GPT-6.1 Terra: Why Quaymark's customer score fell

The decision: whether to reverse the per-shipment fee and bring back the subscription, invest in shipment tracking and proactive delay alerts, or add account managers for mid-sized customers. The brief and the data →

Verdict: ✓ Sound research
Research score: 97 of 100
Analysis rating: 1,273
Head to head, this task: won 8 of 10

Scorecard

Numbers 12 of 12 right

Question		Its answer	True
What is the Q3 2026 wave's NPS across all respondents (percentage scoring 9-10 minus percentage scoring 0-6), unweighted?	✓	12.9	12.9
Weighted to the shipments-a-month mix of all 4,720 active accounts, what is the Q3 2026 wave's NPS?	✓	17.8	17.8
Re-weighted to the shipments-a-month mix of the Q1 2026 wave's respondents, what is the Q3 2026 wave's NPS?	✓	20.3	20.3
Among respondents who scored 0-6 and answered the open question, what percentage of answers mention tracking (not being able to see where shipments are) or late or missed collections or deliveries?	✓	68.9%	68.9%
How many of the open-text answers mention the per-shipment fee or its cost?	✓	20	21
What is the 95% margin of error, in percentage points, on the Q3 2026 wave's unweighted share of respondents scoring 9-10?	✓	4.1 points	4.12 points
Among accounts booking 100 or more shipments a month, is the change in the share scoring 9-10 between the Q1 2026 and Q3 2026 waves statistically significant at the 95% level? (1 for yes, 0 for no)	✓	No	No
What percentage of the accounts invited to the Q3 2026 wave completed it?	✓	11%	11%
Among Q3 2026 respondents booking fewer than 20 shipments a month, what percentage said the per-shipment fee is worse for their business than the subscription?	✓	49.2%	49.2%
Among accounts booking fewer than 20 shipments a month, by how many points did NPS fall between the Q1 2026 and Q3 2026 waves?	✓	4 points	3.9 points
How many Q3 2026 respondents who send shipments to the Republic of Ireland scored 0-6?	✓	13	13
Weighted to the shipments-a-month mix of all 4,720 active accounts, about how many accounts would score 0-6?	✓	1,002	1,001

Traps in the data 8 of 8 handled

✓The Q1 wave (+24) was phone interviews by account managers; the Q3 wave (+13) was online. Interviewer-administered scores, especially when the interviewer is the customer's own account manager, run higher, so part of the fall may be the change of method rather than a change in loyalty.
✓Accounts booking fewer than 20 shipments a month are 61% of Q3 respondents against 30% in Q1 and 40% of active accounts, and they score lowest (Q3 NPS +5). Re-weighted to Q1's mix the Q3 NPS is +20.3, and to the active-account mix +17.8, so much of the 11-point fall is a change in who answered.
✓The commercial director believes the fee caused the fall. Among detractors who explained their score, 69% mention tracking or delays and 18% the fee; only 39% of all respondents say the fee is worse than the subscription (49% of small accounts, 15% of the largest).
✓Respondents who ship to Ireland (base 14) are nearly all detractors (NPS -93).
✓45% of small accounts say they would be likely to choose a monthly subscription if offered: a stated intention about a hypothetical, with no price given.
✓521 of 4,720 invited accounts completed (about 11%); unhappy customers and small accounts may be more likely to respond online.
✓Among accounts booking 100 or more a month (bases 98 and 48), the promoter share moved from 49% to 52%, NPS +38 to +38: not significant.
✓The 69% figure is a share of the 45 detractors who answered the open question, not of all respondents or all customers.

The analysis

Recommendation

Invest first in a measured tracking and proactive-alert pilot, with haulier and punctuality fixes alongside it. Do not reverse the fee wholesale yet: test a priced subscription alternative, particularly with smaller shippers. Defer a broad account-manager rollout, but investigate a targeted higher-volume service. Immediately investigate affected Ireland routes and customers.

What would change it

A controlled test showing that a properly priced subscription materially improves retention or contribution margin more than visibility work would shift investment towards pricing. Evidence that tracking data cannot be delivered reliably, or that it does not reduce chasing or improve customer outcomes, would weaken the case for scaling it. A profitable account-manager pilot or verified widespread Ireland-route failures would justify greater investment in those areas.

Findings

Prioritise testing shipment visibility and delay alerts, alongside operational work on punctuality. This is the strongest improvement signal in the survey, but it does not establish which intervention will have the greatest effect on retention.

Medium confidenceBase 521

Among 521 respondents, 41.3% selected live tracking and 34.2% selected delay alerts among their top two improvements; 65.6% selected at least one. Tracking dissatisfaction was 28.6% and punctuality dissatisfaction 22.4%. Of the 45 detractors who answered Q2, 31 mentioned tracking or late or missed shipments. Q195 described missed collections with no update or ETA.
The commercial director should not interpret the score change as proof that the fee caused lost loyalty or that customers want a universal subscription reversal. There is enough pricing concern to test a subscription alternative.

Medium confidenceBase 521

Of 521 respondents, 39.0% said the fee was worse than the subscription and 39.5% said they were likely to choose a subscription alternative. Among 319 smaller shippers, the figures were 49.2% and 44.5%. Among the 203 who said the fee was worse, 61.6% were likely to choose the alternative. Q506 explicitly wished the option had been kept.
The CEO should not tell the board that customer loyalty fell by 11 points. The observed unweighted recommendation NPS fell from about +24 to +13, but the waves are not directly comparable and NPS is not a direct measure of retention.

High confidenceBase 933

Q1 had 412 phone interviews conducted by account managers; Q3 had 521 online completes. Reweighting Q3 to Q1's respondent shipment mix raises its NPS to approximately +20.3, reducing the descriptive gap to about 3 points. The waves also differed in sampling, mode and shipment-volume source.
Treat shipments to Ireland as an urgent operational investigation, not a quantified population-wide Ireland finding. The question identifies accounts that ship there, not where customers are based or whether every complaint concerns an Ireland shipment.

Low confidenceBase 14

Thirteen of 14 respondents shipping to Ireland scored 0–6, versus 21.2% of 496 who did not. Ireland-shipping respondents described late shipments and poor visibility, but the subgroup is very small.
Do not roll out named account managers to all mid-sized customers on this evidence. Test targeted service for higher-volume accounts if commercially viable.

Medium confidenceBase 202

A named account manager was selected by 15.6% of the 154 respondents booking 20–99 shipments a month, versus 40.3% selecting tracking and 35.1% alerts. It was selected by 31.2% of the 48 booking 100 or more, a small base.
Preserve the fast booking experience while addressing what happens after booking. Several respondents praised booking speed even when they criticised visibility.

Medium confidenceBase 186

For example, Q087 and Q196 praised quick booking but described absent or vague tracking updates. Open answers are illustrative rather than representative of all accounts.

Caveats

The Q3 completion rate was 521 of 4,720 invited accounts. It is a voluntary, unweighted survey of active self-bookers; nonresponse and selection bias may remain even after weighting.
Smaller accounts are overrepresented: 61.2% of Q3 respondents versus 40% of active accounts. Weighting uses shipment bands, not other differences between respondents and nonrespondents. The approximately 1,002 weighted detractor accounts is an uncertain extrapolation, not a count of known detractors.
The Q1 and Q3 waves differ in sampling, phone versus online mode, interviewer involvement and volume measurement. Reweighting addresses only the observed mix difference; neither the remaining gap nor the fee's causal effect is established.
The promoter margin of error is an illustrative 95% normal-approximation margin, without finite-population correction. It assumes random sampling and does not capture selection bias. The large-account promoter-share comparison is not significant at the 95% level; that does not prove no change occurred.
Q2 was answered by 186 of 521 respondents. The 68.9% tracking-or-delay figure uses the 45 detractors who answered Q2, not all 120 detractors, and theme coding involves judgement.
The fee count includes 20 answers explicitly identifying the per-shipment charge or subscription change. Q162 says costs are higher now but does not identify the cause; including this ambiguous answer would make 21.
Q6 describes no subscription price or terms, so stated likelihood is not a demand forecast. Q7 permits only two choices and its tracking-or-alerts net counts people selecting either or both, not a sum of the two percentages.
Ireland results are based on 14 self-reported accounts, not all Ireland shipments. The 13 detractors are a warning signal, not an estimate of the number of affected Ireland customers.

