by twieberneit | Jun 27, 2022 | Blog |
In the course of the last year or three, I have written a few times about the supply chain and how it affects the customer experience, sometimes badly so. In my last article ‘the impact of the supply chain on the customer experience’, I explained some of the issues and laid out a couple of high level solutions. Let me elaborate a little on what I wrote then. Of course, there are challenges in two main areas: The demand sideThe supply side The customer expectations are quite simple: A customer expects that things just work, that the vendor, and information given by the vendor, is reliable, accurate and comes timely; that deliveries after order are coming reasonably fast and that there is transparency about the order and delivery status. This is all quite abstract, so let us fill this with life. An example to the contrary goes as follows: You buy something, e.g., some whiteware, from a brand with a very high reputation; you are asked for upfront payment (several thousand dollar, remember, high reputation), get an approximate delivery date two months out – along with a warning that there may be a delay of a month or so. So far, so good. I could live with that although even the two months should be explained … Now, imagine that one month into the wait time you get an e-mail notifying you about a changed delivery date, pushing it out by a month. Well, not nice, but also not out of the range of expectations. After all you got told so. However, the next month you get a similar...
