U.S. Couriers by Twitter Sentiment

With 76% of adult Americans shopping online and Christmas around the corner, people will be shopping more online in the lead-up. With the increase in online shopping there becomes an increase in demand for delivery couriers, but which courier is the least reliable?

At US Packaging & Wrapping we analyzed over 7.6k Tweets from 5 major couriers to find out who had the most complaints, and what the main complaints were.

Out of the five couriers analyzed the average percentage of tweets with negative sentiment is 42%, at 3.1k tweets out of the 7.6k analyzed. The percentage of positive tweets overall is 29% or 2.2k tweets. There is also neutral sentiment at 8% overall and tweets with no sentiment at 21% overall. From the couriers analyzed, none had a higher percentage of positive mentions compared to negative ones.

The company with the highest percentage of negative Tweets is Lasership, with 176 of 249 tweets analyzed having a negative sentiment. They also have the lowest percentage of positive tweets at just 11%.

In joint second for the highest percentage of negative tweets, we have FedEx and UPS with 42%. For FedEx, this was 1.1k tweets with negative sentiment and for UPS it was 1.3k tweets. FedEx has a higher percentage of positive than UPS Tweets at 31%, with UPS having more tweets with no sentiment at 20%.

Third, we have DHL with 41% of tweets having a negative sentiment, with 59 out of the 145 tweets analyzed. The percentage of tweets with positive sentiment is 26%, the second lowest on our table after Lasership.

Finally, the courier with the lowest percentage of negative tweets is USPS at 36%, or 692 tweets out of the 1.9k analyzed. USPS has the second-highest percentage of positive tweets at 30% and the highest percentage of tweets with no sentiment at 21%.

Packaging Courier With the Worst Drivers

When using a courier service it’s important that the employees driving for delivery companies are going to deliver your packages correctly, for example ringing the doorbell. The company with the highest percentage of complaints about drivers is DHL, with 12% of their negative tweets mentioning ‘drivers’. The overall percentage of negative tweets mentioning drivers across the couriers is 8%, 4% lower than the percentage for DHL.

Packaging Courier With the Worst Customer Service

Sometimes packages are lost, down to no fault of the courier. When this happens it’s important the courier has adequate customer service, a helpful voice on the end of the line who answers your queries and tries to help you get your package back. The courier with the highest percentage of negative tweets is DHL with 20% of tweets mentioning poor customer service. The average percentage across all couriers is 18%, the highest percentage of all complaints analyzed.

Packaging Courier Who Has the Worst Package Tracking

Tracking your package is important, as knowing where in the delivery chain your package is and giving accurate delivery estimates. Once again, the courier with the highest percentage of negative mentions is DHL with 8%. This is far higher than the average across all couriers at 3%.

Packaging Courier With the Latest Deliveries

Similarly to package tracking, when delivery estimates are incorrect it can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you have to make special arrangements to be home. The company with the highest percentage of tweets that mention late deliveries is FedEx at 7%, this is only slightly higher than the industry standard of 5%.

Packaging Courier Most Likely to Lose Your Package

Is there anything more frustrating than excitedly waiting for a package to arrive, only for it to never turn up? The couriers most likely to lose your package are UPS, USPS, and DHL, all with 7% of their negative tweets mentioning the package being lost. This is only slightly higher than the average of 6% of negative tweet mentions.

Courier Most Likely to Get Your Package Stolen

Having anything stolen is never a nice feeling, especially when it’s down to the negligence of someone else. The couriers who received the most mentions of stolen packages in negative tweets are FedEx and DHL at 3%. The remaining couriers all had 2% of their negative tweets mentioning stolen packages.

Courier Most Likely to Damage Your Package

Whilst there are measures sellers make to ensure a product is delivered in one piece, sometimes couriers can be rather heavy-handed. The worst offender for damaging packages, according to our research, is UPS with 4% of their negative tweets mentioning damaged packages. This is just above the average at 3% of negative tweets mentioning damaged packages.

How Do Positive Tweets Compare?

We decided to compare the percentage of positive mentions for customer service and drivers in the tweets as these were the two areas with the highest percentage of mentions in negative tweets. The courier with the best drivers according to their positive tweets is UPS with 7% of mentions, this is only slightly lower than the negative counterpart at 9%. The average percentage of positive mentions is 5%, 3% lower than the number of mentions in negative tweets. The courier with the best customer service experience is also UPS, with 10% of their positive tweets mentioning customer service. This is twice the overall average of 5%, and only 4% behind the number of mentions in negative tweets for UPS at 14%.

Overall

There is no definitive ‘worst’ delivery courier, all couriers aren’t without their faults, whether that be bad customer service or not looking after packages properly. Across all the couriers analyzed there are more negative mentions compared to positive ones, with complaints about customer service, drivers, and lost packages seeing the highest percentages across all tweets analyzed.

Methodology

Using a custom API 7.6k tweets were scraped from the Twitter handles of 5 US of the most popular couriers. MeaningCloud was then used to analyze all tweets and give sentiment data.