It’s not easy keeping customers happy in New York, the nation’s biggest–and arguably toughest–food market.
But online grocer and food delivery service FreshDirect LLC, No. 58 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, says business is good despite the deepening recession because of new customer service initiatives the company launched last fall.
Online customers can’t pick up and thump a melon or peel back the leaves on a head of Romaine lettuce to check for freshness the same as they can in the grocery store. So to accommodate online food shoppers who wanted more product detail, FreshDirect in November unveiled a daily five star rating system that ranks the quality of fruits and vegetables available for delivery the next day. Now before placing an order, web shoppers can see how FreshDirect’s buyers and produce managers have rated the daily assortment of fruits and vegetables. A five star rating means the item is the freshest available while a single star means the fruit or vegetable is below average and probably out of season.
FreshDirect managers check the fruit and vegetables and rate them according to taste, color, firmness and ripeness. “Not everyone is an expert on the seasonality of a fruit or vegetable so this system takes the guesswork out of choosing the best available items,” says FreshDirect chief marketing officer Steve Druckman. “Each of the buyers and managers who rate the produce have years on the job so they have great expertise. I am not aware of any other online or conventional grocer that’s developing a system such as this.”
FreshDirect, which spent the summer conducting extensive consumer research on its new initiatives, says customers also wanted better delivery options and more environmentally friendly packaging.
As a result FreshDirect has eliminated Styrofoam packaging for about 50% of its orders and expects to use 1 million fewer cardboard boxes in 2009.To eliminate boxes, FreshDirect last summer realigned is packaging process and reconfigured some work stations and databases to eliminate the number of boxes containing just one or two items.
To expedite fulfillment, FreshDirect also added more delivery time slots on busy days such as Saturday, pledged to answer service-related e-mails in three hours or less and will roll out a live chat application sometime this year. “We’ve got a lot in the pipeline,” Druckman says.
Since the new customer service features went live, FreshDirect has seen an uptick in the size of the average order and in the frequency of repeat deliveries, although Druckman declined to discuss specific numbers.
So far FreshDirect remains the biggest online grocer serving New York and some surrounding areas. Peapod LLC, No. 45 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, also has a market presence but mostly serves customers outside the city such as in Suffolk and Nassau counties.
But FreshDirect, which says web sales in 2008 rose by double digits to more than $240 million, is adding better customer service features now in order to grow an even bigger base in its core market. “We’re looking to grow our footprint,” Druckman says.
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