At a glance
Share of Interlink Express consignments delivered on or before the contracted service-day promise. Interlink Express is the DPD-group premium-tier UK courier, sister-brand to DPD UK, with the same predicted-delivery-window infrastructure and a slightly more B2B-leaning service portfolio (Pre10:30, Pre12, Next-Day, 2-Day, Saturday). The card scores every delivered consignment 0 or 1 against its own service-tier promise.
| What it counts | COUNT(shipments WHERE actual_delivery_datetime <= promised_delivery_datetime AND status = 'DELIVERED') / COUNT(shipments WHERE status IN ('DELIVERED','FAILED')) over rolling 30 days. Each consignment judged against its tier’s promise. |
| Delivery success criterion | Driver POD scan or signature-on-glass captured at the doorstep, returned via Interlink’s tracking webhook. Carded “Sorry we missed you” without subsequent same-day delivery is not on-time. |
| On-time threshold | Service-tier-specific. Pre10:30 = before 10:30, Pre12 = before 12:00, Next-Day = end-of-day next working day, 2-Day = end-of-day day-2, Saturday = end-of-day Saturday (uplift purchased). Interlink also offers a “predicted 1-hour delivery window” SLA on premium tiers, inherited from the DPD-group platform. |
| Returns / RTO | RTOs excluded (tracked on int_returned_to_sender). Failed-and-redelivered consignments score against the first successful POD; an Express-tier consignment delivering on day 2 of a Pre10:30 promise is late. |
| Service level scope | All services pooled. The dedicated interlink_pre10_30_sla and interlink_pre12_sla cards split out the contracted premium tiers; this card is the all-services aggregate. |
| Money-back-on-late | Interlink offers carriage-charge refund on Pre10:30 / Pre12 service failures where Interlink was at fault. Filing window is typically 14 days from failed POD (tighter than Parcelforce’s 30 days). The card surfaces candidates; pair with int_open_claims. |
| B2B vs B2C | Pooled. Interlink’s portfolio leans B2B-heavy (Pre10:30 and Pre12 are corporate-IT and B2B reseller staples); B2C uses Next-Day. The same five-minute slip is critical for a B2B audience and immaterial for a Saturday consumer; the rate treats them identically. |
| DPD-group relationship | Interlink is the DPD UK premium tier brand (per DPD group), separate from DPD’s standard service. Some merchants run a single account; the card tracks consignments under the connected Interlink credentials only. DPD-account consignments live on the dedicated DPD connector. |
| Currency | N/A (rate metric) |
| Time window | 30D vsP (rolling 30 days, period-over-period) |
| Alert trigger | <95% warns, <90% critical. Interlink’s published Pre10:30 SLA is ~98%; Next-Day SLA is ~96 to 97%. A premium-paid merchant should expect 95%+ aggregate. |
| Roles | owner, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Interlink Express data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK B2B-and-DTC pharmaceuticals merchant: medical-supply DTC consumers and a corporate B2B channel selling to clinics, pharmacies, and care-homes that need stock pre-shift. Interlink Pre10:30 is the B2B contract carrier; Next-Day is the DTC consumer service. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 02 Apr 26 for the trailing 30 days (02 Mar 26 to 01 Apr 26).| Service | Consignments | Delivered on or before promise | OTD% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre10:30 (B2B clinics) | 1,140 | 1,117 | 98.0% |
| Pre12 (B2B mixed) | 380 | 372 | 97.9% |
| Next-Day (DTC consumer) | 2,860 | 2,743 | 95.9% |
| 2-Day (bulk DTC) | 220 | 213 | 96.8% |
| Saturday-uplift Next-Day | 95 | 92 | 96.8% |
| Total (this card) | 4,695 | 4,537 | 96.6% |
- The Pre10:30 cohort is exactly on Interlink’s published 98% SLA. B2B clinics are receiving consignments before 10:30am as contracted. Twenty-three misses across 30 days is the recoverable carriage-refund cohort; pair with
int_open_claimsand file within Interlink’s 14-day filing window. - Next-Day at 95.9% is the cohort dragging the headline. DTC consumer Next-Day misses are the customer-experience problem; 117 missed Next-Day consignments translate into 117+ customer-service contacts at minimum. Compare against the matching DPD-group Next-Day SLA (~97%) to see if Interlink is underperforming its sister-brand on the same network.
