It’s time to adopt a customer-centric attitude

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the July-August 2021 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

July-August 2021

We all know the old saying: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” It has been repeated so often it’s cliché. I’d like to suggest a variation: “When the going gets tough, leadership matters.” To say that supply chains have had a tough time of it would be an understatement. Despite the positive vaccine news here in the United States, global supply chains are not out of the woods yet.

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Buyers’ expectations regarding logistics customer service have consistently increased over the years. Demands for better, faster service have become the norm, not the exception. Almost all customers seem to expect fast service along with flexible delivery options that are customized or tailored to their individual needs. In a previous article*, we termed this the “age of customer impatience.”

Of course, the escalated expectations have, in large part, been driven by the shift from the dominance of traditional retailing to a substantial emphasis on e-commerce and omni-channel retailing. Many consumers expect to be able to choose from a range of shopping options such as ordering from their mobile devices or computers, shopping in stores, shopping online and picking up in store. Logistics plays a key role in making all of this happen seamlessly.

Fast forward to 2020-21. As COVID-19 rewrote the rules of retail, it’s not an overstatement to say that even more extreme demands have been placed on supply chains during the global pandemic. The pandemic accelerated the shift to online shopping at the same time as social distancing rules and infection outbreaks in facilities limited the number of employees in stores and distribution centers. Staying connected in the contactless economy became critical, and supply chain professionals responded and adapted to new demands. For the most part, this response has been better than one would have expected.

Most important of all, customers became more aware of the intricacies of supply chain management challenges as they dealt with out-of-stocks, delivery lead times that often far exceeded two-days and difficult returns, all while coping with rising service costs. The upside is that most became less impatient and more forgiving. Of course, with the brick-and-mortar economy shut down for all but essential services, they didn’t have much choice.

This made us wonder if customers’ apparent attitude adjustment represents a permanent change, or, if, in reality it will be temporary? Have customers merely adopted a temporary workaround to their service expectations, or are we witnessing a slow but steady shift away from the age of customer impatience? Will customer behavior in a post-COVID world retain some of the “patient” habits learned during the pandemic, or will customers simply revert to a “what have you done for me lately” mindset? Cue the age of customer impatience.

To explore this issue, we went to the experts: People who deal with customer-related issues on a daily basis. This group of professionals provided their perspectives on how companies coped with customer service pressures during the past year and how they anticipate this will affect future business operations. The individuals work in a wide range of areas including retailing, distribution, manufacturing, transportation and consulting. The following narrative provides an overview of key issues.

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