Chapter 1487 A Turning Point Brought by a Box of Apples

Lü Mingliang sighed with emotion after hanging up the phone.

He had expected President Pei to support him, but he hadn't imagined the extent of that support.

Not only to maintain the current loss target, but even to expand it further?

The question then became: how to expand?

The losses of Nifeng Logistics ultimately stemmed from the disproportionate ratio of input to output.

For each package delivered to Nifeng Station by Sheng Yun Express, Nifeng Logistics was responsible for door-to-door delivery. Nifeng Logistics might only receive a few cents for each such delivery, but the cost of door-to-door delivery was much higher.

Therefore, Nifeng Logistics actually lost more money the more deliveries they made.

Of course, this also earned them a great reputation and customer goodwill.

Now that they had completely broken ties with Sheng Yun Express, if they wanted to continue losing money, or even expand their losses, they naturally had to keep the entire Nifeng Logistics system running, delivering more goods to lose more money.

Where would the goods come from?

They could come from other small courier companies, and more importantly, from Nifeng Logistics' own courier business!

With President Pei's support, and money and resources in hand, Lü Mingliang became even bolder.

He immediately summoned all the key personnel, especially the key members in charge of business.

"I have some new tasks for you."

"First, contact the major shopping platforms, especially those that originally cooperated with Sheng Yun Express, have recently had a backlog of goods, and are being bombarded with negative reviews. See if we can replace Sheng Yun Express and establish a cooperative relationship with them, or at least provide customers with another logistics option besides Sheng Yun Express."

"Second, contact other small courier companies, reassure them, and tell them that this action is only aimed at Sheng Yun Express, that our cooperation will remain long-term, and that they can continue to promote 'Nifeng Station door-to-door delivery.'"

"Finally, we need to subsidize Nifeng Logistics' own courier business. We'll start with limited-time discounts to expand our business volume in the short term. Of course, the logistics and sorting links must also keep up. In addition to air freight between regions, land transportation must also be strengthened to ensure that cross-regional land transportation can also maintain a relatively fast speed."

Lü Mingliang strictly followed President Pei's instructions and launched a money-scattering campaign.

After all, this was a critical period of commercial competition, and the money was being scattered with good reason.

But he wasn't scattering it randomly, but very strategically. On the one hand, he was deepening cooperation with shopping platforms and merchants, and on the other hand, he was appeasing small courier companies so that the firepower could be concentrated on Sheng Yun Group. Ultimately, it was to promote Nifeng Logistics' own courier business.

Lü Mingliang knew that public opinion was only temporary, not permanent.

If they wanted to completely replace Sheng Yun Express, they had to quickly establish a more complete and efficient logistics system, and defeat Sheng Yun Express head-on with tangible service.

Moreover, subsidizing Nifeng Logistics' own courier business wasn't as expensive as he had imagined.

Because once Nifeng Logistics' own courier business took off, it would generate considerable profits!

Originally, the bulk of the profits from express delivery were being earned by Sheng Yun Express, so Nifeng Logistics had been losing money all along, unable to stop the bleeding.

But now, with Nifeng Logistics delivering its own packages, it could keep all the profits from the entire process. Although it was still losing money, these profits could actually stop the bleeding to some extent.

In other words, as long as Nifeng Logistics continued to maintain its current level of losses, it could continue this subsidy for a long time!

The key personnel nodded and immediately went to make arrangements.

Employees from the business and marketing departments immediately began to contact various shopping platforms, merchants, and other courier companies, striving to find more allies for Nifeng Logistics and isolate Sheng Yun Express.

As for Lü Mingliang, he continued to browse the web, waiting for Sheng Yun Express's counterattack.

Obviously, Sheng Yun Express wouldn't willingly give up the public opinion battlefield. Hiring online commentators hadn't worked for the time being, so they would definitely come up with other crooked ideas to shift the focus of the conflict.

Lü Mingliang didn't know what methods Sheng Yun Express would use, but it didn't matter. They would meet soldiers with generals and water with earth. In the area of public opinion warfare, Tengda would always be invincible.

...

...

February 22nd, Friday.

Sheng Yun Express headquarters.

Nie Yunsheng and a group of senior executives were a little overwhelmed.

Although they had taken a series of measures before, and had achieved some results, it was far from enough!

In particular, they wanted to pass the buck to Nifeng Station, but before Nifeng Station even came out to refute, they were exposed by the onlookers.

After being exposed, this behavior seemed a bit stupid, but there was nothing they could do. No matter how stupidly they shifted the blame, they couldn't not shift it. If they didn't shift the blame, this burden would fall on them, and they would never be able to get rid of it!

Being willing to take responsibility is a good quality, but most companies don't have it.

This directly led to the current public opinion situation being even worse than they had anticipated.

