What is curbside pickup?
Merchants who need to sell inventory with social distancing recommendations still in place are re-evaluating delivery and pickup options to serve customers more efficiently.
One option — curbside pickup — has emerged as a moral middle ground, allowing businesses to keep employees safe and keep selling their in-store inventory while meeting customer demands. With this option, orders are placed online, packaged up in the selected store, and either put into customers’ car trunks or set outside for pickup.
Why should you offer curbside pickup?
Just offering e-booking and in-store pickup, which generally provides a decent level of service, does not meet the current needs of shoppers and merchants during our global health crisis. For customers, purchases via e-booking don’t offer the possibility of contactless payment and must be paid for directly in the store. For merchants, in-store pickup uses warehouse inventory, not in-store inventory. A more innovative way is needed for both parties.
The curbside pickup solution offers shoppers the possibility of staying in their cars or collecting their orders remotely, which keeps both customers and employees at a safe distance from each other. This solution is the most reassuring to both customers and employees because it respects social distancing guidelines while selling a merchant’s store inventory.
How does curbside pickup work?
If your business has both a physical store and an ecommerce store, the curbside pickup option is a great way to unify offline with online orders.
Here’s what the curbside pickup customer journey looks like:
- Your customers select the items they want to purchase
- Your customers select the store where they want to pick up their order
- Payments are made online when completing the order
- You receive the orders directly in OMS
- Your customers receive an email notification when their order is ready for pick up
- Your customers come and pick up their orders from the store they selected
Setting up a curbside pickup option can be enabled now in just two weeks with OSF Digital’s innovative solution for Salesforce Commerce Cloud – Quick Start Curbside Pickup. This flexible option provides customers convenient ordering while respecting social distancing recommendations to reassure shoppers and merchants alike.
Want to learn more? Watch our use case study video to discover the complete customer journey and see behind the scenes how the order management process works from both a customer’s and an employer’s view.
