Chrisco is a Christmas home delivery hamper company with branches in Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
Christmas in January?
What happens if your prepaid Christmas hamper arrives in January? Too late, right? A bit like Santa delivering in January.
Some Chrisco Australia customers have been told they won't get their Christmas food and toy hampers in time for Christmas, despite ordering months ago.
In The News
The Australian television current affairs programs, newspapers and forums are awash with tales of woe and complaints. Many Christmas hampers have not been delivered. Some have been delivered late or incompletely.
Count On Us
Chrisco bases their whole business around one promise - delivering Christmas hampers to customers in time for Christmas. Their site boasts "Count on us.
What Happened With Chrisco?
CEO Lee Hill was put on the spot by A Current Affair. He cited "abnormal operational issues" but did not elaborate with specifics. He did say they will contact customers to arrange new delivery dates or a refund.
Time Sensitive Products
Missed deliveries may sometimes be out of the company's hands. But when your whole business depends on a Christmas product and a pre Christmas delivery, timing and making sure everything is in place is a crucial factor.
The Bottom Line
Customers are not really interested in operational issues. People have a lot invested in Christmas, not just financially, but wanting it to be special too.
It will be interesting to see if Chrisco Australia can turn this around.
Its fairly hard to imagine a more fundamental failure in a company's core business. After all, Chrisco exists to deliver prepaid Christmas hampers, and failing to do that sort of wipes out its reason for existing. The value add is to save their customers time and effort in buying all the goods in their hampers, by failing to deliver they fail to add value - in fact in this case they are destroying the value to customers.
Of course, I can't see the value in this sort of product. They are overpriced and hardly good value at the best of times. Add to that the hassles people are experiencing with deliveries etc and its a total customer satisfaction and business killer.
Posted by: Ian | December 19, 2007 12:18 AM | Permalink to Comment