Notes and Thoughts on Grocery 2.0

As I’m going through several issues this Monday morning, I realized this saying kept coming back into my head several times. The devil really is in the details — and it’s those details that will derail your customer service and ultimately your revenue growth.

Think about it…If you pick a gallon of milk and put it into your online grocery customer’s order and it turns out to be one day past it’s expiration, you have definitely missed a detail. Sure, you put milk into the order and the customer did want it, but they are definitely going to notice the date, and it won’t please them.

Or maybe they asked for green bananas, but you gave them yellow. Again, a detail was missed. In fact, in this case, not only was the detail of the request (green bananas) missed, but so too was the other detail — did you call the customer and tell them you didn’t have green bananas? That customer would have definitely appreciated the call and the detail of exceeding customer expectations would have been accomplished.

Details are a part of every one of our tasks throughout the day. Pay attention to them — your customers definitely do! Don’t shortchange your customers by missing the details. If you miss them enough, your business will suffer!

– Scot

So, the post holiday retail numbers will be a challenge to swallow. As we get ready for a new year, by what measure will consumers use in making their purchasing decisions in 2009?

Just before the 2008 holiday shopping season a survey taken of retail shoppers indicated that a distinguishing factor for shoppers’ choice of stores is customer service.

Online grocery shopping and other tools such as weekly circular, recipe of the day, and more that MyWebGrocer offers are great tools in distinguishing your store as a customer service first business. Check us out for more details.

Grocery shopping is up in this economy due to eat-at-home versus dining out costs. Consumers still want to feel special when they do shop. There have been articles and surveys telling us that customers don’t want to feel are hurried through the cash lines. They still like human interaction when they shop.

Online Grocery Shopping provides a great channel for this human connection between consumers and your store. Personal shoppers pick orders for your customers. When the order is picked up, they are greeted by the personal shopper who reviews their order and addresses the consumer by name.

So though it may seem in other ecommerce channels that the consumer is never seen by the supplier, the “click-and-mortar” features of Online Grocer Shopping brings a fresh way to connect with your customers.

/Dave

“Eat at home” is the hot buzz term that means more and more people are cutting down on their eating out budgets. They still have to eat, and they are short on time now more than ever. Companies doing more with less means more hours at work. So how can people put in the kind of hours they need to at work, cut down on their restaurant visits, and still get good healthy meal choices? Online grocery shopping. The “eat at home” way of our economy lends itself to helping consumers by making it easier and less time consuming to place grocery orders and have them delivered or ready for pick-up on their way home from work. They just spent 2 extra hours at the office or job site. They can’t afford to go out to eat. They’re tired but need food. Here is a grocer’s opportunity to provides a service that builds customer loyalty through a solution your consumers are looking for. Online Grocery Shopping.

/Dave