- B2B contract penalty exposure is real. Each missed Pre10:30 to a clinic may have a contractual penalty per the merchant-clinic supply agreement (typical penalty £25 to £100 per missed delivery on care-home accounts where staff cannot stock medication on time). Twenty-three misses × £50 average penalty = £1,150 of B2B-customer financial exposure on top of the £200 carriage refund opportunity.
- Compare against the 14-day filing window discipline. Interlink’s filing window is 14 days from failed POD, half Parcelforce’s 30 days. Most ops teams accustomed to Parcelforce’s window file too late on Interlink and lose carriage refund eligibility. Cadence-discipline matters more on Interlink.
- Saturday-uplift cohort runs at 96.8%, comparable to standard Next-Day. Saturday-uplift converts some Friday-cohort consignments to weekend delivery successfully; consider whether the £4 to £6 uplift is justifying the recovery relative to dropping the consignment to standard Next-Day for Monday delivery.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
On-time delivery is the customer-facing outcome metric. Pair it with these to diagnose root cause:| Card | Why pair it with On-Time Delivery Rate | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-10:30 Service Promise | The most-stringent Interlink contracted tier. B2B exposure concentrates here. | Pre10:30 SLA dip = corporate-customer contract-penalty risk. The aggregate may still look fine. |
| Pre-12 Service Promise | Mid-tier B2B promise; also contractual on many corporate accounts. | Pre12 dips correlate with Pre10:30 dips (same network, looser deadline). |
| Late Shipments | The absolute-count companion to OTD%. | Counts trigger CS-team capacity decisions; rates trigger account-team conversations. |
| Open Claims | Each carrier-fault miss is a service-failure-refund candidate. Interlink’s 14-day filing window is tight. | Filing rate vs miss rate = recovery efficiency. |
| Avg Shipping Cost | The spend-to-service ratio. Interlink’s premium tier is more expensive than DPD-standard; the OTD lift should justify it. | Cost up + OTD flat = renegotiate. |
| Interlink OTD by Sales Channel | Cross-channel split. Identifies which sales surface is suffering most. | One-channel concentration = single-cohort fix. |
| OTD by Route | Splits by Interlink depot-and-route network. | One-route drops are an account-team conversation. |
Cross-connector: shopify.fulfillment_lead_time | Upstream causation. Late Shopify fulfilment misses Interlink’s same-day collection cutoff. | A creep in Shopify lead time predicts Interlink OTD dip 2 to 4 days later. |
Cross-connector: bigcommerce.unfulfilled_orders | Same as Shopify upstream. | Same caveat. |
Cross-connector: apc.apc_otd_rate | Peer UK premium overnight. Direct competitor. | Comparable cohort sizes, useful for shop-around. |
Cross-connector: parcelforce.par_otd_rate | Peer UK premium. Royal Mail-group competitor to Interlink (DPD-group). | Different networks, different SLA definitions. Calibrate before benchmarking. |
Cross-connector: dpd.dpd_otd_rate | Sister-brand standard tier. Same DPD-group network, looser SLA. | If DPD standard runs higher than Interlink premium, the merchant may be paying for a tier that does not justify itself. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Interlink Express’s own dashboard: Interlink Express MyDPD Business → Reports → Service Performance. Filter by All services / All depots / Last 30 days. The closest like-for-like view is the On-Time Delivery KPI tile. Interlink shares the DPD-group portal infrastructure; many merchants find their Interlink data inside MyDPD Business under an Interlink-tagged account. Why our number may legitimately differ from Interlink’s portal:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Time zone | Boundary | UK local time on both sides. DST-transition Sundays cause minor noise. |
| Predicted-window vs end-of-day | Either | Interlink/DPD portals sometimes default to “delivered within predicted 1-hour window” SLA, which is structurally easier than “delivered by end of working day”. The card uses the contracted service-tier promise (Pre10:30, Pre12, end-of-Next-Day) for cleanliness. |
| Refund-eligible vs all-late | Ours lower | Interlink’s account-team often quote a service-failure rate that excludes customer-fault, address-fault. The card’s denominator is all delivered consignments and the numerator counts on-time-against-promise. |
| In-transit consignments | Ours rolling | Consignments without final POD excluded from numerator and denominator until scan lands. Portal may include in-transit. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
shopify.fulfillment_lead_time | Upstream. Late fulfilment misses collection cutoff. | App-install events, manual overrides. |
dpd.dpd_otd_rate | Sister-brand. Same network, looser SLA. | Different consignments, different service tiers. |
parcelforce.par_otd_rate | Peer UK premium. | Different network. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why is Interlink’s filing window 14 days, not 30 like Parcelforce? Interlink (and DPD-group generally) operates on a tighter ops cadence with faster claim-resolution as the trade-off. The 14-day filing discipline forces merchants to file within two weekly review cycles; miss that and the carriage refund is forfeited. Most ops teams transitioning from Parcelforce under-file Interlink because the Parcelforce 30-day muscle memory is wrong. Pre10:30 SLA is 98% but our number is 96%; is this the merchant or the carrier? Most likely a depot-and-route issue. Pre10:30 requires Interlink’s first-light depot capacity; if your local depot is straining, Pre10:30 takes the hit. Pair withint_route_otd to identify a single underperforming depot. Account-team conversation. If the depot looks healthy, look at merchant-side dispatch cutoff: are you handing consignments to Interlink before their pre-dispatch cutoff?
