Recommendation: Home Delivery and Repair Suggestions During COVID-19

Recommendation: Home Delivery and Repair Suggestions During COVID-19

The COVID-19 public health crisis is - rightfully and understandably so - making retailers and consumers more concerned about safety and hygiene than ever before. You will likely have to take new and extra precautions to keep your employees, your customers and your communities safe and to make consumers comfortable with having your staff deliver products to their home.

Here are some ideas you may want to incorporate as you are making sales and serving customers during this difficult time.

Detail your staff's safety and hygiene policies

You may have already instituted some or all of these practices. But do your customers know that? Make sure you are widely sharing these precautions with your staff, and when discussing deliveries with your customers too.

• Employees that are not feeling well have been told to stay home.
• Employees with other household members that are ill have been told to stay home.
• High touch surfaces inside our store and warehouse are being sanitized several times per day.
• Staff have been directed to wash their hands frequently, including every time they enter the store or a home and after blowing their nose, coughing or sneezing.
• Staff have been directed to stay at least 6 feet away from customers while helping them in the store or delivering, installing or repairing products in their homes.
• Delivery vehicles, hand trucks, tools etc are being sanitized several times per day.
• All delivery vehicles are stocked with hand sanitizer, disinfectant spray, paper towels, booties, face masks and gloves.
• We are monitoring and following recommendations from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Offer delivery options that don't include coming into consumers' homes

You may pride yourself on providing a truly white glove delivery experience, but right now consumers may feel safer with a much more do-it-yourself approach during this public health crisis. You may want to consider offering options like:

• Drop off in your driveway
• Drop off 6 feet from your door
• Drop off in your garage
• Drop off inside your home (but without extra time spent installing)
• Full delivery and installation with extra precautions

You may also consider offering additional services that may help homeowners that don’t feel comfortable with your staff coming inside like:

• they use your (sanitized) hand truck to bring items into their homes themselves while you wait
• installation documentation
• links to YouTube installation videos
• or informal videos you might even make yourself
• video calls with your experts to help walk them through self-installation

Use extra precautions when you go into consumers' homes

If you are delivering, installing or repairing something, you can dramatically increase peace of mind and safety by instituting some or all of these extra precautions. Can your team:

• Wear any protective devices like booties, gloves and/or face masks?
• Stand six feet back from the door after arriving?
• Offer to text the homeowner when you arrive instead of touching their doorbell, knocker or door?
• Offer to deliver, install, repair while the homeowner goes into another room, another floor or outside?
• Ask and offer to wash their hands immediately upon arriving?
• Sanitize all surfaces they touched during delivery/installation/repair before leaving (don’t forget the faucet you used to wash your hands!)?
• Offer alternatives to getting signatures, or at least for the homeowner to use their own pen instead of borrowing yours?

It's a hard habit to break but remember...no handshakes!

Consider having your staff take the lead by starting off the delivery with a statement like this:

“Thank you for trusting us to come into your home at a time like this; we won’t take that responsibility lightly. I hope this won’t offend you, but we won’t be shaking your hand today and we’ll be taking a lot of other precautions too.”

We are here to help you

Like most places now, the entirety of the RWS team is working remotely from our homes. We ask for your understanding if you hear more background noise than usual (our children and/or pets may be very excited to talk to you too!). And as I’m sure you can imagine, many retailers urgently need our help during this challenging time all at once. In case we experience any unexpected issues and you have difficulty reaching a team member via the usual methods, you can:

• Email us at support@retailerwebservices.com
• complete this online form to tell us how we can assist you

Wishing you health, safety and support,

The RWS Team