Nie Yunsheng originally thought that, according to his previous ideas, by working overtime to deliver packages and using online commentators to guide public opinion and appeal for everyone's understanding of Sheng Yun Express, this crisis should be able to be safely overcome.

But he didn't expect that public opinion not only didn't calm down, but instead showed a trend of intensifying!

In other words, they had to find a new breakthrough as soon as possible, otherwise, if this continued, even the online commentators they hired wouldn't be able to withstand it, and would be directly extinguished by the masses.

Just then, a vice president walked over quickly: "President Nie! Someone below reported a sudden situation that may be helpful to the current public opinion."

Nie Yunsheng reached out to take the report and found that it was about an incident that happened at a local branch in Shanghai, which had just been reported.

The cause was that a customer bought a box of apples online. There weren't many apples, but they were of good quality, large and round, with eight in a small box. As a result, when the customer received the apples, some of them were damaged, and one was missing.

This kind of thing wasn't particularly rare at Sheng Yun Express, and the recent tight logistics situation had greatly increased the possibility of this kind of thing happening.

Because Sheng Yun Express had just enough couriers in each link, whether it was in the sorting center or at the delivery branch. Basically, the number of couriers was the minimum number to maintain normal operation, after all, hiring one more person would mean paying one more salary.

Even if there were occasionally more packages, as long as the couriers worked overtime and delivered a little more diligently, they could get through it.

Giving couriers some overtime pay was always more cost-effective than hiring more people.

However, this time, Nifeng Station suddenly cut off the delivery terminal, which caused a chain reaction in Sheng Yun Express's entire delivery chain.

At the branch, even hiring temporary workers was still not enough to meet the demand for package delivery. All the couriers were sent out to deliver packages, so the manpower for unloading goods at the logistics center, sorting center, and branch would naturally decrease. With fewer people, in order to ensure efficiency, they could only choose violent sorting.

And once violent sorting was used, it was easy to cause damage to the outer packaging, loss of packages, and damage, etc.

A box of apples was already heavy, and it was impossible to wrap it as tightly as electronic products with layers of packaging. In the case of violent sorting, it was normal for the box to be damaged, for apples to be lost, and for apples to be dented and deteriorated due to collisions.

However, it just so happened that this customer was particularly stubborn.

Because the backlog of packages had been serious these past few days, this customer had already been very impatient waiting. He was forced to go to the station to pick it up himself, but after picking it up, he found that the apples were damaged, the quantity was not right, and the outer packaging was also broken. He was even more furious and directly complained.

After the complaint, it naturally had to be resolved.

In order to appease the customer, the courier branch told him that they would compensate him with another box of apples. At the same time, according to the rules and regulations, the courier responsible for the delivery would be fined. The customer basically agreed to this handling method.

However, this box of apples was sent from a very far place. The online store was now overwhelmed, and was too busy to deal with packages every day, so they didn't bother to buy another box from the original online store again. Instead, they went to a nearby farmers market to buy a box of apples for compensation.

As a result, the customer took one look and knew that this was not the same thing at all. Although these two kinds of apples looked similar, they were actually not the same variety at all. It was obvious that Sheng Yun Express had just bought them casually to save trouble.

So the customer, in a fit of anger, complained again.

According to Sheng Yun Express's system, a courier who is complained about multiple times, or who is complained about continuously by the same customer, will be fined super double. This is a punitive fine system, which is designed to reduce the negative review rate.

So the courier had no choice but to run to ask the customer to withdraw the complaint, and even knelt down to apologize on the spot. But this customer was very stubborn. He believed that this was no longer a matter of money, but a matter of Sheng Yun Express's disrespect for him. He wanted to know whether the act of buying apples without authorization was done by the courier or the person in charge of the branch, what the corresponding penalty standards were, and whether this kind of problem could be avoided again in the future from a systemic point of view.

The customer emphasized that he was not targeting the courier, but targeting Sheng Yun Express, and demanded an official explanation and apology from Sheng Yun Express.

But obviously, how could his request be satisfied?

So the two sides were at a stalemate, and the scene of the courier kneeling down in pain was also witnessed by many people, who took videos and photos, which were discovered by Sheng Yun Express's public opinion monitoring department and reported directly.

Nie Yunsheng narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at this report.

On the surface, this matter was a negative piece of news, which could be said to be adding insult to injury for the current Sheng Yun Group.

But... from another perspective, maybe it's another way to break the deadlock?

Judging from the photos and videos, this courier's family was ordinary, and he probably didn't have much education, and was relatively simple and honest. The scene of him kneeling down aroused the sympathy of the onlookers even more, and the customer who insisted and didn't compromise in the video seemed very unreasonable instead.

Nie Yunsheng considered for a moment: "This matter has appeared very timely! Just right, we can use this public opinion a little, issue an apology, and then offer condolences to this courier, exempt him from the penalty... If the effect is good, maybe we can recover our current disadvantage in public opinion!"