Retail marketers’ hard work on Christmas promotions is already hitting our high streets and screens. But this festive season, getting retail ready to deliver a winning customer experience will hinge on how well a retail brand performs when it delivers to your home, workplace or click and collect location.

Delivery is becoming recognised as a competitive differentiator when it provides the convenience and choice that consumers demand. Recent Forrester research that I commissioned revealed that 80 percent of European retailers report a positive and measurable impact on customer satisfaction because of offering multiple delivery options at the checkout.

What’s interesting about this finding is that it applies to retailers in France and Germany, as well as the UK. This country may seem to set the pace on eCommerce innovation but increases in investment in delivery capabilities are expected Europe-wide. We found that UK retailers are allocating double the investment for delivery to remote locker locations (68 percent) and alternative collection points, while the majority of French (56 percent) and German (76 percent) retailers expect investment in delivery processes to increase in the coming years to drive customer experience.

It’s going to be critical to have these processes in place given that we anticipate that it will be the busiest festive season so far, with online order and delivery volumes expected to reach 120 million in December alone.

Managing this increase in delivery volume and also satisfying increasing consumer demand for flexibility and convenience is going to put retailers under serious pressure. But, slipping up on delivery can cause serious brand damage. For example, from further research, we found that 59 percent of consumers are less likely or unlikely to order from a retailer ever again if they have a negative delivery experience. What’s more, a shocking 78 percent are likely to tell their friends about it.

Learning how to manage the complex delivery processes that enable new and wider choice for online consumers will be essential for retailers. Alternative delivery methods, such as lockers and click and collect, put the control in the shoppers’ hands as they provide more choice and convenience on when to receive their delivery and what is the best way to collect it. However, these new methods require changes to traditional methods and come with new challenges in how goods are received and stored instore.

Overall, Christmas 2014 is going to be extremely interesting for the industry. New investments in delivery capabilities are going to be tested and provide valuable data on how services can be further enhanced and extended. For digital marketers, the fact that the retail and carrier industry is collaborating on a superior end-to-end customer experience, from the web page to delivery point, should be reassuring.

 

By Angela O’Connell, Marketing and Strategy Director at MetaPack. 

PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.

comments powered by Disqus