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What are BOPIS’s most glaring growing pains?

BOPIS (buy online, pickup in-store) gained greater acceptance with consumers globally last year but its challenges were highlighted in a new survey from the U.K.

More than a third (36 percent) of U.K. shoppers who used BOPIS, also called “click & collect,” encountered issues over the holiday season with their orders, according to the second annual JDA/Centiro Christmas Customer Pulse report conducted by YouGov. The study surveyed 2,008 adults between Dec. 29 and 30.

Of those who encountered issues, the major problems were seen as:

  • Not having a dedicated area in-store for BOPIS purchases, cited by 31 percent;
  • Long waiting times due to lack of in-store staff, 31 percent;
  • Staff being unable to/taking a long time to locate items in-store, 24 percent.

On the positive side, 41 percent of online holiday shoppers used BOPIS, up from 39 percent in the year-ago survey. Of those that used BOPIS, 24 percent said they would use the service more next holiday season. Fifty-six percent said they used BOPIS to avoid delivery charges, while 49 percent said it was more convenient than home delivery. A quarter said they chose to shop specifically with a retailer that offered BOPIS over one that solely offered home delivery.

In the U.S., the International Council of Shopping Centers’ “Holiday Consumer Purchasing Trends Study” found about a third (32 percent) of shoppers this past holiday season took advantage of BOPIS. Of those, 69 percent went on to buy other things while they were picking up their orders and 36 percent made another purchase in an adjacent store.

A StellaService study last year got some attention for finding that using BOPIS only saved shoppers on average 96 seconds versus entering the store and checking out themselves. But a Forrester Research study found numerous other reasons backing BOPIS’s growing popularity, including saving on shipping costs, adding convenience over online purchasing, ensuring a product was available and reserving it, and getting the product on the same day.

BrainTrust

"First of all, can I lobby to kill that term, BOPIS? The British have a much more elegant name: Click and Collect. BOPIS sounds like something that requires a doctor’s office visit to cure."

Nikki Baird

VP of Strategy, Aptos


"So you spend millions building a store, stocking it with inventory and scheduling it with staff. Then you launch your click-and-collect program (thanks Nikki!) and see it used as nothing more than a glorified vending machine!"

Kevin Graff

President, Graff Retail


"The most astounding statistics from this study in my opinion were that 32% of shoppers used BOPIS and a whopping 69% of those shoppers bought additional items while in-store. If that isn’t a huge incentive for retailers to get BOPIS right, I don’t know what is."

Arie Shpanya

Founder & Executive Chairman, Wiser


Discussion Questions

What do you see as the biggest challenges to well-executed BOPIS? What are the solutions?

Poll

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Chris Petersen, PhD
Chris Petersen, PhD
8 years ago

Biggest challenge is real-time inventory management at the shelf level!

Brick-and-mortar retail systems were designed to manage inventory totals at store locations for weekly replenishment. Most retailers simply do not have actual SKU counts on the shelf at the individual store when the consumer clicks online. And what happens when the last item(s) for a store is already in shoppers’ carts waiting to check out so they are still reported as in-stock?

If BOPIS is to scale and succeed, retailers will need something like RFID systems that allow in-stock scanning store-wide on a real time basis. Perpetual inventory management through POS won’t cut it.

Hell hath no fury like a customer who purchased by click and can’t collect when they come to the store!

Nikki Baird
Nikki Baird
8 years ago

First of all, can I lobby to kill that term, BOPIS? The British have a much more elegant name: Click and Collect. BOPIS sounds like something that requires a doctor’s office visit to cure.

Second, I do think that the physical execution is probably the biggest pain point. Employees who don’t know what is going on or don’t have ready access to the customer’s order information and a lot of variability in how the in-store pick-up side is implemented, so that consumers are confused about where to go or who to talk to.

Unfortunately, retailers seem more afraid of promising inventory they don’t have than on building a strong pick-up process. While their fears are legitimate, especially if they don’t have accurate in-store inventory, as with all things customer related they should not ignore the process, training and technology to support the customer-employee interaction, which is a core piece of in-store pickup.

I’ve seen other data points that validate that in-store pickup drives incremental trips and incremental basket, which is why it’s worth doing for the retailer — but only if they put a process in place that facilitates all that incremental stuff, instead of wastes customer time and creates annoyances and ill will. That’ll kill incremental basket very quickly.

Ralph Jacobson
Ralph Jacobson
8 years ago

Executing an organized process is certainly the challenge. The problem is that this service is not a priority, or it may be considered an afterthought due to the fact that 99 percent of in-store staff is taking care of people who are actually shopping in the store, as opposed to ensuring online shoppers are also taken care of.

