1ST Edition

1
1ST Edition

September 15th, 2008

DHL Global Forwarding Latin America
We are glad to release the 1st Edition of FIRST
NEWS. Find out what are we doing with the
customer-satisfactions results, what First Choice
is and more!

• FIRST CHOICE And what is it?
• Many of you might have asked yourselves what is
  the purpose of filling out a customer-satisfaction
  survey if we do not see the results? What has
  DGF done with our responses? What is Fist Choice?
  Well, here we give you the answers.

First News Get to know First Choice through
First News! Through First News, we aim to share
with you what First Choice is, our main
objectives, how it gets developed and finally and
most importantly, how it directly benefits you in
your day to day logistics processes.
Improvement Initiative Standard Customer Report
for Air Ocean Shipments In the 2007
customer-satisfaction survey you rated us as
average on reporting related to Air Ocean
Shipments. Find out what we are doing to improve
this process and provide you with what you need
on air ocean shipments reports.
Improvement Initiative Standard Customer Report
Customs Clearance The results also revealed you
were not quite content with our DGF Brokerage
report, and in particular with the Follow Net
system. Find out how we have fixed our brokerage
report so that we could provide you will full
visibility on this process.
Improvement Initiative Complaint Handling
Workflow Design, Management Control But we not
only work on improving reports Exploring more
results of the same survey, we found out that you
perceived us as below good when it came to
complaint handling. Get to know what processes
have been put in place and what we are doing to
do things better!
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1ST Edition

September 15th, 2008

DHL Global Forwarding Latin America

• Dear Customer,
• Since 2007, there has been a sense of change
  embedded in the roots of DHL Global Forwarding
  and the entire DPWN group. This change has been
  injected by First Choice.
• But what is First Choice? First Choice is the
  single largest consolidated service and
  customerfocused initiative launched by the DPWN
  aimed at transforming the way we do business. It
  will enable us to consistently deliver a superior
  service experience to our customers so that we
  can become and remain your first choice!
• In other words, First Choice is a systematic and
  sustainable approach to enhance our service
  delivery processes and increase customer
  satisfaction.

It is comprised of a set of tools and practices
adopted from Six Sigma and Lean - in particular
the DMAIC methodology, which has been tailored to
meet the special needs of the service sector.
This specific methodology will set us apart by
allowing us to improve in a structured and
disciplined way. First Choice is about gearing
all of our people and processes towards
consistently delivering great service, delighting
our customers and allowing us to create real
value so that you can focus on your core
business. Thousands of customers are already
benefiting from the improvements in service and
work processes made possible by First Choice!
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1ST Edition

September 15th, 2008

DHL Global Forwarding Latin America
Through First News, we aim to share with you, our
customer, what First Choice is, our main
objectives, how it gets developed and finally and
most importantly, how it directly benefits you in
your day to day logistics processes. First News
will show you twice a year what we have done with
the customersatisfaction survey results, what
initiatives have started as a result of your
comments and how those have had a direct impact
on your own operations.
More than 160 customersatisfaction surveys have
been conducted all over the world, 14 of them in
Latin America, which have clearly revealed the
expectations that our customers place on us. With
the information you helped us gather, we have
been able to measure current customer perception
and satisfaction levels, which allowed us to
define, measure and improve upon existing
processes. With First Choice, our aim is to
delight our customers at every point of
interaction and deliver significant added value
to your business.
Thank you for sharing this change with us.
Thank you for making us your First Choice!
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1ST Edition