B2B clinics expect Pre10:30 for medication; what is the contract-penalty exposure?
Care-home and clinic supply contracts typically include penalties of £25 to £100 per missed delivery where staff cannot stock medication on shift. A 2% Pre10:30 miss rate on 1,000 monthly consignments is 20 misses × £50 average penalty = £1,000 of B2B-customer financial exposure on top of the £200 of carriage-refund opportunity. Track Pre10:30 separately and report the penalty exposure to finance monthly.
Predicted-window SLA vs end-of-day SLA: which does Interlink contract us against?
Both, depending on the service tier. Pre10:30 / Pre12 are time-definite (cutoff-time-on-promised-day); Next-Day is end-of-day next working day. The DPD-group “predicted 1-hour window” is a customer-perception layer, not a contractual SLA, on most accounts. Check your Interlink contract to confirm which definition the carrier promises you specifically.
Why does Interlink show the parcel as “delivered on time” but the customer says it was late?
End-of-day vs customer-expectation. Next-Day’s promise is “by end of working day”; a 19:30 delivery is on-time by Interlink’s contract and late by customer expectation. Pair with checkout copy: communicate “by end of next working day” not “tomorrow morning” to align customer mental model with the contract.
Saturday delivery on Interlink: how does it work?
Saturday delivery is a paid-for upgrade on Next-Day. Interlink’s Saturday network is more limited than weekday (smaller crew, fewer routes), so OTD on Saturday-uplifted consignments tends to run slightly below weekday Next-Day. Pair with int_avg_shipping_cost to ensure the £4 to £6 Saturday uplift converts cost-effectively.
DPD-group brand: are Interlink and DPD UK the same carrier?
Same parent group (DPD), shared network infrastructure, separate brand and rate-card-tier. Interlink Express positions as the premium tier (Pre10:30, Pre12) while DPD UK is the standard / mid-tier. Some merchants run a single account that bills under DPD with Interlink-flagged premium consignments; others run separate accounts. The card tracks consignments under the connected Interlink credentials only.
Compared to Parcelforce, which is the better UK premium carrier?
Different jobs. Parcelforce’s network is larger and more rural-coverage; Interlink’s predicted-window infrastructure (inherited from DPD-group) gives slightly tighter customer experience on consumer DTC. For B2B Pre10:30, both perform comparably; for consumer 1-hour-window communication, Interlink/DPD is generally tighter. Many multi-carrier merchants run Parcelforce for rural and Interlink for urban DTC.
During Q4 peak, Interlink OTD typically dips 3 to 6 points; is that normal?
Yes for the full DPD-group network. Q4 saturation hits all premium carriers; Interlink’s larger automation footprint (sortation centres) holds up slightly better than smaller-network competitors but not by much. Read Q4 numbers in seasonal context. Adjust customer-comms (“Order by 18 Dec for delivery by 23 Dec”) and reset weekly-review expectations.
How do we negotiate our Interlink rate card?
Bring this card, interlink_pre10_30_sla (Pre10:30 SLA performance), int_avg_shipping_cost, and int_open_claims to the account-team review. Volume above ~£3K monthly with documented sub-95% aggregate or sub-98% Pre10:30 over 60+ days has the strongest negotiation position. Expect 5 to 12% rate-card improvement in exchange for service-recovery commitments or a longer-term volume contract.