Why Coop.ch does not sell food online
A few months ago, Coop closed its online store coop@home and brought coop.ch into play instead. And yes, you can order groceries from coop.ch and have them delivered to your home. But the actual service being sold is a different thing.
What do customers buy on coop.ch?
Most customers who order groceries from coop.ch certainly do so for one reason: to save the time they need for a weekly local shopping trip. Or more precisely: to use this time for something else.
During a pandemic, when many people want to reduce their contacts, coop.ch brings a second service into play: security. The security of coming into contact with just one person instead of a multitude of people in the supermarket: the Coop supplier. If you don’t want that either, you can have the goods delivered to your door.
Unfortunately, coop.ch always delivers food, but not always the promised time.
Small things are important
It starts with very small things. Anyone who tries to put items in the shopping cart in the coop.ch store has to get used to waiting. When things are fast, it takes five seconds for the item to arrive in the basket.
When things are slow, you’ll wait 30 seconds and still can’t be sure whether the dish tabs will be delivered — sometimes the item just doesn’t end up in the shopping cart. There is no indication of this. Of course, customers notice it anyway: at least when the dishwasher is full, but there are no more tabs. Time is lost, and washing by hand is the order of the day.
Imagine this in a local supermarket: customers stand motionless in front of the shelf for 30 seconds, waiting for the weightless butter to slowly float into the shopping cart. Sometimes, however, it only looks as if it is now in the basket.
Big things are even more important
It’s a hassle for customers if the delivery doesn’t work out. There is usually a one-hour delivery window. This limits the convenience a bit because you have to wait for it (even with “deposit goods” the fresh items have to go into the refrigerator). But the balance is right: spend an hour at home so you can jog in the park on Saturday morning. Fair.
If the streets are full or the planning doesn’t work, then the delivery will come later. Only Coop could report how often this actually happens. There seems to be no information about this for customers. Even after the agreed delivery time has expired, there is no e-mail or SMS. Anyone who calls customer service waits, only to be told that the delivery will surely come soon. There seems to be no anticipation of a delay. The promise to deliver free time is broken.
Quite stupidly, but most certainly just my individual case: the evening delivery still comes nevertheless sometime after 22 o’clock, the commodity is deposited before the door, but the customer already sleeps. But the next morning the fresh items are spoiled and the ice cream has melted. Off to the trash with it. The customer service issues a refund after the customer has read out all 22 individual item numbers (which again costs time).
Now Coop delivers nothing at all
And suddenly Coop no longer delivers the second promised service, security. Despite the pandemic, the customer now runs to the supermarket he actually wanted to stay away from to get the fresh items there. In the back of his mind lurks the feeling of having ended up here due to the fault of coop.ch.
I know that selling food online is difficult — probably more difficult than any other goods. But in Switzerland, it works excellently and has for a long time.
However, it is essential that the stores are aware of what they are selling: not food but convenience (and sometimes: security). All customer experiences and journeys must be optimized primarily around this purpose. Employees must understand this and live it. Everything else is an addition.
Only those who deliver convenience will be able to charge for food in the long term.
