Sainsbury's tackles coronavirus stockpiling with omnichannel initiatives
Sainsbury's is to prioritise vulnerable and elderly people for online deliveries amid customer stockpiling during the coronavirus outbreak.
“From Monday, 23rd March, our online customers who are over 70 years of age or have a disability will have priority to online delivery slots,” CEO Mike Coupe said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Also from Monday, Sainsbury’s will operate an expanded Click and Collect service. “We are significantly increasing the number of collection sites across the country over the coming days in preparation for this,” Coupe commented.
“Customers can place their order online as usual and pick it up from a collection point in the store car park. We believe this will also work for people who are self-isolating”
Take that!
Yesterday, we reported that Sainsbury’s customers were taking to Twitter to lambast the grocery giant over a lack of online delivery slots and poor communication around this.
It all started with an innocent enough tweet as Brandon from the Sainsbury’s customer service team announced on Monday: “Good morning everyone. The team are here until 11:30pm to answer your queries.”
Cue hoards of people venting spleen. All of the supermarkets are facing a high demand for home deliveries as more people head online for their groceries. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult (indeed, impossible in many cases) to get time slots.
We’re flagging up Sainsbury’s, because it appeared on Twitter, welcoming customer queries, then failed to answer them or even provide basic information. We believe that’s what the kids would call an EPIC FAIL.
“As I’ve tweeted you twice with no reply, when will you have a response to all the delivery pass holders on what you are doing to refund or extend them for your loyal customers who are unable to get deliveries,” said @andrew_roland.
“Seconding this. My delivery pass just auto renewed and it’s not looking likely that I will be able to use it anytime in the near future - £60 is a lot of money to come out in a very uncertain time for a service that’s now useless,” commented @Captain_Kenzie1.
“Good morning Brandon. Can you please let us know if there are any plans to distribute delivery slots more fairly. At the moment it is impossible to book one. This is terrible for vulnerable customers. Will there also be refunds for delivery pass holders?” asked @BillBaggins96.
You can check out the many other comments here.
Sainsbury’s did not respond to our request for comment.
