Peak period service failures

The service designer in me is always fascinated by the way organisations handle service failures - especially during peak periods - and the Christmas holidays, with lots of regular staff on leave, increased demand, and major sales taking place always delivers (or not, as you'll soon see).

As with many people, the Christmas period is full of retail interactions with companies of various sorts. Gift-buying is obviously high on the list, but so is taking advantage of sales (in-store and online), and the fun and games of deliveries. Knowing what goes in to running a retail operation, I'm typically fairly patient during these times, but I'm equally constantly appraising the ways in which organisations respond along the way. So here are a few quick anecdotes from the past couple of weeks to ease us in to the new year...

1. Karst Online

I'm a fan of Karst products and decided to order something from their online store. The order went through and I received a confirmation "We're on it!" email straight away. The normal next step is a notification that the order has been picked, packed, and shipped. Instead I received an email from customer service telling me they were out of stock; that I shouldn't have been able to order it; that they'll find out why that happened and fix the issue; that stock would be available in a few weeks if I wanted to wait, or that they could refund the order if I preferred. I asked for a refund and it was processed the next day.

This is a good example of a no-fuss service recovery. They admitted the issue was their fault; promised to rectify it; and offered me options - which they then delivered on quickly.

2. Campos Coffee

We go through a lot of coffee in our household and so I placed an order for a kilo of beans through Campos' online store (something I do every 3-4 weeks). The order was placed on Dec 25th and packed on Dec 29th. Given the state of our coffee supplies I opted for express delivery. The order to picked up by the delivery company - via Shippit - on Jan 2nd. Campos and the couriers both operate over the weekend, but given the time of year I understand the delay.

And that's where things fell apart. The courier - CouriersPlease - was subcontracted by Shippit - and took the parcel to their depot. The delivery ETA has since come and gone without any movement. It's still sitting there.

I started by contacting Campos, who responded with a variation on: we're not the couriers; we'll pass your feedback along. (Not happy with that response at all.) I contacted Shippit, who said "We'll contact CouriersPlease but it's out of our hands." (That's the last I heard from Shippit.) And then on to CouriersPlease who, after a frustrating exchange with their online chatbot got me through to a 'human agent' who was able to tell me that there was no further information available but did I have any instructions for the driver...

That felt like such a curious response I asked for more details - what driver? Are you able to confirm that you've located the parcel (my suspicion is that it's been lost)? Can you give me an ETA on when it will be delivered. The response was confounding: No, it hasn't been loaded onto a truck; I'm just confirming with you that you still want it delivered...

The agent ended by promising to following with the team and that they'd email me when they had sorted out delivery. That was Friday morning. I've heard nothing since. (A CouriersPlease van was delivering something in my street on Sunday, but not to me.) I tried following up Saturday only to be told that customer service operating hours are Mon-Fri only.

So, of the three parties involved in this transaction, two have basically disavowed any responsibility for the stuff up; and the third is non-responsive. Suffice to say: not satisfactory at all. But let me be clear: as the retailer in this scenario, Campos should retain responsibility for the delivery of my order - this idea of washing your hands of things once it leaves your warehouse is dangerous, and not how customers see the world. I purchased from Campos and they've failed to deliver; and now they're refusing to do anything about it.

Expectations

Companies often underestimate the importance of setting clear and reasonable expectations in the minds of customers during the early interactions of a service. Advertisements and contextual information presented during a purchase help to establish factors such as stock availability, processing times, and delivery timeframes.

During periods of peak demand those factors may change. Organisations that fail to re-set expectations are setting themselves up for service failures in the minds of customers. Which then cascades into higher volumes of queries, follow-up messages, and complaints. When this gets out of hand, companies can spend all of their time trying to handle the complaints instead of being able to actually deliver the service.

We saw this in a client a few months back. A system change led to a reduction in customer visibility over delivery status; which created an influx of calls to check on things - even though they were on track; which impacted on their ability to make the outbound calls needed to get the jobs done; which created delays and more calls. This spiralled out of control quickly and they ended up nearly tripling the size of their contact centre team to cope.

That change wasn't managed well; customer expectations weren't well set; and the subsequent flurry of enquiries created a cascading series of failures in their systems.

In my case, Campos, Shippit, and CouriersPlease may all be thinking that they're doing well given the time of year. And if they'd said that when I ordered I probably wouldn't be concerned. But the expectation they set was for delivery much more quickly than it turns out they're able.