Woolworths : Great social presence; terrible delivery
I am not generally one of those who get up on their soap box and start sprouting negative sentiment until the cows come home. I am also aware that some of my followers and readers of this blog are not fans of “brand trashing” through social channels. But (as there always is) this time I feel that I have been seriously betrayed by a much loved and admired brand in South Africa. Not only that, but there is a major example here – real life – of how brands can damage themselves should they not be adequately prepared.
The story goes like this.
Last week Tuesday I needed to get a R 100 Christmas present for a friend of mine as we were having a get together Christmas party on Saturday evening. I started scouring the internet to look for ideas and the thought struck me to try Woolworths. I had seen their offline ads about their shopping portal and how super simple it was to use. I had also seen the Woolworths SA twitter profile @Woolworths_SA making a lot of noise. So I gave it a shot.
I went online and looked around at the men’s section. I browsed until I was blue in the face and eventually found something that I thought my friend would like. He likes hats; so I found him a hat!
I hit the equivalent of “add to cart”; filled in my delivery address and selected my method of payment. I indicated my delivery time for Saturday morning between 10:00 and 13:00. It was smooth; it was almost nirvana! I proudly sat back thinking, “wow, when online shops like this work, it makes it so much easier – I will be back to do this again!”
I went and spoke to a colleague who was also looking for something and told her to go and order from Woolworths – which she did!
Shattered dreams!
Now the reason why I included the screenshot of the product I was going to buy; and please note that this screenshot was taken on the morning of writing this article, not 4 days prior – when the following transpired.
Friday afternoon at about 16:20; I was sitting in traffic when my cellphone rings with an unknown number. I hesitate before I answer thinking it is going to be someone selling me another cellphone contract; nevertheless I answer.
The gent on the other end of the phone proudly announces that he is calling me from Woolworths EASTGATE (my first suspicion something is about to go wrong). I miss his name as he mumbles it out before plunging in to tell me that the item I ordered from the store is not in stock.He continues to tell me that they cannot source another cap for me as there will be no time to do this before my requested delivery time. My blissful Woolworths dream is about to come crashing down.
After further interrogation; I tell him to cancel my order as if Woolworths cannot supply what I ordered; then I do not wish to proceed with anything further. After a few uhms, he says that he will get the call center to call me and officially cancel my order; after which he promptly puts the phone down (without saying good bye).
Being a proponent on online and social media; I decided to Tweet Woolworths to alert them of my dissatisfaction.
To date I have not heard anything from them in response to this Tweet.
The plot thickens.
I didn’t think terribly much of this until earlier this afternoon. I was speaking to a colleague (the same one who also placed an order last week) and was telling them about my misfortune with my online order. To my shock and horror on Friday afternoon she also received a call and was told that her order could not be fulfilled! Surely this cannot be a coincidence? Two separate orders both getting the same response?
The only difference with her dealings with the call center agent is that she received an email confirming her order cancellation (something I am still waiting for).
I love the quip in brackets about them hoping it was not something that they did! 
What went wrong?
For my money there a few things that have gone wrong here :
- The online brand promise is not being fulfilled by offline promises.
- There seems to be a supply chain issue if the Eastgate store is calling me about an order when my closest store (which I indicated) is Fourways Mall.
- Staff monitoring the Woolworths online social presence are not properly trained in dealing with all their mentions or their monitoring techniques need some revising.
- The stock control for their online store is not sufficiently updated in real time with the in store POS (point of sale). (i do realise the complexities here and understand how difficult this point is to get right).
The Marketing of my site worked! Now what?
Online Marketing can be broken down into a few different areas which all have their place in the online world.
First there is SEO (search engine optimisation) which is perfect for getting visitors to your site. But this is all that SEO is concerned with.
Then there is SEM (search engine marketing) which utilises PPC (Pay Per Click) methods such as Google AdWords to essentially buy traffic on to your site by bidding on certain keywords which your site is relevant for.
After that comes website optimisation which is geared towards really making your site convert. It is solely concerned with making visitors click the right buttons and fill in forms on your site so that you can contact them with regards to their enquiry.
Don’t make them think!
The basic premise with website marketing or indeed any marketing is that you cannot allow yourself to make it too complicated. You have got to always be focusing on the lowest common denominator and ensuring that your marketing mesages can be understood by whomever that might be in your target market.
This same message hold true once your marketing campaigns have done their job. You have driven users to your site and they have “taken the bait” and asked a question or filled in a form, or whatever action you needed them to take.
Get the balance right.
The place where a lot of businesses fall over and disappoint their customers is in their systems and procedures and indeed their internal processes. (There is marketing relevance here)
Online marketing needs to be concerned with every part of the value chain – from the initial enquiry online through to the final delivery of the product which has been ordered. Each one of the following touch points are critical to ensuring that the customer is happy and comes back to your company again.
Business Process :
The processes that potential customers and paying clients are funneled through as they interact & deal with your company. If these are not properly streamlined; you might not just have a frustrated customer on your hands, but also revenue might be lost through to customers cancelling orders.
This gets worse from an operations point of view as you might be losing revenue due to incorrect ordering and even poor utilisation of man hours.
Business processes are vitally important to ensure that your company is running smoothly and efficiently. BizAgi is an excellent FREE process modeler.
Business Systems :
The business systems are the touch points that your staff and customers need to interact with when ordering. These need to be periodically assessed to make sure that you are using the correct systems for your needs. As a business, especially from a marketing point of view – a client and potential clients is hugely impatient! If your systems are clunky and take your staff too long to process orders or to source goods to supply, you are going to have to find new clients to service as the current ones are going to leave.
Marketing dove-tails with all of the above as a main function of marketing is not only to attract customers; but also to retain them. Sloppy & cumbersome systems and processes make this very difficult to do.
