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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Shipping & Courier

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At a glance

Share of Net Dispatch-routed parcels that received a UK carrier exception scan in transit. Net Dispatch normalises Royal Mail, DPD, Evri, Yodel exception event codes into a unified taxonomy. Leading indicator for late deliveries.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your NetDispatch data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A UK DTC fashion merchant via Net Dispatch. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 30 days vs the prior 30 days. The card reads 5.8% with sentiment red (above warn=3); alert tripped. Five things to notice:
  1. Address-issue rate climbing 0.5 ppt is the headline. Investigation: the merchant launched a new mobile-checkout flow in late February that doesn’t validate UK postcodes against Royal Mail’s PAF (Postcode Address File). Fix: integrate Loqate or AddressFinder for UK address validation at checkout. Expected drop: 0.4 to 0.7 ppt within 2 weeks.
  2. Recipient-absent at 2.5% is normal for UK urban DTC. UK households (especially flats) are typically empty during business hours; “delivery attempted” is irreducible to ~2% for non-safe-place merchants. Mitigation: enable safe-place options at checkout (porch, neighbour, parcel locker) which Net Dispatch can pass through to most carriers.
  3. Held at depot at 1.0% is part of the UK pattern. “Held at depot for collection” is common when delivery attempt fails and recipient hasn’t arranged redelivery. The recipient must collect within 7-18 days (carrier-dependent) or the parcel returns to sender.
  4. Failed collection at 0.2% indicates merchant-side issue. 28 shipments where Evri/Yodel drivers failed to pick up from the merchant’s warehouse on schedule. Investigate with Net Dispatch CSM; usually traces to specific driver routes or unreliable pickup windows.
  5. The 952 exceptions in 30 days will produce roughly 480-670 late deliveries downstream. This card is the early-warning signal for the on-time number.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Net Dispatch’s own dashboard: Net Dispatch Dashboard → Tracking → Filter by status: Exception. Lists shipments with active or recent exception events, per type. The card aggregates; the dashboard supports row-level triage. Why our number may legitimately differ from Net Dispatch’s portal: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

How do I cut UK address-issue exceptions? Integrate Royal Mail PAF-backed address-validation at checkout (Loqate, AddressFinder, Crafty Clicks, GetAddress). UK addresses are postcode-driven; the validator rejects undeliverable postcodes and standardises flat numbers. Reduces address-issue rate by 50-70% within a billing period. Why is “Held at depot” so prevalent in UK? UK households (especially flats and apartments in London, Manchester, Birmingham) often have no safe drop-off, no porch, no neighbour relationship. Carriers attempt delivery, fail, hold at depot. Recipient must collect or arrange redelivery within 7-18 days. Mitigation: enable safe-place options at checkout; offer parcel-locker or collection-point delivery (especially Royal Mail Click & Collect, DPD Pickup). What’s “Failed collection”? Net Dispatch-specific exception: the carrier driver was scheduled to collect from the merchant’s warehouse but didn’t arrive on the scheduled day. Common with rural Evri/Yodel pickups. Mitigation: switch to a more reliable pickup carrier or use a daily collection window with Royal Mail. Should I switch from Evri to Royal Mail to reduce exceptions? For high-AOV or fragile-goods merchants, often yes. Evri’s exception rate runs 1.5-2x Royal Mail’s for similar parcel mix. The cost saving from Evri (typically £1-2/parcel) needs to be weighed against CS workload and customer-experience impact. My exception rate jumped 1 ppt overnight. What happened? Three usual causes. (1) UK winter weather, named storms (UK Met Office names them since 2015) cause widespread weather-disruption exceptions for 2-5 days. (2) Carrier-specific issue, check Net Dispatch dashboard for carrier health alerts. (3) Checkout-flow change, address-issue spike often traces to a recent integration update. During Royal Mail strikes, do all the affected shipments count as exceptions? Carrier-dependent. Royal Mail typically does NOT post explicit “service suspended due to industrial action” exception scans for most shipments; they just hold them. The card may not catch the strike directly via exceptions; you’ll see it in On-Time Delivery Rate instead. Net Dispatch CSM can configure a strike-day exclusion if needed. A parcel showed an exception but ultimately delivered on time. Why does it count? Exceptions are events; delivery is the outcome. Many exceptions resolve on next-day attempt and deliver within service-standard window. The card counts events because they’re predictive of customer-experience risk. Q4 effect? UK Q4 (mid-November to 24 Dec) typically sees 1.5-3x normal exception rate. Drivers: increased volume strain, holiday-travel recipients, weather (named storms common in November-January), gift-shipping address-quality issues from hand-keyed data.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Exception Rate is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across NetDispatch 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.