Stuck in an airport with nowhere to go? When the CrowdStrike tech outage brought global travel to its knees this July, our US correspondent Gordon Hecht was reminded that it pays to have long-term plans, because – even in furniture retail – you never know what’s round the corner …
Mid-July was a great time for travel by car or bus. But not so much for airline travel.
I, like millions of other people, felt the impact of the global IT outage that caused flight delays and cancellations around this big blue marble we call Earth.
My retail experience reminds me of stressful situations trying to recover service failures for one or two customers. I sympathise for the front-line gate agents and phone crews of the major airlines. They had to resolve thousands of issues with limited resources.
With all the chaos, my airline treated me quite well. I won’t tell you which carrier I used, but there was very little delta between their regular service level and their crisis service level. They found me another flight, although I had to change airports. They kept delays under two hours. And they awarded me 20,000 Sky Pesos towards another flight. All without asking.
We of the retail world have to master the art of customer service recovery. There’s so much that can go wrong on the path from shopper to owner. Errors in advertising, incorrect stock count, delivery truck issues, worker call-offs, product damage, delayed shipments, and general human error.
Chances are good that you and your team can manage the one-off situations. You might even have a written procedure that includes recommended guidelines and allowances for severe issues, remembering that it’s always less costly to give merchandise than money.
But do you have a plan for a massive issue? One that affects hundreds or thousands of customers? Any of these situations could affect you …
Vehicle fleet vandalism
Imagine that your operations team is about to start loading the delivery trucks for the day’s route. Except there is a problem. Some nutjob slashed tires on every one of your vehicles.
Beyond the repair cost, think about the delays. You’ll lose the delivery slots today, and tomorrow’s schedule is already filled to the brim. Multiple customers disappointed for multiple days.
Whether you have a single pick-up truck or a fleet of bobtails, you can expect the truck breakdown issue will hit you at some point.
Prepare today. Open an account with your local truck rental offices. You’ll have a membership number that will save time in the rental process. While you are doing that, open accounts with a couple of local tire dealers (especially those that do fleet service).
Create a triage process to separate the ‘must-have’ customers from the ‘will wait’ customers. Some people are forgiving. Others are not.
Your staff chucks a sickie
People get sick. A couple of years ago we encouraged them to work through it. Things have changed. Today, we prefer that employees stay home.
But what if the entire staff at a location or department all got the creeping crud, and you had nobody to cover their absences?
On the retail side, you may have to close a store location for a day or two. On the operations side, you’d have to get someone to man the fort.
Take preventative action now. Cross training is necessary for the operational team. Personnel changes happen without notice. The greater the number of people that can perform multiple tasks, the lesser the chance that your service level will be diminished.
On the retail side, create a plan for fill in staff. Goal #1 is to keep the door open – whether other stores provide temporary coverage, or you have designated floaters. If there simply is no way to get coverage, post the closing on your website, Google for Business site, and when possible, a sign on the door.
If your store is equipped with a phone-answering device, post that change so incoming callers will know you have a brief time change in schedule.
Buyer, buyer! We’re on fire!
It will probably never happen. But you should prepare for that catastrophic event to your locations. Fires, earthquakes, floods and extended power outages have all affected US retail stores in the last year.
Fires or floods at your warehouse can destroy your inventory in a matter of moments. Those disasters could close a retail location for months or longer.
You can ease the pain of recovery by keeping a current and accurate inventory of merchandise and equipment on paper and on a Cloud storage system. In my days at Tumbleweed Tech I learned that a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a term paper. Take that iFruit phone around your locations and snap photos or create a video that covers your assets. Shoot those up to the Cloud to avoid a storm in the future.
Fortunately, your vendors should be able to rush replacement merchandise to you quickly. Start by ordering replacements for sold orders first. As for storage, consider using empty shipping containers. They provide a quick, low-cost alternative should you lose your warehouse.
While you are opening accounts at vehicle rental and tire stores, you can add in suppliers of logistical equipment. Forklifts, dollies, moving pads. Some items may be available for rent.
Extended power outages may mean closing locations, depending on the weather. Too hot or too cold, nobody wants to work in that environment. In the case of a short-term outage, you need a method to process a written sales order. Good old pen and paper with a calculator.
Keep a small supply of paper sales orders on hand. Simple copies of your standard slip. Be sure your sales team knows how to figure tax on a sale. Your staff can snap a photo and text your customer a receipt. Next time you are at the bank, ask if they have some of those old-fashioned carbon credit card slips, too. Train your team to print the name, account number, expiration date, and three- or four-digit verification number on any bank card receipt they prepare.
Be prepared
It took the airlines four days to resolve and repair their IT failures. Considering the thousands of flights cancelled, affecting millions of passengers, it’s amazing that things were back to normal by day five. That recovery didn’t happen by accident.
Preplanning, personnel mobilisation, flexibility with pricing and scheduling, coupled with ongoing communication updates, kept the event from becoming travel armageddon.
You can plan for worst-case scenarios too. Learn what you team can (and cannot) do, train for flexibility, and secure your assets and resources ahead of time. Some day – and that day may never come – you will be happy you did.
Gordon can be reached at [email protected].
