry”. He believes that his previous work experience at those organisations have helped him develop a nuanced understanding of the changing nature of the e-commerce logistics industry. In such a dynamic environment, instead of having integrated logistics players that handle logistics processes end-to-end, Arne expressed that one would see a shift towards the rise of specialized parties that focus on specific parts of the process.he onus is on bigger players to adapt to such changes and identify key positions to specialize in to stay competitive.
With Parcel Perform, they aim to be on the right side of this evolution.“I’m quite happy to experience both B2B enterprise and B2C e-commerce environments; each has its own challenges and areas of growth” He disclosed that in his work with B2B enterprise customers, they emphasize building solutions for the long term to support their customers.
“We want users to remember that we are the go-to platform for any issues they may be facing in e-commerce logistics; focusing on solving issues for our customers and working with them to grow their business. We strive to have the best customer engagement process in the industry; from customer support, key account management and account onboarding. This approach has helped us to gain the trust of our customers when handling their key business processes. Our customer engagement team prioritizes an element of collaboration with them to solve their issues and grow together with them.”
Arne Jeroschewski
AngelCentral syndication and funding
Singapore has the highest number of tech incubators in Southeast Asia, however, many startups in this region still encounter financial challenges such as the lack of funding.
When asked about this matter, Arne revealed that one investor-related challenge Parcel Perform faced was related to the global scope of their business.
“Parcel Perform is a global business serving customers all over the world, so our physical location doesn’t matter as much. Rather, our team needs to remember to think globally and bear in mind different local market conditions all the time.”
From his experience, he had noticed that investors in this part of the world do not expect global businesses to be based in Singapore and that they tend to prioritize businesses that have a Southeast Asian focus, “This perception is one we had to work around when on the lookout for funding.”.
Building upon this, Arne expressed that the funding round from AngelCentral was instrumental in helping establish and broaden Parcel Perform’s initial supporter base, which aided in providing a more comfortable environment for other angel investors to invest in Parcel Perform.
“We appreciated the thorough due diligence processes and vetting AngelCentral has done for Parcel Perform as it gave us the credibility we needed while continuing to raise funds in subsequent rounds.”
2020 going forward
Having recently expanded Parcel Perform’s services to European markets, Arne advises future entrepreneurs against entering another market without existing first customers from that market.
“When entering another market, regardless of whether it is familiar or unfamiliar, a business needs to go all in.” He believes that these existing customers would be able to provide valuable information on how to customize any future approach which would appeal to new customers, along with the unique issues that the product can help to address.
“New customers will be more comfortable doing business with you if you already have existing customers there. Do not be half-hearted in your approach, because that is the best recipe for failure. Instead, do your best to commit time, money and resources on the ground to make it work.”
