Offline deliverability problems…
// October 24th, 2009 // e-commerce
Typically ‘deliverability problems’ for an online business means problems with their email marketing, but for many small online businesses around the UK the Royal Mail strikes have created a whole new type of deliverability problem.
For businesses that are used to focusing on their PPC ROI and website conversion ratio, it’s often easy to take the normally reliable distribution of customers orders for granted. The recent strikes have resulted in a change of focus for pro-active, customer focused businesses from online to offline. Over the last week time has been spent:
- Researching, contacting and negotiating with alternative couriers.
- The implementation of a new third party courier into daily workflow and IT infrastructure (online & offline).
- Adding and updating online content to keep customers informed and reduce the impact on their conversion rate.
- The cost of upgrading customers orders to the least effected postal service Royal Mail offer (whilst negotiating with couriers) to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction.
- Dealing with the increase in customer communication via phone, email and live chat that delayed deliveries causes.
Large volume mail order businesses are in the envious position of having the resources to be able to switch couriers and take a fairly small hit on their bottom line, but for a small-scale e-commerce venture that relies on Royal Mail the strikes have had a serious impact:
Quantitative estimates of the number of items delayed (30 – 65 million items!) gives only a partial impression of the real impact on businesses around the UK that rely on post as a key part of their business. The unknown factor in all of this is customer perception, will people simply not even consider firing up Google and searching for the item they need to purchase. Instead heading for the safe harbour of the local high street, knowing that it maybe more expensive, but that potential delivery problems are not a factor in their buying decision.
One thing is certain, ‘bricks and mortar’ shops on the high street will have benefited from all of this.