Contributor: Graham Smith, Strategic Account Director at Gophr
79% of shoppers say click and collect needs improving.
For retailers, relying on click and collect alone, especially during busy periods such as Christmas, isn’t enough. The expectation now is flexibility, speed, and choice. If you’ve already built a half-decent in-store collection service, you’re closer than you think to offering a delivery experience that meets demand, boosts sales and keeps shoppers loyal.
But you have to move fast.
Speed vs. