At an opening event Wednesday afternoon, Stanford’s FedEx Office celebrated its recent expansion to provide a comprehensive, one-stop parcel management service for students.
The new office in Tresidder Student Union opened earlier this year. The former FedEx office at Stanford, also located in Tresidder, provided printing and outbound shipping services, but not package pick-up, to Stanford community members.
At Wednesday’s “grand opening,” FedEx officials and employees, as well as Stanford students and faculty — all with refreshments in hand — milled around the business’s balloon-adorned office on the first floor of Tresidder to commemorate the redefinition of FedEx’s presence on campus.
“Every day, we sit at the intersection of the virtual and physical worlds,” said Aimee DiCicco, FedEx’s senior vice president of commercial business development. “The needs of the University and students change, and they’re growing.”
With the rise of e-commerce, particularly Amazon, universities’ needs for efficient package management systems have grown, DiCicco said. According to studies conducted by FedEx, 68 percent of students receive more than one package per month. In September 2016, the Stanford FedEx office processed over 9,000 shipments.
The site affords customers an additional technological convenience. When a package arrives, one of the office’s 12 employees will scan and label it, thereby associating the item with the SUNet ID account of its owner. As soon as the item is documented in the computer system, the Stanford student or faculty member receives an automated mobile notification communicating that their parcel is ready for pickup. DiCicco says that this step toward efficiency helps enforce FedEx’s commitment to customer satisfaction, affectionately recognized within the corporation as the “Purple Promise.”
Sunshine Cootauco, FedEx’s Stanford Center Manager, appreciates the sense of community that has arisen in the office.
“It’s great that our team has been able to build relationships with students here,” she said. “Students have picked up many packages from online orders, so it’s nice to see regular faces.”
DiCicco looks forward to future innovations the company can make on campus, perhaps by adding lockers or other package-oriented infrastructure.
“This is just the beginning,” she said. “We are excited, but we aren’t resting on our laurels. We want to do more.
Contact Courtney Douglas at ccd4 ‘at’ stanford.edu.