A recent blog entry by my colleague Richard got me a bit worked up recently, and as usual I'm keen to add my two cents. His experience with Empire Direct is a perfect example of a multiple channel business not working as a genuinely integrated multichannel retailer, something that’s unfortunately all too common. Whilst the business presumably considers itself ‘multichannel’, the service levels, experience and the proposition all differ from one touchpoint to the other.
I had a similar experience with UPS recently, which was pretty much the opposite of Richard’s ED tale. Shipping something from one continent to another is a reasonably complex task, and managing this through a self-service interface is something that the UPS website manifestly fails to achieve. At every step in the process, it’s unhelpful, misleading, full of unexplained jargon and every failed attempt I made resulted in a key part of the process being missed out. Quite how you can arrange a shipment from one place to another without being prompted to arrange a pickup separately is beyond me.
The natural result of this was a series of calls to UPS customer service, both in the UK and the US. Despite being a global company dealing in international shipping, their UK and US businesses do not communicate directly, so as a customer you have to deal directly with both sides, which will result in several hours of international calls at the full rate. Thank heavens for Skype.
However, once I’d got to speak with someone, their service was pretty much faultless. Helpful, informed and patient (useful with an irate and semi-incompetent customer like me), the result of every call was a step forwards in the process. The US team were particularly good, masking their sighs of despair quite well when faced with yet another customer had managed to arrange a delivery but no pickup.
Once the package was under way, it arrived far quicker than expected, and their tracking facility gave me realtime information on where the package was and what it was doing (or I suppose, what was being done to it). In the end though, what should have taken three days ended up taking over five weeks, with numerous false starts and delays whilst UPS worked out what had gone wrong.
So all in all, a very patchy performance, which could be solved by breaking down some of the territorial boundaries in the organization, and giving serious thought to the usability of UPS.com. Serious disconnects were evident internally, requiring the customer to jump through unnecessary hoops. Had I not been bloody-minded (and professionally interested) enough to see it through, I would have given up early in the process.
So why does this happen so much? In my experience, it’s a symptom or the organic nature of a business’ expansion into new channels. In the early days, a website was non-functional, and would probably fall under the remit of the marketing department (being solely a communications channel). With development and added functionality would come more involvement from IT at some point, and possibly a new business unit being spun off. This BU would comprise its own set of disciplines, from inventory to merchandising, and was most likely a completely discrete unit within the wider business.
This is where disconnects arise, not only operationally, but in terms of proposition, experience and brand. As Richard and I found out, a patchy experience leads to a vote of no confidence in the business. Whilst we both found things that worked really well, the overall experience left us cold (and motivated to tell the world about it…).
This is a tricky issue to solve, and one for which there’s no silver bullet. Change is principally required in a number areas:
Operational
Operational teams need to work across all channels. Marketing is usually ahead of the game here, with various communication channels being handled through the same team, but merchandising, commercial, operations and even occasionally finance are frequently siloed by channel. Customer services often ends up carrying the can here, with contact coming in from multiple sources and one function having to assimilate sometimes conflicting information from numerous business units.
Architectural
Share one common version of the truth. Whether a customer is buying an item from a store or online, there is an expectation that it’s fundamentally the same thing. In instances where the cost price differs, or even the selling price or the promotional mechanic, trouble looms. Can they return an item bought online to a store, for example? Conventional wisdom suggests they should; practical experience shows this is rare.
Also – on the customer service note above, every customer-facing staff member should have access to the same information. Can I change my address or contact preferences at the till? Can I reserve an item by SMS and pick it up instore? Can I edit this order at a later date on the website? The experience should be consistent throughout each touchpoint.
Cultural
A change that goes hand in hand with the operational side of things, but one which merits a separate mention. Do store staff see the website as competition or complement? Each channel needs to have an awareness of how the other operates, and an ability to communicate this directly to customers. Far too often, tell a member of store staff ‘I saw this on your website…’ and you’ll receive a blank look if you’re lucky. This plays into effective internal communications as well as a sound multichannel culture throughout.
In the example given above, I experienced two very distinct versions of UPS. One was friendly, helpful, informed and efficient; the other was obtuse, challenging and counter-intuitive. It could have been two entirely different businesses. Whoever has stewardship of the brand must ensure that it’s correctly represented at every touchpoint, not just in terms of look and feel, but tone of voice, service level, function and so on. Although a huge challenge, this can be achieved by addressing the points above over time, and building the entire business, from the shop floor to the Directorate, on the premise of true, integrated multichannel retail.
Naturally, if UPS would like to investigate how we could help them get their online business delivering the same excellent levels of service as their call centre, I'm always around at dan.wilkinson@conchango.com.