19 Dec 2006 0019H

Sears.com Appliance Checkout

It’s not everyday that you run into a piece of your past. I bought a fridge today, it was rated highly by Consumer Reports, it’s a Kenmore, and I’m giving it as a present to my parents for Xmas. They don’t read blogs or much online so I’m safe saying this out loud. Anyway, back in the winter of 1999, first quarter of 2000 I was part of a team that designed and built the front end for Sears.com, and one of the first tasks I was given was to structure the IA and come up with the UI for the Appliance section checkout. Not long after we delivered, they overhauled the look and feel, I’d say within a year, year and a half, but there are parts of the UI still in place. So it’s true what people say about building stuff: code never dies. And it is in the case of Sears.com, where most of my process flow is still intact. I think there are some parts that got simplified but it’s all pretty much there. I’ll have to do a screen by screen comparison.

But this is the real learning today. I placed my order last night about midnight, 1AMish. Didn’t receive a notice until this morning that the credit card info wasn’t right. Didn’t receive an ETA about when I’d be contacted to schedule delivery and haul away service. Didn’t receive any system updates except when I called Customer Service at lunch, somewhat worried, I got ran around the system four times. When I check the online order status, I get conflicting info. One screen says it’s been processed, the other says it’s still processing. And now 24 hours later I still haven’t heard anything from anyone about delivery. Well, now we know a little bit more about why Sears is not turning around, financially, when core parts of their business like this are not executing well. It’s disappointing, and bit frightening. Can the endgame be far behind for them?

The lesson is, it doesn’t matter how good you capture requirements or how well you step through the process in your UI. If your systems aren’t talking to each other, your fulfillment systems are FUBAR, your customer service reps aren’t clued in (very nice people though), all that still winds up being a bad customer experience.

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2 responses to "Sears.com Appliance Checkout"

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21 Dec 2006 1536H

tim writes:

I bought a gift for my dad at Sears yesterday. It was a little disappointing– aside from their badass tool section, the rest of it was pretty sorry. And even in the tool section, there were wide swaths of empty aisles where it was clear that they were sold out. Someone should have either anticiapted the demand, or made a call to the warehouse to get more stuff on the shelves. What was sold out? The stuff in the 15 to 30 dollar range. I can’t belive that they don’t have retail data to indicate that is where they move the most volume, since every year I have bought my dad a gift, it has been either one item from those aisles, or a combination of items from those aisles.

22 Dec 2006 1808H

me writes:

It’s interesting to note that a former Army general in charge of logistics at the time of the Gulf War in 1992 came to head Sears logistics and supply chain management, but who knows what happened when the merger/buyout from Kmart happened. Perhaps what you and I are experiencing is a result of the distribution and supply chain problems that result from poor integration.

In the merchandising section, I’m not sure what to make of the Structure line being part of Sears now (although I did buy some nice twill cavalry pants from them) or Land’s End being made so prominent. The electronics section seems to be holding its own along with Craftsman (the 130 piece tool set I have seems to be missing a piece though) and Kenmore. It may be those are the only things worth shopping of the once glorious Empire of Sears. Perhaps they’ll be spun off into their own boutiques, and then, poof. No more department stores, just specialty shops and big boxes.

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