The Problem

Unlike elsewhere in Australia, Melbourne and the State of Victoria, endured a gruelling 11 week lockdown in 2020. At this time, Kmart doubled down on curb-side click & collect so they could service customer needs.

When a customer made a click & collect purchase, they were sent a text message when the goods were ready for collection. In that message, they were told to call the store on arrival and someone would bring out their goods.

The Victorian 'dark stores' were averaging 400 click & collect orders a store per day. Kmart quickly realised that the current processes & systems could not meet the customer demands.

The phones were continually engaged which frustrated their customer & the Kmart teams could not keep up with the volume of collections as they never knew when customers were coming in. The carparks were bedlam, and the Kmart team were continually having to run back and forth to collect, locate and then deliver the orders.

The process was inefficient and not sustainable.

The Solution

Kmart engaged SocialQ to help them build a completely contactless click & collect process that wouldn’t require any apps to be downloaded.

Kmart included a 'Book In Your Collection' link in the text message they were sent when goods were ready for collection. This link allowed customers to select a date & time to collect their goods.

Collection times were broken into 10-minute slots and capped at 10 bookings per slot.

By including a 40-min 'booking block out’, SocialQ was able to give the Kmart teams time to collect the goods for the forthcoming bookings and bring them to the collection point, ready to be collected when the customers arrived.

Customers received a reminder message the morning their goods were to be collected.

On arrival, they clicked the 'I’ve Arrived’ and then added the Parking Bay they were parked in. This sent a message to the Kmart team who would then bring the goods to the car, verify the booking and then put the goods in the boot.

The Results

Once SocialQ was rolled out, Kmart doubled the number of click & collect bookings they could process.

Customer complaints in regard to click & collect essentially dropped to zero and the satisfaction of the Kmart team managing this process increased as they now had a process that worked.

Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria said that Kmart was operating world’s best practice when it came to their click & collect & virtual queuing.

The Client's Words

“Like most businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic brought store closures and physical distancing challenges to how Kmart operated. As we looked for ways to deal with these, we came across SocialQ and their virtual queuing platform that had just been launched and began to explore how it could enhance Kmart’s in-store experience.

As we learnt more about the wider possibilities of SocialQ, we ended up using the solution to streamline our click and collect booking process and made things incredibly easy for our store teams.

Even as snap lockdowns came and went, we were able to remain trading, using the SocialQ platform to coordinate curb-side and contactless click & collect.

Beyond the technology, it was great to work with a company who prioritised our needs and were able to be flexible and agile as those needs changed. The speed and efficiency with which they work helped us build and deliver a better customer experience and a more streamlined workflow internally.”

Storeplay IQ’s system was powered by AWS Services, including Amazon CloudFront and AWS Lambda, ensuring scalability, speed, and reliability during the high-demand period.

Steve Stone, Kmart National Store Support Manager