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MSC most responsive carrier to e-bookings made in Americas

Liner carrier made responding to e-bookings a priority, as it has seen its customers shift from phone bookings to electronic platform, according to INTTRA research.

   Mediterranean Shipping Co. is the most responsive liner carrier to electronic booking requests made by parties in the Americas, according to research from the ocean freight e-commerce network INTTRA.
   INTTRA released its first set of e-booking responsiveness metrics in October across all bookings made through its network, which includes all of the world’s biggest container lines.
   INTTRA’s analysis on booking responsiveness, “Ocean Carrier Booking Responsiveness Analysis,” provides an exclusive benchmark measuring the amount of time it takes a shipper or third party logistics services provider to make a booking for container shipments with an ocean carrier.
   “MSC is delighted to be recognized as the leader in INTTRA’s e-booking responsiveness analysis,” said Claudio Bozzo, chief operating officer of MSC. “We know that fast response time to online booking is critical to our customers. It is at the core of MSC’s business strategy.”
   INTTRA’s first set of metrics found Maersk Line and its subsidiary brands dominating the list of top lines in terms of booking responsiveness.
  
“Those who already believed booking responsiveness was critical to their business, they love it, and it supports the direction the company believes is important,” Sandra Moran, chief marketing officer at INTTRA, told American Shipper. “MSC doubled down efforts to get into the top position.
   “Some of the carriers are not even in the place where they can identify that service is a differentiator,” she continued. “Some carriers cannot measure it themselves, but it’s caught the attention of senior leadership at virtually every line.”
   MSC said the shift to e-bookings from its customers has driven its focus on responding to electronic requests.
   “Our priority is to make sure customers can book in the way they prefer,” Andre Simha, chief information officer for MSC, told American Shipper. “That is why we have made both e-booking and phone bookings a priority. Certainly, in the last three years, we saw a big shift from phone bookings to e-bookings, and consequently, we focused on how to improve our response time and the overall customer experience.
   “For us every customer is important, and we want to make sure they are also for our customer service staff,” he continued. “Consequently, we did not prioritize [one type of shipper over another]. Actually, to say it in better words, we prioritized every customer. We standardized at the highest possible level, and that is what allowed us to reach the results we see today.”
   Simha said roughly 90 percent of MSC’s e-commerce transactions are processed through INTTRA. MSC was a founding member of INTTRA, prior to the solutions company’s transition to become a true multi-carrier platform, and its “e-commerce strategy was based on INTTRA’s capabilities since day one.”
   Moran stressed that service components like booking responsiveness “does make a difference to carriers winning business, but also to the workflow of the logistics professionals trying to get their cargo on the ship.
   “If this industry is going to transform,” she continued, “it has to look at what other industries have done. Other industries have done things to shift their customer channels to more efficient methods. Shippers still pick up the phone to make a booking because they get better service that way.”
   Among the things carriers must adapt to, Moran said, is the idea that customers want a similar experience across all channels.
   According to INTTRA research, the gap between the most responsive and least responsive is a few hours on average. That gap varies depending on trade lane, and it can vary widely by carriers in individual instances.
   For example, past anecdotal research by SeaIntel found some carriers took days to respond to an online booking request.
   Moran said the biggest barrier to better responsiveness is mostly carrier back-end limitations.
   “The real reason they can’t confirm instantly is because their business processes aren’t automated,” she said. “They’re going through a whole series of processes. They’re doing a whole bunch of manual processes on the back end. But they all are doing it to some extent — they’re getting there. Using technology as a customer service differentiator — it will come to this industry. That’s the last differentiation there is.”