Seeing greater demand from customers for immediate fulfillment of ecommerce orders, Bath Bath & Beyond is expanding its same-day delivery to 700 stores covering nearly 16,000 ZIP codes, a near doubling, through a partnership with Roadie. The retailer is also allowing customers to pick up online orders curbside as early as 8 a.m.
Pitney Bowes is rolling out a new series of smart lockers that can be used either in office or apartment buildings, college campuses or retail stores that can be configured to use as parcel boxes for individuals to send and receive items, or for picking up ecommerce orders and processing returns.
As 2020 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect back on a wild and crazy year in retail, to paraphrase the Festrunk brothers from Saturday Night Live. COVID-19 came in like a wrecking ball in February and March, causing widespread shutdowns that hit retail especially hard, leading to hockey-stick growth in ecommerce.
The pandemic has accelerated customer experience and convenience trends that were previously gaining momentum. Now, some of those trends have become essential for businesses to offer safe shopping experiences. To know which ones are worth investing in, recognize which are fads and which will prevail long past next year.
This holiday season, we may see pent-up demand from earlier in the year channeled into even more ecommerce purchases and larger order values. Luxury retailers can take a few steps now to make sure they’re positioned to meet this demand.
The DTC “discovery to delivery” business model has many advantages. You own the end-to-end customer journey, and develop a direct, digitally-driven and engaging relationship with them. DTC brands using smart technology also have unfiltered insight into customer behavior and real-time data at every step along the process.
This peak holiday season will be unlike any before, and brands must adapt accordingly. These unusual circumstances need to be met with creative solutions. Here are a few ways to avoid this scenario by looking at alternative last-mile delivery options that will keep both consumers and brands happy.
As consumers have begun holiday shopping earlier than ever, merchants are expecting historical peak trends, and fraudsters will try to take advantage of this. To prepare for the uptick in BOPIS fraud this holiday season, consider enacting both short-term and long-term fraud mitigation strategies to protect yourself and your customers.
For retailers, massive holiday ecommerce this year raises the prospect of more customer complaints, lost package claims, returns due to delays and possible shipping fraud as harried customer service agents try to keep shoppers happy by making post-order changes. Here’s how you can plan now to keep holiday customers happy.
The harsh truth is that this holiday season will be a true test for retailers and brands – can they meet demand while exceeding high customer expectations? Those that can’t quickly adapt will lose out to fierce competition. Technology can help them scale up and optimize their fulfillment and delivery to win the 2020 holidays.