The biggest problem for South African online shops with Black Friday sales volumes is not website uptime or payment platform stability – it is courier services which must deliver the products.
Last year, many South Africans who purchased products online on Black Friday had to wait for weeks for their products to be delivered.
MyBroadband spoke to some of South Africa’s biggest ecommerce players, and they all highlighted courier services as a big concern.
One ecommerce CEO, who asked to remain anonymous, said the biggest problem on Black Friday is always deliveries.
“Every year there are courier companies which buckle under the load. After Black Friday, you see many CEOs in their cars doing deliveries,” he said.
Another online shopping executive explained that the biggest problem, in his opinion, is issues associated with accurate forecasting and load balancing at courier companies.
Courier companies typically ask their customer for volume estimates over Black Friday, and then prepare for these volumes.
The problem comes in when one or more of its customers exceeds their forecasted sales, which overloads the system.
“For example, when 20 online shops forecast 20,000 shipments each, they combine all the forecasted deliveries and prepare for 400,000 shipments,” he explained.
“However, when one customer spikes and does 400,000 shipments, there is no capacity to complete the rest of the work.”
Because the courier services’ systems cannot do load balance by customer, their capacity is reached prematurely, resulting in heavy delivery delays for some online shops.
“It’s been a problem since inception. Courier companies still do not have load balancing in place,” he said.
He added that the problem is aggravated by the courier companies’ insistence that they are well prepared, and that they do not have delivery limitations.
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