Skip to main content
Metrics type: Supporting MetricsCategory: Delivery Performance

At a glance

Share of Deutsche Post / DHL Paket consignments delivered on the carrier’s first delivery attempt, rather than re-routed to a Packstation locker, redirected to a Postfiliale (Post Office) branch for pickup, or carded for a second attempt. On the German national network this runs high because the Packstation locker estate (over 12,000 sites) and Filiale handover absorb most “recipient absent” events as successful first contact. A reading below the 85 percent alert floor points to a postcode cluster with poor home-delivery success or a service-mix that is leaning too hard on home delivery where lockers would land first time.

What it tracks

First-attempt success is the cleanest single proxy for “did the network deliver without friction”. Each re-attempt, Packstation re-route, or Filiale redirect adds a day of transit, a tracking-event the customer has to interpret, and a measurable lift in “where is my order” contacts. The metric counts a Packstation deposit or a Filiale handover as a successful first attempt because, on the German market, those are the recipient’s chosen delivery point and not a failure. A genuine miss is a recipient_absent or delivery_attempted event that precedes the eventual delivery. Below 85 percent, look first at OTD by Route to find the postcode clusters dragging the rate, then at Failed Deliveries and Exception Rate to separate “absent recipient” from “bad address data”. A structural fix is often a checkout nudge towards Packstation for the affected postcodes.

Reconciling against the source

Reconcile against the DHL Geschäftskundenportal (Business Customer Portal) delivery-performance view, or the per-parcel event history in DHL’s tracking portal, filtered to Inland, last 30 days, outbound only. Expect small differences from tracking-event ingestion latency (scans arrive in batches) and because scan timestamps are recorded in carrier-local time (CET / CEST) while the card stores in UTC, so boundary-day parcels can shift between days. The portal may also count a Packstation deposit differently from this card; confirm the definition before treating a gap as real.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

First-Attempt Delivery Rate is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Deutsche Post and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.