Click and collect service CollectPlus has reported a 25% year-on-year increase in parcel volumes for the October to December Christmas period with record numbers of customers too. More than half a million new customers also used the service during the same period, up 26% on the year before.
Avoiding peak crowds whilst still ensuring product would be theirs was key for customers with the click and collect service growing 30% year on year in Cyber Week (including Black Friday), according to Collect Plus.
Click and collect volumes grew 29% compared to the same month the year before and by 25% year on year in December.
Many retailers, including Very and ASOS, offered next day delivery to stores in the CollectPlus network up until 23 December.
Neil Ashworth, chief executive officer at CollectPlus, said: “Use of our service has grown throughout 2016, with our total Click & Collect volume up significantly on last year. However, it is at Christmas that the delivery option comes into its own with customers demonstrating their confidence in click and collect collect as a convenient and reliable way to buy online. December saw an increasing number of Click & Collect customers shopping even closer to Christmas as they were confident they would still be able to collect their purchases in time for the big day,” he said.
Sixteen new brands including Levi’s, Adidas, AO.com and L’Occitane joined the click and collect service last year.
Phil Hackney, group operations director at Shop Direct, whose brands include Very.co.uk, Very Exclusive and Littlewoods.com, said: “Thanks to shoppers reaching for their smartphones, we are on track to deliver another record year of sales and profits for the 2016/2017 period. We have increased group sales by 9% year-on-year during the seven weeks to 23 December 2016, which was helped in part by the smooth running of our click and collect services, provided by CollectPlus, with a quarter of our total parcels delivered to CollectPlus locations for customers to collect.”
CollectPlus also added 39 new brands to its returns policy during 2016, including Mamas and Papas and Foot Asylum.
Liz Edden, internet manager at Foot Asylum, said: “We were thrilled to bring CollectPlus on board for our customer returns process before Christmas. We needed to give our customers a more flexible and faster service, and CollectPlus were great at understanding our needs and even let us do a trial before any commitment, which proved to be very successful. We saw a massive improvement in the time taken to return parcels as well as our customer satisfaction levels, and we are planning to go live with CollectPlus’ Click & Collect service soon.”
Image credit: CollectPlus