This service needs to be taken seriously in every store of the chain. Store ops management needs to follow up weekly and examine how the process is being handled in literally every store. I see this as being the chief reason online shoppers get disappointed.

Ken Morris
Ken Morris
8 years ago

According to our Boston Retail Partners 2016 POS/Customer Engagement Survey (released 2 weeks ago), 85 percent of retailers indicated that unified commerce is their top priority. Many have taken the “just get something done” approach to deliver omnichannel. The unfortunate result of this quick-fix approach is a “faux” omnichannel model that doesn’t execute as promised and has the risk of disappointing customers. While 60 percent of retailers indicate they have implemented “inventory visibility across channels,” 80 percent of those retailers indicate that the system “needs improvement.” According to another recent study, this is a real issue, as 60 percent of click-and-collect orders placed on Cyber Monday had problems.

Many legacy systems are not designed to accommodate today’s retail environment and retailers have scrambled to cobble things together in attempts to deliver the omnichannel capabilities their customers demand.

Retailers need to invest in infrastructure, networks and service-oriented architecture (SOA) layers to do it right. The risk of losing customers due to disappointing shopping experiences caused by a flawed omnichannel architecture is deadly and that is why “real” unified commerce should be a top priority for 2016.

Adrian Weidmann
Adrian Weidmann
8 years ago

The YouGov survey brought to light the obvious challenges — ensuring that these types of omnichannel initiatives are in fact orchestrated and aligned across the various departments. The survey results suggest that the interactive team created the functionality of BOPIS on the website but failed to identify, define and activate the logistics and processes required to actually deliver on this promise to its shoppers and customers.

Retail may want to monitor and look to the QSR/fast casual food service industry as a number of those brands are making this initiative work quite successfully for their customers. Chilli’s and Noodles & Company are two such brands that have implemented the BOPIS strategy with great results. While working for one international QSR brand redefining their in-store digital media workflows, we ordered our lunch from Chili’s (a competitor?!) online to be picked up at a location across the street. It worked seamlessly and I was able to use this process as a learning event.

Adrian Weidmann
Adrian Weidmann
8 years ago

I concur with Nikki. From now on I, for one, will use “click-and-collect!”

Max Goldberg
Max Goldberg
8 years ago

If well executed, BOPIS can be a benefit to retailers and consumers. Consumers know that the product will be available at a given price. They save time and gain piece of mind. The potential pitfalls are on the retail side. A store must devote employee time to picking the item(s) and serving the order when the consumer comes to the store. The retailer must have an accurate inventory management system to insure that the items a customer orders are available. And finally, the retailer loses potential impromptu sales, as most BOPIS transactions are handled by the customer service desk, usually at the front of the store.

Kevin Graff
Kevin Graff
8 years ago

So you spend millions building a store, stocking it with inventory and scheduling it with staff. Then you launch your click-and-collect program (thanks Nikki!) and see it used as nothing more than a glorified vending machine! Customers come into the store, pick up their product and leave. The staff at the pick up counters look like transaction bots whose only job is to track down the item and hand it to the customer.

Look, the “hook” of the click-and-collect program is that you actually get the customer to (finally) come into your store. For goodness sake, teach your staff how to sell them more stuff while they’re there!

Bob Amster
Bob Amster
8 years ago

While it is true that (conceptually) BOPIS is possible and certainly desirable, achieving the smooth execution is the challenge. Automated systems can provide information but people have to execute: Items to be picked-up in store have to be set aside, properly identified and easily found. This process requires changes in store layout and creates new functions to be performed by store associates. The overall business process has to be as foolproof as possible.

Inventory accuracy is of the utmost importance because no retailer should want to send a customer to a store to pick up an item that is not there physically, but was there on paper. We have been proposing that item-level RFID is a key technology to include if BOPIS is going to work smoothly. It is the ONLY technology that provides physical inventory accuracy on a real-time basis.

Taking the statistics provided in these studies at face value, they are not encouraging. If only 24 percent of those who used BOPIS would do it again next holiday season it did not leave a great taste in their mouth, and retailers will need to hone their BOPIS processes. I am talking about inventory accuracy, proper product identification, dedicated holding area, added steps, confirmation of order request by store associates, credit card charge at pick-up time, etc.

The adage that “the devil is in the details” applies to BOPIS as well.

