Do these client stories sound familiar to you?
The sun is shining and I work in my vegetable garden and I need some extra supplies to finish up the work. The stores are closed and the items I need to order will have a shipping cost of €70. There isn’t a click and collect option available…
Our pharmacists sends out an email to inform us that mouth masks are back in stock. I want to pick them up as soon as possible…
I miss the friday night fries from our take away restaurant. I know exactly what I want to order but I don’t want to wait in line during these times of social distancing…
My favorite jeans needs to be replaced. I know I want the same model from the same brand. I don’t need to fit it and I want to buy it from the local fashion boutique…
Quick and safe pick up from your local stores is now more than ever a point of value.
But it can be done differently as well…
Oh no! Yesterday I noticed that my fresh grounded coffee was almost finished and it would only be enough for my first cup the next morning.
Luckily we have the internet! I grab my laptop and order a new pack of my favorite grounded coffee from my local coffee shop. Instead of shipping I choose for the ‘Click and Collect’ option. So today I could walk to the store and collect my order during the time slot I selected. It was quickly ordered, easily payed online, no waiting line in front of the store and I received the package completely in line with the social distance safety requirements. ☕
Click and Collect for local stores
Unfortunately I can’t place a lot of online orders with the local stores I visit frequently. Most of them don’t have a website so I am forced to look for alternatives. But there aren’t many local alternatives to be found at all.
Online orders has been growing in the last years but the marketshare isn’t big enough yet. Especially the smaller local stores are running way behind…
A huge part of the population is now learning about the joy of online shopping. And after the lockdown measures they will continue to search more frequently for online alternatives to avoid a tip to the local stores.
The click and collect concept has been around for awhile. But unfortunately we haven’t seen it in use with a lot for stores that cater to their local audience. Click and collect can be a win-win situation for the stores and their customers. The client pays you upfront and you know precisely when clients will pick up their purchase. And for the client it is pleasant to order and pay online, and they know that the trip to the store will be quick and easy as the purchase will be ready to pick up as soon as they enter your store.
Recently we developed for the biological supermarket BE O Versmarkt a new webshop with a click and collect functionality. Their clients can easily select the products they want to buy and pick them up during one of the available time slots. The clients don’t need to wait to get into the store and they can return home quickly with their fresh BIO products. Today this is a valuable service for their clients.
Also after the crisis people will still want to use this service because the the benefits are very clear: as a consumer you know that your products are in-stock and you can quickly pick them up. And if you do forget to place something in your online shopping cart you can still hop into the physical store to buy that specific item. A click and collect service will stay a valuable asset for food and non-food stores.
A lot of stores are forced to close their doors temporarily because they aren’t selling essential products. However, they would be able to still service their clients if they can deliver their product in the mail or by offering a click and collect option on their webshop. Picking up products from a local store was always an option during the Corona lockdown measurements in all European countries.
As a business leader you need to ask yourself the right questions. Think about how you can approach the switch to online for your company.
- How can I offer a safe online shop to my customers?
- What kind of questions will customers have about my products and services?
- Can I put all my products in an online shop?
- Can I deliver my products with a parcel shipment or through the mail?
- How can I organise a good click and collect flow in my store?
In this example from Patisserie Lietaert we kept the humorous and well known local baker at the center of the attention of his online shop. You can order all products online and choose to pick it up from his store. It gave him already a lot of benefits before the Corona crisis as he could already service more clients than usual on his busy days and it helps him to accurately forecast the products he needs to prepare for the next working day.
Also our client Surprice who has been making authentic ice cream creations for the last 10 years seen a lot of benefits from the click and collect option on his webshop. The normal B2B orders from restaurant went down to 0. But luckily he can still sell his ice cream cakes and creations through his channel of professional bakeries that service as a pick up point throughout Belgium. So end clients can order them online, choose click and collect and pick up the order at their lokal bakery.
With all these successful examples can only conclude that click and collect will be here to stay.
