To ensure customer satisfaction, Coolblue decided in 2016 to start delivering white goods in its own blue vans, with its own Coolblue delivery staff. That decision seems to have done the retail giant no favours; last year, Coolblue turned its best year ever. A host of new plans for CoolblueBezorgt are in the pipeline for 2018, including the so-called 'TV delivery street'. Ahead of the e-Delivery event on 28 March, we put five questions to Remco de Jong, Head of Delivery at Coolblue.
Where are you now with CoolblueBezorgt? What proportion of white goods deliveries do you deliver yourself?
"We deliver most of the refrigerators, washing machines and dryers ourselves.CoolblueBezorgt now has 150 vans, 600 deliverers and 8 depots spread throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. This makes us the largest white goods delivery company in the Netherlands. It is nice to mention that CoolblueBezorgt scores very high on customer satisfaction. With an NPS (Net Promoter Score) of 75, the service even achieves the highest customer satisfaction score of any department within Coolblue."
What plans for CoolblueBezorgt are still in the pipeline?
"Now that we have mastered the delivery of white goods, from next month we will also take delivery of televisions into our own hands. And when we deliver those, we can also start installing them. This gives us a chance to do something extra for our customers and start 'surprising' them. Televisions are often a lot bigger than they used to be. Customers were given a big box and then had to sort it out. As a customer, that doesn't make you happy. We will change that from next month.
We also want to give our customers more control over the when and where of their delivery. To support the strong growth of CoolblueBezorgt, we are looking for 1,000 additional employees."
Will you possibly deliver all items yourself in the future, or will you continue to work with delivery partners?
"I'm not saying never, but for now this is not on the cards. Coolblue is growing incredibly
fast. We are expected to reach €1.5 billion in sales (+25 per cent) in 2018. We
will therefore desperately need our delivery partners to get all the parcels to our customers
get them."
To facilitate that growth, Coolblue is looking for 1,000 extra delivery drivers. Meanwhile, the labour market is officially 'strained'. What are you noticing about this? And how do you anticipate this?
"Recruiting 1,000 extra delivery drivers is definitely possible. In 2017, Coolblue received more than 58 thousand applications. There are an awful lot of people who want to work at Coolblue, but we actually hire about 1 per cent of all applicants. Because it's not just about what you can do, but also whether you fit in with us. We also think it's important to train our delivery staff ourselves. They are the key to the success of CoolblueBezorgt; and must ensure that customers become very satisfied or even 'amazed'."
During the e-Delivery Event on 28 March, you will give a session on CoolblueBezorgt. What can visitors expect from this?
"At Coolblue, we are becoming more than ever a true 'customer journey agency'. In other words; we do much more than offering products, but we provide a good retail experience from A to Z. Delivery plays a very important role in that.
During this presentation, I will talk more about this customer journey and how we complete it with CoolblueBezorgt. It's about the total journey and the choices we have made at CoolblueBezorgt to really amaze our customers during that customer journey."
