April 28, 2020 •Elder Ocampo
To help combat the spread of COVID-19 and maintain business as (close to) usual, many retailers and restaurants have implemented a curbside pickup option for customers. By letting your customers order online or over the phone and picking up their order at your store, curbside pickup has become a go-to way to limit human interaction. customers In this post, we are going to dig into the mechanics of curbside pickup and give you the tools you need to get started or improve your current curbside pickup process!
There are several steps to take into consideration when getting started with curbside pickup. While none of these steps are particularly difficult, overlooking any of them could undermine your efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19 as much as possible.
Step 1: Devise a Process and Train Staff on the Procedure of the Process
One of the reasons for curbside pickup is to get as close to a no-contact process as possible. This means you want the least amount of people possible touching each order. Your process might have unique elements that are relevant to your business. Whatever your process includes, be sure that all staff is trained in the process to avoid confusion. This will create an efficient and safe execution of the process.
Step 2: Pack Orders with Paper or Plastic Bags
When orders come in, they should be assigned to a designated in-store shopper/picker for packing. Even if there is only one product, it should be packed in a paper or plastic bag. Making it convenient for customers carrying the products from their vehicle to the home.
After packing orders in bags, make sure that each order is clearly labelled. This will help avoid confusion at pickup, which can be a great time saver.
Step 3: Create a Pickup Station with Shelving Storage Racks
Once the order items have been collected, they should be delivered to a pickup station. Depending upon your location and/or the weather, this pickup station can be located indoors or outdoors. This may come down to how much room you have for setting up a pickup station in your store or what the weather situation is like outside of your store. Regardless of indoors or outdoors, have storage racks in place for the orders to be set while the shopper/picker gets started with the next orders.
Step 4: Use Signage to Direct Customers to Your Pickup Area
With anything new, there is a learning curve. If you are implementing curbside pickup for the first time, it’s very likely that your customers won’t be 100% sure about where to pick up their order—or even which direction to approach the pickup station. This can lead to serious traffic jams in your parking lot, which will be frustrating for everybody. Use clear signage at parking lot entrances that lead users along a path to pickup can avoid some serious headaches.
Step 5: Deliver Orders with Rolling Carts or Shopping Carts
If your pickup section is a designated area of your parking lot, you’ll need carts to transport orders to vehicles. With multiple vehicles in the pickup queue, rolling carts and shopping carts are a great way to service multiple customers at the same time. This will keep the lines moving and limit frustration.
Some businesses skip the pickup station racks and just park loaded carts at the pickup location so that they can be pushed right to customer vehicles. You many want to experiment to see which approach works best for you. Either way, carts are an indispensable part of the process.
S-CUBE Has What You Need
We all know how serious this pandemic is. It’s changing the way we do business now and how we will do business in the future. Many of us have been figuring out how to keep our doors open as we go. While a change like this can seem like quite a bit to take in all at once, we’re here to help as much as we can.
At S-CUBE, we can promise you that we will leverage our experience, resources, and products to help you and your business get through this and ready to thrive on the other side. Let’s work together to find ways to help you succeed during this unprecedented time, contact us to get started today!