Black Friday: Behind the scenes
With Black Friday online sales having overtaken cash purchases‚ web-based retailers‚ together with logistical and support companies‚ are pulling out all the stops in preparation.
No longer taking place over just one day‚ preparations for what the industry has dubbed “Black Five Day” begin almost as soon as the last one is over. And they include huge investments in workforce and technology capacity.
Companies do everything from increasing and specially training their staff compliments‚ specifically for what is now a five-day period which includes Cyber Monday‚ to bringing in engineers and developers to optimise customer experience.
The result is a span of less than a week which accounts for around one third of annual sales for many retailers.
“There’s 38% more sales made now than over the Christmas period which is traditionally the big spending period‚” said Brandon Aitken‚ account director at business process outsourcing company Webhelp
“Black Friday has effectively disrupted the retail market starting in the US and UK‚ but now we also see it in South Africa. From a company point of view this (October to December) is what they call the golden quarter.”
Aitken‚ whose company services major online retail companies in the UK from offices across South Africa‚ said they increased their staff by 1‚000 to 3‚500 specifically for Black Friday.
Only people with a good temperament were recruited to deal with the “elevated level of customer anxiety” during the sale period.
“We recruit and assess people with that kind of temperament to deal with the customer anxiety‚” Aitken told TimesLIVE.
“Generally we receive about 120‚000 calls per week but that goes up by an additional 85‚000 calls during Black Friday weekend and 28‚000 more on Black Friday.
“It takes very careful planning and we start talking about it in April and then formulate a plan by June. We run this as an event.”
Chief marketing officer at one of South Africa’s largest online retailers Takealot‚ Julie-Anne Walsh‚ said that resources were bolstered across the company for Black Friday.
Since managing a turnover of R1-million on its first Black Friday in 2012‚ Takealot expects to make between R80-million and R130-million this year.
“We basically spend the entire year preparing for this period‚” Walsh said.
“We have to make sure that our site can handle the five-fold increase in traffic and that the payment mechanisms stay up.
“This year we are looking to mitigate that by having back-up plans in place to ensure we can continue to operate.”
Manager of ecommerce service Aramex Global Shopper Mark Mahoney believed that South Africans were comfortable shopping online from retailers all over the globe.
“We saw a 31% increase in shipments over the festive season in 2016 and anticipate a similar spike this year. Additionally year-on-year growth in global shopping shipments grew by 96%” said Mahoney.
