Marcel te Lindert writes this week about webshops who, after making a mistake, do not deal with their customers correctly. 'Every mistake made is unfortunate, but not correcting a mistake properly is a mortal sin. We measure everything in logistics, but is anyone using a performance indicator for this?'
On Whit Monday, late at night after a tiring day, I found myself inflating four air mattresses. That was not the intention. My brother-in-law from Maastricht had been expecting our visit and had found in it an occasion to buy a sofa bed for his lodgers online. More than a week and a half in advance, taking into account the 10-day delivery time, he had already placed his order online.
Before the promised delivery time was up, a delivery man was indeed on the doorstep with a huge box. My brother-in-law was delighted with the delivery and enthusiastically started unwrapping the package as if it were a St Nicholas present. However, to his great disappointment, the package did not contain the promised sofa bed, but a large wardrobe. As a result, I found myself inflating not two, but four airbeds.
What do you do when you receive a wrong delivery? You take another look at what it says on the box. On it was a shipping label with the address of someone in Amsterdam. So my brother-in-law from Maastricht had received the cupboard that an Amsterdam person had ordered. That sounds like the cupboard shouldn't even have been in this delivery car. A cupboard instead of a sofa bed, Maastricht instead of Amsterdam: how much worse can it get?
Of course, things go wrong everywhere. Customers are quite willing to accept a mistake, if the problem is then solved quickly and properly. So the other morning, my brother-in-law phoned the web shop directly. The lady on the other end of the line arranged for the cupboard to be collected and for the right sofa bed to be delivered. Fine resolution, it seems.
Until, in the afternoon, another lady called. Whether it was true that my brother-in-law had received a wrong order. He explained everything again and indicated that a colleague of hers had solved the problems that morning. The lady looked into her system but could not find anything. She saw nothing about a cupboard that had to be returned and a sofa bed that had to be delivered. In fact, she didn't understand any of it.
At that moment, all trust in this webshop disappeared, at least with me and I think also with my brother-in-law. A company that makes big mistakes and then cannot figure out what was agreed with customers does not give the impression that its logistics processes are under control. Anyone who wants to serve their customers well must not only ensure correct deliveries, but also integrate IT systems so that everyone has the same information, does not talk past each other and can inform customers correctly.
A supply chain director of a retail chain recently warned of the danger of judging carriers only on the hard numbers about timeliness and accuracy of deliveries. More important than that, he said, is the perception of customers, the shops in this case. A carrier that delivers 99 out of 100 shipments correctly realises a poor performance in the eyes of shoppers if it does not properly resolve problems with the 100th shipment. This supply chain director would rather have a carrier that may not perform as well in terms of hard numbers, but handles its customers correctly. We measure everything in logistics, but is anyone using a performance indicator for this?
Any mistake made is unfortunate, but not correcting a mistake properly is a mortal sin. After all, it costs customers.
Marcel te Lindert - logistics and supply chain journalist
