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When talking to retailers about their online strategy, the topics lately have been about rich Internet application interfaces like AJAX, Flash or Silverlight and social functionality like consumer product reviews.    Despite personally enjoying these topics,  I often try to bring the conversation around to the basics to make sure the retailer has done the basic things like implement accurate real time inventory visibility and accurate tracking through an order management system and set of processes.    Nothing creates a sub par customer experience more than messing up the basic fundamentals of what consumers have come to expect when shopping, tracking, and receiving their order.  The experience I had with Barnes and Noble last week illustrates this pretty well.

My wife was speaking with our daughter’s 4th grade teacher and she told my wife that she wanted to have the class read The Westing Game before school was released for the summer.  Unfortunately, the school library only had a few copies so my wife and I decided to purchase the needed books and donate them to the school.  We spent the following weekend visiting a few book stores and bought all of the copies they had, but we were still short about 10 copies. 

My wife logged on to BN.com and added the 10 copies to her cart and Barnes and Noble reported that they had them in stock.  She selected expedited delivery which is 3 days or less.   Upon BN’s receipt of the order,  they promptly sent out an email telling her that the books would ship the following day.  This was great and my wife was pleased knowing that the product would arrive before the end of the week so the class could begin working on the book soon there after.

Two days later BN followed up with an email saying that due to “an unexpected delay” they were unable to ship the merchandise for 1-5 business days.

Due to an unexpected delay, we are unable to ship the merchandise listed below in the time frame indicated in our previous email.  We anticipate that your merchandise will be shipped within the next 1-5 business days. (Please note: business days are Monday through Friday, excluding holidays observed by the Post Office.)  As always, you will not be charged until this merchandise ships from our warehouse.

 

We assume that you still want to purchase this merchandise.  However, if you would like to cancel this portion of your order, you may do so online at:

www.bn.com/orderstatus.

 

Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay.

 

– Barnes & Noble

Disappointed at losing 3 days in the process, my wife started working on an order with Amazon.com.  Miraculously,  two hours later we receive another email saying that our order is packed and ready to ship. 

Thank you for shopping with us.Your order is now packed and ready to leave our warehouse. The details of your order appear below. Within one business day of receiving this email, you may track the delivery status of your order at *UPS Tracking Link*.

When a tracking number is provided, please note that we’ve assigned it before giving the package to the carrier. Tracking details for your shipment may not be available immediately. Some carriers do not have weekend pick up service, and will not process tracking information until the next business day following the completion of your order. You may need to check the carrier’s site periodically for updated information.

We appreciate your business and look forward to you visiting us again soon at http://www.bn.com.

– Barnes & Noble

 

So at this point my wife is left with a WTH moment and not sure whether to trust the first or second email.   Fortunately the package arrived a few days later, but she was left with a distrust of BN and their ability to execute on an order.   The next time she goes to place an order, she’s going to have to wonder if BN will be able to ship the product or if she should just go to Amazon.com from the start. 

I’m not sure if this was caused by inaccurate inventory data or a poor order management system/process for tracking the status.  But this is a basic level of capability that consumers have come to expect and not being able to provide this greatly affects the customer experience.

When determining your priorities for your online strategy, if you can’t provide the basic level of capabilities, then raise the priorities for these improvements and lower the priorities of the latest greatest trends going on in the online world.