September 15th, 2008

DHL Global Forwarding Latin America
DHL Global Forwarding Brazil Develops
Initiatives to Benefit You!
"XM tool gave us more visibility on tracking
shipments and comfort in order to select time and
hour to receive reports. We notice reports are
more accurate and received at the right time of
day stated a DGF BR customer. Initiative
Customer Reporting Standard Customer Report for
Air Ocean Shipments The results of the January
2007 customer-satisfaction survey revealed that
our customers were not very content with our air
and ocean shipments reporting. Customers gave us
an average rating. Digging down on the
results, we found out that aspects such as
accuracy of data and timeliness were the most
criticized ones in both air and ocean shipments.
Specifically in the main branches, Sao Paulo,
Santos and Campinas.
At DGF we are not content with being just
average. We are world class and our objective is
to be your First Choice! So we started an
Improvement Initiative to overcome these
problems. The objective of this First Choice
Customer Reporting Initiative was to improve your
satisfaction level. We aimed to reduce any
internal manual work to produce these
reports. Throughout the improvement initiative,
we identified reports that were manually
produced, many of them differed in content and
layout...
Our First Choice initiative team concluded that
our corporate tool (XM) was able to cover the
reporting needs of our customers. We established
different specifications to adjust this tool to
our pool of small, medium and large customers so
that we could better match each of their specific
needs. We executed pilots with some of our
customers to assess the effectiveness of our
solution. We received positive feedback
validating it. We now really satisfy our
customers reporting needs in an accurate and
timely fashion. The reports are in the process of
being deployed to all remaining customers. During
the last 9 months, manual reports have been
decreased by 18 and accuracy has increased by
12. Our target is to reduce manual reports by
50 by the end of December 2008.
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1ST Edition

September 15th, 2008

DHL Global Forwarding Latin America
DHL Global Forwarding Brazil Develops
Initiatives to Benefit You!
After the cleaning process and evaluation of the
mandatory fields in the Follow Net System, we can
definitely see that Follow Net is more accurate
and friendly explained a DGF BR
customer. Initiative Customer Reporting
Standard Customer Report for Customs
Clearance Another point of improvement on
reporting was detected. This time on customs
clearance reports. The information provided to
our customers by the DGF brokerage report was not
always accurate, up-to-date and sometimes it
missed relevant information. No wonder our
customers gave us a low satisfaction level in
this specific point. But this was not only
affecting our customers, it was also affecting our
internal productivity as our customers preferred
to call or email our staff as opposed to using
this system that would not give them what they
needed. You might very well know this system -
Follow Net - which is supposed to give you
visibility of brokerage status on each shipment.
The First Choice team at DGF Brazil developed an
improvement initiative to make this system work
as it is supposed to and give you the information
you need from it. The First Choice team at DGF
Brazil analyzed the reports at hand. It
identified which information our customers want
to see, the existent fields, fields not used by
our staff and also identified what information
these reports were missing. The group identified
that more than 50 of the existing fields did not
add value to the customer or to the DGF operation!
Based on this information, the First Choice team
made a lean process in the system, only leaving
relevant and mandatory check points that show the
exact status of the processes for our customers.
Not only did we adjust the system, but we also
trained the whole team on how and when to make
inputs in it, clarifying their impact on the
final consumer our customers. Now we are
providing information on time, with quality and
consistent data, achieving our main goal for
our customers to have full visibility of the
customs clearance process through Follow Net.
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1ST Edition

September 15th, 2008

DHL Global Forwarding Latin America
DHL Global Forwarding Brazil Develops
Initiatives to Benefit You!
First Choice is about better understanding what
causes pain to our customers Cristina Bishop,
Air Freight Director, DGF Brazil. Initiative
Complaint Handling Workflow Design, Management
Control The results of the customer survey run
in January 2007 revealed that our customers were
not completely satisfied with our complaint
handling. We received a below good rating. More
than 70 of complaint answers were late and about
20 of the answers lacked quality. After deep
diving on the results, we concluded that the main
points affecting this touchpoint were
Solving problems quickly, providing intermediate
update and the length of time to provide a
satisfactory solution. The First Choice Team at
DGF Brazil pursued an improvement initiative with
the objective of improving the complaint handling
workflow design, manage and control it to
delivery consistent outputs. We identified that
our customers usually do not know who to approach
within our organization once we have been
selected as the logistics provider. A Welcome
Letter was created to do exactly that, advise
our customers about our structure and who to go
to when issues arise. This letter has been sent
to all new customers. Our employees were also
fully trained so that they can effectively act
upon customer complaints and effectively use the
CARE system a system created to manage all
customer complaints.
A complete procedure for complaint was developed,
including target times for response to customers,
escalation procedures and CARE complaint
registration procedures. This procedure is being
currently run in Sao Paulo. It was initially
being monitored on a weekly basis and it is now
being monitored twice a day to make sure that
timeliness and accuracy goals are met. The
program will soon be applied to the whole
country. So far now, the percentage of late
responses has been reduced by 44 and the
percentage of reports lacking quality has been
reduced by 36!