CX is dying a slow death in an increasingly fast-paced, digital world…

I ordered some t-shirts from a new (to me) brand called Nobero, recently. Their website was slick, and promised “Premium Quality Clothes” with “Great Customer Experience”. I scanned through some online reviews and found them to be positive, so I ordered a few tees using a promo bundled offer, and paid for it online. And then, the saga began…

Delivery promise of a few days turned into weeks. The tracking link said that the package has reached my city (1 Apr), and is delayed by a day. However, that page just kept reporting an incremental counter by adding a day to the delay, every day! (so great use of Tech, I suppose). I looked up the Nobero website and called their Customer Support number, but an auto-response said they have decided to move to WhatsApp-only support (more great use of Tech). I then raised a query using WA, but only got an unhelpful canned reply: “our team is working on It we will have this delivered as soon as possible”. Now, comes the really fun part…

I looked up details on my tracking link and found that their delivery partner was Shiprocket. Since Nobero did not have a Twitter presence, I tried tagging Shiprocket to get a response from them. Their reply, and I quote: “We wish to inform you that Shiprocket is a courier aggregator that specializes in shipping goods from one destination to another. We don’t sell the goods ourselves. If you have an issue with the products you purchased or their delivery, please contact the seller directly. -Team Shiprocket”

Can you imagine a delivery specialist that cannot provide support on a delivery delay?!

Meanwhile, I got another text message that said, “Your Smartr shipment will be delivered soon” with yet another tracking link that takes me to a ‘Smartr Logistics’ webpage carrying no more helpful info than an “In Transit” status. Further attempts to reach Nobero via WA again yielded the exact same canned reply (as you can see, they obviously care a lot about providing their customers a great CX!).

After even more days of delay, my doorbell rang at 11 pm last night, and my package was delivered by an individual (no uniform or logo) who claims he has no idea of Shiprocket or Nobero or Smartr, and only got the parcel a few hours ago for a delivery drop – which he promptly did!

In the meanwhile, thousands of new D2C startup businesses are being launched with the support of hundreds of angel/seed/VC funds, all trying to be the next unicorn, when a simple delivery of a t-shirt for a metro city pincode has taken two weeks and countless hoops (of zero information) in 2024.

We are busy moving most services to Digital channels, but the basics are not always in place, and there is (often) no one to interact with when things go wrong.

Is it any wonder that CX is dying a slow death in an increasingly fast-paced, digital world?!