Gordon Arnold
Gordon Arnold
8 years ago

Accountability is the issue here. Store management must be reassessed and assigned with staffing for the issue to turn into a profit center. Another problem is to identify where pick-up is outside the store and supply adequate parking/pick-up spaces with enforced maximum use times. Allowing space for impulse purchases in pick-up areas and easy store access will grow sales if properly managed and store supported.

Simon Jones
Simon Jones
8 years ago

Certainty of stock availability and in-store processes to ensure BOPIS customers get what they ordered.

James Tenser
James Tenser
8 years ago

It’s clear that perfect click-and-collect services depend on an accurate and up-to-the minute perpetual store inventory, as well as a designated pickup location inside (or outside) the store.

Click-and-collect seems more relevant for grocery throughout the year, but during the holiday crush it makes plenty of sense for time-pressed shoppers who know exactly what they want.

Retailers should let go of the spurious concept that store pickup is an opportunity to drive more traffic. Shoppers who pre-order online are best served by a quick, painless pickup process that takes place a few steps from the front door. Don’t worry — they’ll remember later that you served them well.

Alan Lipson
Alan Lipson
8 years ago

I see two main challenges to the success of click-and-collect. First, ensuring that the product is indeed available in the store. Second, ensuring the product is picked, packed and ready for the consumer at the designated time.

This first problem is solved in differing ways depending on the type of retailer. For clothing and fashion type retailers it will most likely take RFID or some other form of technology to ensure that what is in the inventory count is really available. For grocery, it’s a little easier since higher quantities are usually available and in some cases, substitution could solve the problem. For QSR, it’s more of a manufacturing process, so as long as the raw materials are available, the final product should be ready, much like prescriptions in the retail environment.

The second problem is more of a human resources issue. How are the store personnel compensated? What incentives do they have for this task compared with serving live customers in the store? What is the overall KPI for the store management and retailer for ensuring that this click-and-collect process succeeds?

Lastly, have the sales associates been trained in not only servicing the customer with the delivery of the click-and-collect products, but do they know how to engage the customer to bring them into the store and make additional purchases?

As others have said, that’s the main reason to get them to the store in the first place.

Gajendra Ratnavel
Gajendra Ratnavel
8 years ago

BOPIS during rush time like the holiday season needs to be organized better because using the locker idea won’t work. The locker concept is ideal for non-rush times.

Organized better doesn’t mean just having more staff (although that would certainly help), but also things like providing a time slot for people to come pick up their stuff. They don’t have to follow it but if they do, they can pickup faster and be out of there.

Ken Silay
Ken Silay
8 years ago

In an article written last year, I identified that most retailers will still be trying to be “omni-channel” in 2017. The key reasons are (1) a robust network infrastructure in all stores to handle the different demands of the customers and associates which doesn’t happen overnight, (2) a customer data management structure that maintains all channels of customer data in one storage location with quick access via the robust network discussed above and (3) as others are identifying, inventory accuracy that exceeds at least the 95 to 98% accuracy level.

Today, BOPIS — and it doesn’t matter what you call it – is done usually with some sort of algorithm that takes into account the inaccuracy of inventory to only look at stores above a certain inventory number to try to be reasonably sure that the store will have it. So rather than address the inventory accuracy issue by implementing the technology (RFID) to solve it, we continue to only look at the cost of the tag and its affect on margin and not try to see the positive consequences accurate inventory will have on better merchandise allocation, reducing markdowns and the possibility of selling the item farther up the supply chain at a higher margin.

We need to think differently, be more creative and assess and take the necessary risks to meet this challenge.

Georgina Bliss
Georgina Bliss
8 years ago

The solution is easy: Regular, consistent, appropriate, thorough, and solid customer service training for all employees (emphasis on associates in the trenches) in the client services’ food chain. Retailers need to return to basics in training and restore “Training Departments” with dedicated staffs.

Arie Shpanya
Arie Shpanya
8 years ago

I agree that execution is the biggest challenge here. Any retailer can offer the option, but it’s clear that not all retailers can follow through properly. The bottom line is to make it quick and painless. That means that retailers need to have inventory information updated to ensure they can fulfill all online orders to be picked up at a particular store. They also need to make sure they can fulfill them quickly, with dedicated check out lines and employees that have a pulse on stock levels.

The most astounding statistics from this study in my opinion were that 32% of shoppers used BOPIS and a whopping 69% of those shoppers bought additional items while in-store. If that isn’t a huge incentive for retailers to get BOPIS right, I don’t know what is.

Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.
Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.
8 years ago

Operationally, BOPIS is totally disconnected from the culture a bricks store has spent decades leveraging as their principle business asset. The stark contrast between Walmart’s and Amazon’s logistics tells the tale.

Walmart built the world’s premier logistics operations delivering full pallets of merchandise to their stores, and “warehousing” that merchandise on the shelves of the store — including back rooms. Shoppers then serve as unpaid stock-pickers to get their own stuff, and take it to the checkout to pay. For Walmart, this is all MASS movement of merchandise.

Amazon, on the other hand, has managed logistically, each and every item sold to each and every shopper. This begins with the sale at the Amazon “shelf,” a web page, and then managing the delivery to the address of the shopper’s choosing. The focus has been on timely delivery of masses of SINGLE items.

The stark reality is that anyone can hire people to build an “Amazonian” web site. And BOPIS is a fantastic IDEA, for a lot of reasons. But Walmart, nor any other bricks retailer, can’t simply recreate the logistics of the Amazonian single item delivery system!

I’m reasonably creative at solving problems, but the ONLY solution I see to this one is robotics. Check the progress of the two retail giants in this department, and specifically in terms of the atomistic solution that Amazon has built — single items, contrasted with pallets for everyone else. This same issue is seriously minimized by Costco’s big head stores — and weaker online focus.

And that’s all I have to say about that … right now. 😉

Lee Peterson
Lee Peterson
8 years ago

According to a syndicated quant and qual study we did on BOPIS preferences, the real 900 lb. gorilla in the room is that customers, by a wide margin, don’t want to go inside the store at at all for BOPIS. Defeats the purpose. Given that very few retailers actually do drive through BOPIS, there is a tremendous opportunity for retailers to get that % even higher and be first/best to market. But … there are also huge operational challenges, like storage, freshness, speed of service, staffing, etc. that make it very difficult to execute. It’s a real conundrum at this point. But the idea of store as a fulfillment center is definitely under way.

Walmart and Tesco have provided the best tests so far with drive through scenarios, but there’s a long way to go for them and for others that are only doing BOPIS in store. This is something that should be concepted from the customer out, vs operations in. Let’s hope that for a lot of retailers with sinking footfalls (traffic), that’s the approach.

Chuck Palmer
Chuck Palmer
8 years ago

The infrastructure upgrades necessary to make click & collect work smoothly are daunting and may come eventually, but not quickly. Consumers are starting their journey online and that environment can be infinitely more flexible in this scenario than the physical. It makes sense that the online experience set the tone and manage expectations.

In these early days of c&c, retailers should be strategically approaching the service with a learning attitude. Select items, select stores, maybe even select VIP customers who may be a bit more loyal and willing to give feedback and participate in shaping the service.

In the store, I wonder if in some cases, an assisted self-serve model would work with either text or digital signage notifications about order fulfillment, account charged (swipe/dip card to prove it’s you) and pickup time/confirmation. The reassurances would go far to build trust in the system, provide real behavioral data and offer an easy way to handle and document issue resolution.

And am I crazy, or didn’t Sears, J.C. Penney, Service Merchandise, et. al. tackle some of these similar issues in the 1970s and 1980s?

Melanie Nuce
Melanie Nuce
8 years ago

Flexible fulfillment options like BOPIS can really be a game-changer for consumers and for retailers. But some retail companies are simply failing to prioritize inventory visibility for omni-channel fulfillment and do not leverage item-level RFID. In fact, retailers currently implementing item-level RFID would agree that fulfilling from the store in any capacity is nearly impossible without the level of real-time data and inventory accuracy it provides.

Moving forward, RFID will play a major role in a store’s fulfillment capabilities and give retailers the inventory confidence to avoid these negative consumer experiences.

Dave Wendland
Dave Wendland
8 years ago

First and foremost, let’s not throw this baby out with the bath water just yet.

In my opinion, BOPIS is here to stay and it is becoming one of the essential building blocks to marry brick-and-mortar and online shopping. Sure there are challenges … remember this is new.

Solutions in this evolution? Reward customers for adding to their market basket while in the store, make the experience memorable (and fun!), and, by all means, train the staff to meet the demands of this new normal.

Devika Girish
Devika Girish
8 years ago

Interesting stats, Tom. As mentioned long waiting times can definitely spoil the entire shopping experience for customers. One of the technologies that can prove helpful on this front is iBeacon technology. For example, you can deploy a beacon at the parking lot to notify the in-store staff to keep the order ready and install another beacon near the click-and-collect counter to notify users when their order is ready. You can read in detail on how to go about this here.