India, December 21, 2020: HomeTown, one of the leading furniture and lifestyle retailers, part of the Future Group partnered with FarEye to orchestrate last-mile deliveries, achieve real-time visibility and enhance the customer experience. Recognized as India’s biggest store in homemaking, renovation, and decor, HomeTown improved delivery turnaround time by 50% and achieved a 60% reduction in customer calls due to proactive communication regarding orders and deliveries.
With people favoring to stay indoors, following social distancing measures, and working from the comfort of home, shopping habits underwent rapid change. People increasingly invested in items such as fitness equipment, home entertainment, and furniture. HomeTown witnessed a gradual month-on-month increase in online purchases post-unlock. The brand’s “Home Office” section saw a 3x increase in demand.
Amidst surging orders and the need to drive seamless on-time fulfillment, HomeTown was facing challenges in ensuring safe and satisfactory deliveries. With regards to their multi-unit furniture delivery, highly efficient collaboration and interoperability between delivery and installation teams emerged as a key requirement.
Leveraging FarEye’s logistics orchestration platform, the leading retailer was able to streamline processes such as- assigning orders to delivery executives, tracking incomplete orders and return/ replacement requests, and scheduling appointments for installation while keeping the customers informed at every step. Managers now track the delivery status in real-time with ePod and service completion pictures.
Vaishali Thakkar, GM–Customer Service and Operations, HomeTown commented, “FarEye has helped us scale up our product delivery and post-sale processes with new distribution models and logistics partners smoothly, to ensure consistent customer experience. Being a highly customizable platform, it has been able to completely deliver as per our requirements. It has helped us in increasing the productivity of our field service engineers and technicians who are on the front lines of our business, and the face of the organization. “
Kushal Nahata, CEO and Co-founder FarEye said, “With regards to furniture and heavy equipment purchase, customer service goes beyond generating a delightful doorstep delivery experience. Providing customers with a comfortable at-home experience of furniture installation is critical too. HomeTown ensured that customers are able to get a pleasant experience amidst the pandemic while setting up home offices or getting upgrades. At the core of providing such holistic customer service is logistics. In the world of online buying, logistics is the only physical touchpoint that connects a customer with the brand. In this regard, we are delighted to partner with HomeTown and together drive exceptional levels of delivery efficiencies and drive delightful customer experiences.”