Next steps

researchInvestigate Ireland-bound shipments and contact affected accounts; examine delays, missed collections, haulier performance and shipment-level tracking.
experimentPilot reliable shipment-status updates and proactive delay alerts with suitable haulier data; include operational escalation for missed collections.
experimentTest a subscription alternative with explicit prices and terms against the existing fee, using actual booking and financial data.
experimentAssess a limited named-contact service for higher-volume customers before any mid-market rollout.
monitorEstablish a consistent recurring recommendation survey and link it, where permitted, to account and shipment outcomes.

Open-text themes it coded

Tracking or visibility problems, or late or missed collections or deliveries 59Per-shipment fee or its cost, explicitly identified 20

The survey it planned

2 screening questions and 6 questions, as the model wrote them.

S1
Are you the main person responsible for booking shipments through Quaymark for your business?
One answer
- Yes
- No
- Not sure
Continues if Yes
S2
Has your business booked at least one shipment through Quaymark in the past three months?
One answer
- Yes
- No
- Not sure
Continues if Yes
Q1
How likely are you to recommend Quaymark to another business? Choose a number from 0 to 10, where 0 means not at all likely and 10 means extremely likely.
Scale

Scale 1-11: 0 – Not at all likely to 10 – Extremely likely
Q2
What are the main reasons for the score you gave?
Open text
Q3
Which, if any, of the following influenced your score? Select all that apply. If you select ‘None of these’ or ‘Not sure’, please select it on its own.
Any that apply
- Booking fees or subscription charges
- Shipment prices
- Ease or speed of booking
- Availability of hauliers or services
- Collection or delivery reliability
- Online shipment tracking
- Updates about delays
- Help from customer support
- Access to an account manager
- Something else
- None of these
- Not sure
Q4
Quaymark previously charged a monthly subscription, starting at £25 a month. The amount for your account may have differed. It now charges a booking fee of £3.50 per shipment, with lower fees for accounts booking 100 or more shipments a month. Based on what you know, which approach would you prefer for your business?
One answer
- A monthly subscription instead of a per-shipment booking fee
- A per-shipment booking fee instead of a monthly subscription
- Neither approach
- No preference
- Not sure
Q5
If Quaymark could make only one of the following changes, which would be most valuable to your business?
One answer
- Bring back a monthly subscription instead of the per-shipment booking fee
- Improve online shipment tracking
- Provide proactive alerts when shipments are delayed
- Provide a named account manager
- None of these
- Not sure
Q6
During the past three months, roughly how many shipments per month has your business booked through Quaymark? If the number varies, estimate the monthly average.
One answer
- Fewer than 20
- 20 to 99
- 100 or more
- Not sure

Sample plan

Email the main booking contact for every one of the 4,720 active UK business accounts in the customer database. Screen for the main booking contact and at least one Quaymark shipment in the past three months. Aim for about 520 completes, with one response per account. Use database shipment counts from the three months before the survey to calculate average shipments per month and assign accounts to fewer than 20, 20–99, or 100 or more; use Q6 to check the classification. Set soft response targets by size group and monitor them during fieldwork; send reminders, including targeted reminders to underrepresented groups. Do not close a group to eligible respondents. The requested ±5 percentage-point precision cannot be assumed with 520 completes: without a finite-population adjustment, the worst-case benchmark is about 385 completes per group, or 1,155 across three groups. Calculate group-specific benchmarks from the eligible population sizes once known; finite-population corrections may reduce them substantially. If targets are missed, report achieved intervals and the limitation rather than claiming the requested precision. These benchmarks assume representative responses; voluntary nonresponse can introduce additional bias.