This story was originally posted April 3rd and updated September 1st 2020
Global COVID-19 restrictions have brought forward e-commerce growth by up to ten years and mandated focus on health and safety.
Whether you’re improving your existing service or introducing it as new, click-and-collect is a smart addition to every retailer’s fulfilment toolkit as consumers move online and demand contact-less fulfilment options.
Click-and-collect lets you continue selling and getting your in-store goods into consumers hands, and it takes the pressure off warehouse deliveries.
In the current environment, click-and-collect can also help ensure staff safety because you can set things up to be contactless.
Here are our top three things to consider if you’re thinking about implementing click-and-collect:
1. Business process and social distancing
To optimise physical distance between your team and customers, set up an alert and collection system. For instance, when an order is ready, contact the customer with a specific time to collect - a good platform will enable you to automate this process. And set up a designated safe zone where customers can wait for store staff to bring their purchases to them with minimal contact.
2. Keep a check on service levels
Choose a unified commerce platform so you have a click-and-collect dashboard that updates in real time and can be monitored from anywhere, including while your sales manager is working from home. It should provide an all-of-business view of sales and fulfilment and automatically alert the right people when a sale may not be able to be fulfilled. So you can tell customers right away, arrange for stock to be transferred from another store, or offer delivery instead.
3. Make it consistent and easy across all channels
There’s so much changing for retail reps right now, including different processes that are mandated by retailers and by the government. Keeping the in-store process consistent and easy will reduce stress and errors.
In Infinity, orders from any channel are processed in the same simple way by your in-store team – whether the sale is made through your call centre, a mobile app or your ecommerce site. One consistent process saves time, reduces errors and frees your team up to focus on your customer rather than the transaction.
I’d be happy to discuss click-and-collect in more detail and answer any questions you have about getting it up and running. Contact me here or through LinkedIn.
