Today, shipping alerts; tomorrow, delivery alerts
Online retailers commonly send out automated shipping notifications--alerting customers when their products have shipped. Now Shari’s Berries wants to alert customers to when the product has been delivered.
The vast majority of online purchases don’t need that notification--the buyer knows when it’s been delivered because the buyer is usually the recipient. But it’s a different case at Shari’s Berries, which sells chocolate-dipped strawberries at Berries.com.
“Many people baby-sit our product, calling in to find out if it’s been delivered,” says Kevin Beresford, president and CEO. He cites one instance where a buyer sent his girlfriend a gift of strawberries prior to proposing to her. His plan was to arrive with the ring no sooner than 30 minutes after the strawberries arrived, so he kept calling Berries.com to ask if they had been delivered yet, Beresford recounts.
Beresford says the company plans to send delivery notification by e-mail or automated phone message, at the customer’s choice. “It will keep our equipment available for when people really need to talk to somebody,” he says.
Sales at Shari’s Berries are up 23% over last year, Beresford says, partly the result of creating gifts tied to holidays that aren’t usually high-end sweets occasions, such as Halloween. “We doubled our sales for Halloween this year,” Beresford says. Shari’s Berries offered berries with different dipping patterns, some resembling jack o’ lanterns, played with a Halloween bear. “Halloween was an event for us this year,” Beresford says. Similarly, it designed stars-and-stripes dipped berries for Veteran’s Day.
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