I don’t think most small business owners give much thought to how a courier can impact the impression customers have of their business. I didn’t—until a customer made me.

In the early days we used a courier company for local deliveries within about a 150-kilometre radius of one of our warehouses. Each day they’d pick up our parcels in a van and take them back to their warehouse, where they’d be sorted by route and placed on the appropriate van and then delivered the next day. What more could you want from a courier service? Well, there was something that hadn’t crossed my mind until I received a phone call from the owner of one of our bigger customers.