The study comes from StellaService, a company that measures how the quality of customer service from a number of online retailers. Vice president of research for the company Kevon Hills said that this slowdown is a first for Amazon in a recent interview with Forbes.
“For a long time, Amazon has been the leader when it comes to fulfillment,” Hills said. “There are 40 companies on our list, and Amazon has always been in the top 10. This year, we’ve seen them fall outside of the top 10, which is the first time we’ve seen that happen.”
During Amazon’s most recent earnings call last week, it was revealed that while earnings fell slightly short of projections, Prime memberships were on the rise. Memberships worldwide grew by 51 percent, and in the U.S., memberships grew by 47 percent. Hills says that the company could be focusing too much on its membership program.
“They’re really blowing that program out,” Hills told Forbes. “But where we’ve seen a slowdown for them is packages [delivered] within four days, year over year and compared to the industry.” This falls outside the two-day shipping included with Prime memberships.
Of course, the blame here might not all fall on Amazon — shipping companies like UPS and FedEx could be at fault. The only problem with that is that other companies are actually getting orders to customers faster.
“Three years ago, if you delivered a package in four days, that was worthy of a top-10 consideration,” Hills said. “Now, if you deliver a package in four days, that puts you at 20. The industry is getting faster, and we’ve seen Amazon fall off a little bit.”
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