Why the “doorstep experience” is vital for brands

High street stores may have been shut­tered in March, as the UK entered the first nation­al lock­down, but the pres­sure on ecom­merce and last-mile logis­tics had nev­er been greater.

Food, fash­ion, flat­pack fur­ni­ture and gifts all flew off web­sites as con­sumers sat and shopped at home. By April, ecom­merce had reached a record high, account­ing for a third (30.7 per cent) of all UK retail sales, accord­ing to the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics, a spike of 10 per­cent­age points in just a few short weeks. In one week alone, Tesco ful­filled one mil­lion online orders, hir­ing 4,000 new dri­vers and 12,000 new pick­ers to meet demand.

Yes, the shift in shop­ping habits brought with it brand-new oppor­tu­ni­ties. By the end of 2020, ecom­merce will see a £5.3‑billion lift thanks to coro­n­avirus, says Edge Retail Insight. But it has also exposed major chal­lenges and gaps when it comes to cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. After all, with­out bricks-and-mor­tar stores, the oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­sumer inter­ac­tion has been cut down, with few­er chances to impress and excel at cus­tomer ser­vice. The only excep­tion? The last mile.

“It’s some­times the only phys­i­cal touch­point, so the doorstep expe­ri­ence is absolute­ly crit­i­cal to brand per­cep­tion,” says Louisa Hose­good, dig­i­tal and strat­e­gy direc­tor at Bis Hen­der­son Con­sult­ing. “Cus­tomers often want speed, but more than that, they want cer­tain­ty of deliv­ery and good com­mu­ni­ca­tions.”

These expec­ta­tions were incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to meet, as last-mile logis­tics became a mine­field. “The mas­sive spike in demand on lock­down caused sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ties for retail­ers in terms of mobil­is­ing addi­tion­al resources and capac­i­ty at such short notice, all with con­sid­er­a­tion to the enor­mous con­straints posed by strict social dis­tanc­ing rules,” says Hose­good.

Majed Zam­bara­ji, founder and chief exec­u­tive of inter­na­tion­al couri­er Time Express, says: “Retail­ers eager to sell more and cut their loss­es made unre­al­is­tic par­cel deliv­ery com­mit­ments to cus­tomers, who in turn put pres­sure on logis­tics couri­ers to deliv­er ship­ments on time.”

Using tech to manage customer expectations

At Moo, an online print busi­ness deliv­er­ing mate­ri­als to cus­tomers across 200 coun­tries, the dis­rup­tion to last-mile logis­tics was a major stick­ing point when it came to cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. “We had lots of chal­lenges get­ting stuff to peo­ple in the time­frame we want­ed to and a big increase in queries to cus­tomer sup­port,” says direc­tor of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence Dan Moross.

“But once they con­tact­ed us as the issues were so frac­tious and spread across dif­fer­ent car­ri­ers, we did­n’t always have the help to give them.”

For Moo and many oth­er com­pa­nies, the expe­ri­ence has forced an accel­er­a­tion in the inte­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and ded­i­cat­ed soft­ware designed to help min­imise these issues in the last mile. Even in the mid­dle of a cri­sis.

In April, for exam­ple, just as inter­na­tion­al restric­tions gained pace, Moo part­nered with data and tech­nol­o­gy providers par­celLab to send new updates to cus­tomers pro­vid­ing more accu­rate deliv­ery times. Excep­tion emails were also cre­at­ed to keep cus­tomers updat­ed on delays or failed deliv­er­ies, while insights on inter­na­tion­al couri­ers also allowed Moo to pro­vide more accu­rate deliv­ery time­lines at the point of check­out. 

“It imme­di­ate­ly helped to reduce inbound queries about ‘where is my order’ as cus­tomers had bet­ter infor­ma­tion,” says Moross. Its net pro­mo­tor score, or cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion rat­ing, also began to recov­er. 

Reduc­ing cost­ly inbound queries to cus­tomer ser­vice agents was also a top pri­or­i­ty for The Dia­mond Store as it grap­pled with a 250 per cent spike in orders over lock­down, explains chief exec­u­tive Gary Ingram. “Peo­ple kept call­ing in and we want­ed to stop the calls and let the cus­tomer know before they had to ques­tion what was going on,” he says.

It used soft­ware provider Hub­Spot to cre­ate reg­u­lar email updates. “They’d say ‘we’re now set­ting the sap­phire; we’re now tak­ing it to the pol­ish­er and so on’ for any prod­uct where deliv­ery would take longer than 24 hours. It led to a mas­sive decline in queries,” says Ingram. “It saved us, to be hon­est.”

Retaining customer loyalty through delivery

At vit­a­min and CBD (cannabid­i­ol) sup­ple­ment retail­er Your­Zoo­ki, the expe­ri­ence of COVID-19, and a huge increase in demand, has led to dra­mat­ic changes to its last-mile logis­tics oper­a­tions, says co-founder Mar­cus Mollinga. The com­pa­ny now has a ful­ly auto­mat­ed ship­ping inte­gra­tion plat­form that enables it to ship all orders made before 5pm on the same day and offer more ship­ping options to cus­tomers.

“At the same time, we updat­ed our inven­to­ry man­age­ment to a more pow­er­ful cloud-based sys­tem,” he says. “This has allowed us to have real-time inven­to­ry con­trol and report­ing, as well as greater clar­i­ty across our sup­pli­ers, pro­duc­tion and cus­tomers.”

A new arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence chat­bot has also joined its cus­tomer ser­vice team to help man­age the increase in queries to its call cen­tre. “Our cus­tomer’s expe­ri­ence is incred­i­bly impor­tant to us and these tech solu­tions have enabled us to improve our ser­vice,” adds Mollinga.

Retailers invest in new technology for the last mile

Even as retail­ers emerge from the height of the online rush dur­ing lock­down, many are still mak­ing moves to improve the last-mile cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. In August, Asda con­firmed its cloth­ing brand George would be tri­alling deliv­ery man­age­ment soft­ware Sort­ed, to track parcels and pro­vide cus­tomers with real-time updates.

It came off the back of a real­i­sa­tion that when cus­tomers hear noth­ing about a delay, it can real­ly hurt reten­tion and loy­al­ty, says Sort­ed founder and chief exec­u­tive David Grimes. “Asda recog­nised they were behind and need­ed to address this issue, par­tic­u­lar­ly as they approach the peak peri­od of Black Fri­day [Novem­ber 27] and Christ­mas,” he says.

The Sort­ed React soft­ware will now enable them to alert cus­tomers proac­tive­ly to deliv­ery sta­tus in cus­tomer-friend­ly lan­guage, reduc­ing the need to reach out to a sup­port cen­tre, which great­ly reduces costs.

Its invest­ment in this tech­nol­o­gy is symp­to­matic of a longer-term shift among retail­ers when it comes to last-mile logis­tics, one accel­er­at­ed by the expe­ri­ence of the last few months, says Grimes. “Retail­ers are now recog­nis­ing the impor­tance of deliv­ery. It was often the for­got­ten part of the ecom­merce trans­ac­tion, but we’re see­ing a real surge in them acknowl­edg­ing they need to improve their deliv­ery offer,” he says.

“COVID has made retail­ers realise their online offer is cru­cial and a major part of that is deliv­ery; the ques­tion of how do I get this prod­uct to a cus­tomer?”

Per­haps, more impor­tant­ly, com­pa­nies need to ask them­selves, how do you get your prod­ucts to a hap­py cus­tomer?