The e-commerce marketplace Flipkart is setting up collection centers for the online customers to pick their orders at their expediency. This move has been made as the firm is hoping to solve the expensive problem of failed package deliveries.
Flipkart has come up with 20 such ‘experience zones’ in ten cities across India. The company is all set to open 100 such collection centers all over the country within March next year. These collection centers will play a major role in Flipkart’s expansion to small towns and village as it is the prime element for the same. Basically, such facilities help the firm in serving efficiently in the interior regions of the country. These centers are launched in conjunction with the company’s logistics arm Ekart.
Regarding the same, Neeraj Aggarwal, the Senior Director of Delivery Operations at Flipkart stated that they believe in this model as they consider it is a resolution to the customer unavailability issues as it will let the customers choose to adjust the delivery time and location as per their convenience. It will also provide a solution to the restrictions for e-commerce entry into gated communities, tech parks and universities.
A major challenge for the e-commerce companies is the customer unavailability issue during the product delivery. This kicks off a process that increases the cost for both the online portal as well as the merchants. The collection centers will not only resolve this issue, but also prevent the last mile delivery costs that account for almost 28 percetn of the overall cost of transporting goods.
Flipkart stated that this project was a six month pilot witnessing at least 80 percent of the orders that are picked up the collection centers. The company will introduce other value added services such as instant returns, spot trials, open box deliveries, cash on return, product demos and third party repair services at the experience zones.
Across the world, the customer pickups of e-commerce orders are an existing strategy. Amazon launched the Amazon Locker service in 2011, but the customers can retrieve their packages at a locker location in their area using a personal code. There are thousands of pickup points across Canada for this purpose.
