If you’ve been following along with this column you should now have your site designed, working, and merchandised with a selection of products for your potential customers to buy. It makes sense at this point to address some of the operational considerations you’ll have as you get your e-commerce operation up and running.
It should be fairly obvious that you’ll need someone to stay on top of the technical aspects of your site. This includes maintenance, updates, and improvements. This could be a dedicated internal person, or it could be part of the package of services that your design and development partner can offer.
In terms of operations, you’re going to need at least one person to handle the actual processing of orders. This typically involves the receipt of the order information from your web store, review of the customer information to make sure that the order is valid (i.e. it’s not going to some guy in Lagos Nigeria via a PO Box in The Dominican Republic all from a credit card issued to a little old lady in Omaha), and of course the actual order entry into your dealer/retail management system. You’ll need people (of if volume allows a single person) to transact the order, pull all in-stock products from your inventory as well as place vendor orders for all out of stock products, send confirmation information to the customer advising them of the status of their order, and then get the in-stock products to your shipping department so they can begin their journey to the customer.
You don’t have a shipping department? Well, if you plan on doing any significant amount of business on-line, you’re going to need one. A dedicated shipping department that can handle the regular stream of products, but can also handle the high seasonal fluctuations that are inherent in various powersports retail segments. This means at least one shipping person, physical space enough for them, the orders waiting to ship, and the required packaging material. Once the order gets to the shipping department, you’ll need process it with your shipping terminal, as well as arrange for the tracking information to be communicated to the customer so they can monitor its progress.
Of course in order for stuff to go out, it’s gotta get in. No doubt you already have a receiving department or area, however I’m willing to bet that it does not currently have the resources dedicated to it to handle the tremendous increase in volume your soon-to-be-successful e-commerce operation is going to generate. Your receiving department should evolve into the quarterback of your e-commerce operations. They will be responsible for the receiving and distribution of product to inventory as well as getting products sent to shipping to fill pending orders for product that you did not have in stock. You will need and want an efficient link between your shipping and receiving operations to increase customer service, as well as keep inventory costs down. If you don’t get the receiving department and all of the connections between various functions like customer service, inventory control, shipping, and order processing running smoothly your fledgling e-commerce operation has a good chance of generating: irate customers, horribly inflated and inaccurate inventory levels, and a large amount of stress for everyone involved in e-commerce at your shop.
Of course, if you structure your e-commerce operation in such a way that you are able to rely on drop-shipping or other outsourced logistics then you may not need the physical space and as many directly involved people, but you will still need people that are able to stay on top of your contract logistics provider to make sure that you are maintaining the level of customer service that you want to be known for. Just because it’s out of sight, never for a second assume that it’s out of mind. They are still your customers, and it’s still your shop’s reputation.
You’re also going to need people to handle customer service. Whether you rely on e-mail or telephone as your communication channel, you are going to experience a tremendous amount of customer service related contact. This can be pre-sales questions about products (no matter how clearly your product description states that Product X only comes in blue, plenty of people will email or call asking how they can get it in green), and you will also get a lot of emails and phone calls about “Where’s my stuff?”
Seriously, you will begin hearing that question in your sleep.
No matter how clearly you explain to them (via e-mail, telephone, carrier pigeon, or smoke signals) that the product they ordered is on back order from the supplier, and that it will be at least three weeks before it’s even in the country, they will still call and email asking why they have not received a tracking number yet. As you do more volume of business, the volume of this type of interaction will increase. And as you move into more and more commodity, general market type products, this type of customer service hand-holding goes way up. Yet another reason to try and focus on unique or specialized products and leave the low margin, high volume business to people that enjoy migraines and ulcers.
This was a brief overview of some of the infrastructure you are going to require to have even a semi-functioning e-commerce operation. As your success, and thus volume goes up, the importance for a well-running machine keeps going up and up. Next month I’ll address some of the internal information processing requirements that you’ll not only need to ensure a smoothly running and effective e-commerce operation, but also benefit your dealership in general as well.
Tags:Column, DealerNews, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, motorcycle, powersports, selling-online
