BackIf your parcel has gone missing, the successful delivery of a billion others is unlikely to improve your mood.
That is the problem with answering a complaint through statistics. The chief executive sees the scale of the operation. The customer sees an empty doorstep. The figures offer little reassurance to someone still waiting for a delivery.
This week on BBC Radio 4’s When It Hits the Fan, David Yelland and I discussed Evri, Tom Watson’s role at Palantir and the arguments over Jeffrey Archer’s legacy. Each story raises a question about whose opinion can influence what happens next.
Evri: the customer rarely chooses
Evri Group says it now delivers more than a billion parcels annually. Chief executive Martijn de Lange has defended its performance, telling The Times that 99 per cent of its 48-hour deliveries arrive on time.
Ofcom’s 2025 research measures something different. Among customers who contacted Evri about a delivery issue, 41% were dissatisfied with the contact process and 31% were satisfied.
The delivery rate tells us little about how effectively Evri helps customers when something goes wrong. A company can deliver an enormous number of parcels successfully and still leave people frustrated when they need help.
For the customer, the missing parcel may be the beginning of the problem. The lasting resentment comes from trying to get an answer. Handling a failure gives a business an opportunity to demonstrate that someone is taking responsibility. A difficult complaints process can turn an operational mistake into a judgement about the whole company.
I belong to dozens of WhatsApp groups, where recommendations from people we know can carry more weight than a corporate reassurance. We know the person telling us what happened, and we can ask them questions. Their account is likely to stay with us longer than a delivery statistic.
Complaints may be circulating in private groups without appearing in the company’s monitoring. Communications teams can therefore underestimate the frustration simply because they cannot see it.
Yet the customer waiting for the parcel usually did not choose Evri. The retailer did. Retailers assess price, capacity and performance across many deliveries. Customers assess what happened to theirs. That separation helps explain why public frustration and commercial growth can coexist.
But retailers have their own reputations to protect. If delivery complaints create enough customer-service work, refunds or lost repeat business, the customer’s frustration becomes the retailer’s commercial problem. At that point, complaints can begin to change purchasing decisions.
Evri’s growth tells us that the business is meeting important needs for retailers. It does not settle the question of whether customers receive enough help when a delivery fails.
Palantir: public concern can reach the purchaser
Palantir also sells primarily to organisations rather than individuals. Where its customers are public bodies, the people affected can exert pressure through their elected representatives.
Tom Watson, Labour’s former deputy leader, has become a senior vice-president at the company after previously advising it. Palantir holds substantial UK public-sector contracts, including work with the NHS and Ministry of Defence, and faces criticism over privacy, accountability and its work with military and security organisations.
Political experience can help a company understand how government works. It also creates questions about the boundaries between public service, political relationships and commercial advantage. The company needs to explain what the person has been hired to do and how those boundaries will be maintained.
Once a contract is awarded, the questions about data, oversight and accountability continue. Public bodies must be able to explain what the technology does, how its use is governed, who is responsible and what happens if something goes wrong.
Most citizens cannot choose the software their public services use. They can, however, raise concerns with MPs, support campaigns and demand scrutiny. Ministers and public bodies must then answer questions that a private purchaser may never face.
A company can satisfy the officials buying its services and still face opposition from the people affected by them. Communications advisers need to account for that opposition because it can influence the political conditions in which contracts are renewed, expanded or reviewed.
Jeffrey Archer: a legacy has many authors
Jeffrey Archer’s death brought tributes to his publishing success alongside renewed attention to his controversial past, including his 2001 convictions for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
The familiar discomfort followed: how should a public life be discussed while a family is grieving?
Obituaries need to acknowledge the convictions as well as the publishing success, while treating the grieving family with care. The first accounts published after a death can become the foundation for how later generations understand someone.
Memoirs, archives and foundations can preserve a person’s work and perspective. They cannot secure agreement about its meaning. Critics, colleagues, readers and historians bring their own evidence and experiences, including events the individual might have preferred to leave out.
For writers and artists, these judgements may also have commercial consequences. Their work continues to circulate, and estates make decisions about publication, licensing and adaptation. An audience can value the work while remaining troubled by its creator.
The scope for managing a legacy is therefore limited. Preserving someone’s account gives future readers material to consider; it does not oblige them to accept that account.
Across these stories, the strength of feeling is only part of the assessment. Advisers need to understand who can turn dissatisfaction into a lost contract, parliamentary scrutiny or a lasting reassessment of someone’s life.
Originally featured in Substack
