How to Turn Supply Chain Delays into Opportunities

The supply chain is broken, stoking inflation and leaving consumers wondering when, if ever, they’ll get what they ordered or see another stocked shelf. Just ask anyone shopping for a new car or frantically searching for baby formula. Yesterday, I spent more than $80 filling up my gas tank; in California it would’ve cost about $120. To make matters worse, even in our post-COVID global business environment, our supply chain issues won’t be easy to fix. In fact, The Federal Reserve’s new Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI) tells us we’re “at historically high levels” and heading in the wrong direction. Consumer angst is rising. Customer centricity is lacking.

“I spent $50 on groceries yesterday, that didn’t even fill one of those hand carts. I have crazy allergies and specific nutritional needs. I can see that kale has doubled, that milk and eggs are more expensive. Beans and other legumes too,” Ashley Stevens told me. “Plus, there are businesses that service industries that are giving life-saving plastics to people. Nothing about what’s happening now can be fixed on an individual level. The problems are too great for any one person or organization. We need federal intervention now.”

When I asked Ms. Stevens, who refers to herself as a “regular working class person,” how supply chain holdups are specifically impacting small businesses, her response was even more demoralizing: “We already know that small businesses put a lot of money back into their communities. So they are needed. But the ones struggling to meet demand will crumble — and so will the communities around them.”

Indeed, for many smaller brick-and-mortar (and online) businesses, even a couple irascible — and vocal — customers can be catastrophic. (That’s what the PPP loans were for, “but most of the $522 billion went to a tiny slice of borrowers.”)

So, what does this mean for you and other businesses striving to meet demand? How do we avoid losing customers when they’re disappointed (or freaking out) about delays? Might there be an opportunity for some businesses to actually leverage supply chain delays to improve brand reputation and increase sales? I think so.

^{[not my daughter]}

Months before last Chanukah, my wife and I ordered a cosplay outfit for our daughter (a minor TikTok celeb). It was supposed to arrive by the holidays. It came last week. Did we hear from the company during that 10-month period? Not until we remembered that the outfit had never arrived — and we reached out. “Oops,” they said, “our bad.” No true apology. No money back. No coupon for future orders. And no phone number to speak to an actual human being. This company lost a high-value customer. (My daughter has dozens of these outfits, and has no plans to stop spending all her money on them.)

So what could the cosplay company have done? Oh, so many things!

1. When management, ops or finance realized supply chain delays would increase production and delivery times, the company could have added an alert to their website to demonstrate transparency and reduce customer disappointment
2. When the company realized supply chain delays would increase production and delivery times, it could’ve added a phone number (or even a chatbot) to their website to showcase their customer centricity and offer real-time support
3. When the company realized supply chain delays would increase production and delivery times, it could’ve used the shipping delays on social media to not only prepare their audience but potentially drive increased holiday demand
4. When a purchase was made for a product clearly on backorder, the company could have emailed or texted us with similar (and not backordered) outfits based on this and/or any past orders (and cart abandons)
5. When the order was clearly not going to ship in time for the holidays, the company could have emailed or texted us with a timely headsup, offering a discount, coupon or outfit alternatives that would arrive on time
6. When the order was not delivered in time for the holidays, the company could’ve sent an apology email or text, asking us how we think we should be compensated
7. When we finally remembered the missing Chanukah gift and angrily emailed the support address, the company could have flagged the account as a potential high-value loss, assigning a top customer experience agent to address our concerns and, ideally, retain us as customers
8. When the outfit was finally packaged for delivery, the company could’ve added a free second outfit in our daughter’s size or even stuffed the box with little accessories and trinkets

I can promise you, and the costume maker, that our daughter would have been so surprised by and appreciative of any extras added free to her order that she would’ve insisted we stick with this brand. And had the company made any effort to prevent our daughter from celebrating one present short, my wife and I probably wouldn’t be scouting competitors for our daughter’s birthday.

There’s not a single product-producing company on earth that hasn’t faced some kind of supply chain setback since COVID. Customer centricity is what separates the companies that overcome the unexpected hardship from those that don’t. 

And believe me, there’s ample opportunity. According to our research, when dealing with brands:

• Nearly 41% of consumers receive “no solutions” to product delays
• Less than 22% of consumers receive transparent communication or offers of alternative methods for quicker delivery
• Less than 17% of consumers say they haven’t experienced many product delays since COVID

In other words, now’s the time to change the customer experience you deliver — and reap the financial benefits.

To learn more about managing customer complaints (like ours) and how to convert customer feedback into free promotion, download our exclusive how-to guide today.

Image Credits (in order of appearance)

1. Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/lBVvPNHjQko
2. Photo by Hưng Nguyễn on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/5s4l8RtEHVI