Do Business Well

Service organizations will grow up that will enable demand for ordering and delivery to be met continually. Production will be the only variable. Let me explain. There is a relatively finite amount of purchasing power in the world at any one time. There is also a finite amount of time to view and order products. This means that if there was only one shop to order from it would be relatively easy to build a process and an infrastructure that could cope with the total demand for dealing with orders, complaints, payments, deliveries and returns.

This is how postal delivery services work. They know how many homes there are and organize delivery men to deliver each day to a certain percentage based on the general level of demand. Most of the time there is sufficient slack built into the system to cope with demand blips. This may just mean the delivery people working a little faster or longer occasionally.

If people want to get stuff to your house, the good news is that there are Only so many homes out there. If people want to answer your questions, the good news is that there is a limit to how many you can ask at any one time. This means that service organizations should gr_owup that can cope with all of the demand.

The only variation comes from which front-end organization is pushing the demand through the fulfilment system. As a result you should have happy e-customers — whatever they want they get. The trick is to worry about attracting the demand your way.

Buy.com have followed this ‘pure model’ in pursuit of the e-customer because it believes that in time it will allow them to win. It has chosen to integrate its own systems and processes into those of its six world- class distribution partners. The result is that it has a remarkable ability to increase the scale of its sales without having to follow a traditional cycle of making a business case, investing and then building.

Delivery mechanisms need to be fast enough

The average person spends more than two years of his life in line, waiting and queuing. People jostling in the airport. Pushing into line and along lines for tickets and checking-in. Lines for boarding the plane. Lines for collecting luggage. Lines for taxis. More lines than Hollywood.

On the internet there is no need for jostling. From the e-customer’s point of view it doesn’t matter whether he is the first or the 6 billionth person wanting to be served. He can be accommodated. Your problem in serving him comes when the `no jostle promise’ cannot be met by a `no jostle delivery‘.

E-customers will be unnecessarily disappointed when their queue of one is impacted by hundreds of thousands of other individuals. Broadband may cure the problem from the e-customer’s side of the equation but carefully thought through expandable systems need to be put in place on the business side. Delivery mechanisms on the business side need to be fast enough.

Running up to its launch, Cahoot, the new UK financial services e-service, used a combination of viral e-mail campaigns, leaflet distribution, competitions, and a teaser website. All designed to push e-customers on site to pre-register and then open accounts with them. During the launch they even threw in an unnecessary poster campaign to promote the 0% APR credit card.

Result? Well surprisingly enough it was popular. Credit for nothing has always had its advocates. But after all that preparation and all that advertising, led by the slogan ‘Defy Convention’, the systems were not able to cope with the demand.

E-customers received error messages (not good for the nervous e-customer or for the demanding e-customer) and could not register. The system did not cope gracefully and did not explain what to do. No reassurance.

The next day e-mails were sent out to pre-registered Cahoot e-customers. The text explained that:

“Many apologies for any inconvenience that the delay in applying may have caused you. P.S. If you have recently completed your application, please ignore this e-mail and accept our apologies for troubling you.”

Not a good start. Just count the mistakes. The system could not distinguish between those e-customers who had had problems and those who had not. Its ‘one message for all’ approach meant that e-customers who were not aware of the problem were made fully aware of it. The e-mail communicated the mistake and made it bigger!

So take note. Avoid being caught up in what is being called the world wide wait. The e-customer might as well queue in the real world. It’s easier on the eyes.

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