Eish.

It’s not lekker when a local business performs poorly, disappointing thousands of its customers.

When staffing problems at Spree’s Johannesburg warehouse “caused orders to be delayed for weeks,” according to MyBroadband, it’s estimated around 6 000 customers’ orders were – and still are – backlogged.

It will apparently take another week to get everything in order.

When customers attempted to contact the company for an explanation, “the Spree Team” apologised for the delivery failure‚ and explained that the order was “still part of a backlog of orders that we are busy processing at our warehouse”.

However, many others didn’t receive any emails at all.

The mayhem began around the end of May, and disgruntled customers were soon forced to take out their frustration on the online fashion store’s social platforms.

And get this: throughout this period, Spree continued to post advertising content and ‘lookbook’ tips on their Facebook page – without once mentioning what was going on, other than in sporadic replies to complaints.

It finally took them around 12 days to reply to the rest of the complaints:

Not a good look, hey?

These days, an online retailer’s Facebook page is used as more than just a self-advertising platform. You need to show your customers you care through legit community management – and that means telling them why their order is taking longer than the one day they paid for.

Eventually, however, Spree posted a stand-alone apology. Kind of:

Yes, that was 20 hours ago – and we suspect it only happened after Times LIVE caught hold of the story. Responding to their query‚ Spree’s head of brand marketing‚ Kim Hawkins‚ said:

“[T]he company’s (unnamed) service provider had made changes to its staffing component in the warehouse‚ causing delays in the fulfilment of orders.

“We were aware of the planned changes‚ but we were not expecting the ramifications to the extent that we’re experiencing at the moment.

“We share our customers’ frustration as our service provider hasn’t been able to give an accurate estimate for deliveries…” she said.

“We are so sorry for the inconvenience caused to our customers as a result. It is not the experience that we want our customers to have‚ and we are working very hard to rectify the mistakes and get the orders delivered.”

Transparency is key, people, and clearly the banner they placed on the top of their page did nothing to warn customers:

It’s interesting that you can order a product online, from a site that doesn’t deliver to South Africa nogal, and the team at Postbox Courier will have it delivered to your address in SA within a week.

Just a little food for thought.

[source:mybroadband]