Takealot may decide to hold back on its next day and expedited shipping offers over Black Friday, depending on how well its system copes with the increase of customers.<\/p>\n
This is according to Kim Reid, CEO of Takealot who was speaking to BusinessTech ahead of Black Friday next week.<\/p>\n
“It will all depend on how the day goes,” said Reid. “Currently it’s business as usual and we will see how much strain the system and back-end takes.<\/p>\n
“If we find that the strain is too much, there is a strong possibility that we will simply correct the system to show that deliveries will be shipped later.”<\/p>\n
The most important part of Takealot’s Black Friday deliveries will be to ensure that orders will be delivered to customers at the time they have been given – even if its slightly later than normal, he said.<\/p>\n
“Whatever time we give the customers on their orders, is the time we are aiming for”.<\/p>\n
Returns<\/strong><\/p>\n As part of Takealot’s ramp up over Black Friday and into Christmas, the website’s executive committee members meet daily in a “war room” to go over stats, including the number of deliveries leaving as well as how well the warehouse is coping with orders.<\/p>\n Part of this is a statistical analysis of the the number of returned items and how long it takes to return an item, said Reid.<\/p>\n While he explained that the site was expecting an influx of customers, he indicated that returns should not be majorly affected by Black Friday.<\/p>\n “When the pipe is full, the pipe is full – but we should see the same turn around time for returns as if it was not Black Friday (which is around 3-4 days),” he said.<\/p>\n “Often the biggest barrier is not the return itself, but arranging a suitable pick-up time with the customer.”<\/p>\n
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