4. Is Your Workforce Prepared?
Perfecting the ecommerce interface and customer experience is only really half of what needs to be addressed. In what will likely be an incredibly busy two months, your team needs to be ready as well.
Anticipating the bustle of the holidays, a training session or two may be the refresher that’s needed to be on top of your game. Knowledgeable staff members will guarantee that your customers will be happy and backend operations run smoothly.
In addition to educating personnel, is/are your distribution center/centers ready to handle the additional orders? Carrying a smidge of extra inventory, albeit expensive, can definitely help expedite the shipping process and makes lead times one less thing to worry about during the rush.
Additionally, one project which far too few organizations implement is integration. If your ecommerce system is fully integrated with your back-office management or enterprise resource planning system, you allow your customers to see real time information on the products they want to buy, and your order processing and fulfillment runs like a well-oiled, mechanical lawn Santa.
Integration points which make for seamless automation can include customer history, order processing and history, as well as inventory balances. Integrated systems also give sales representatives very easy access to information they’ll need, because the data is shown from where it’s meant to be stored.
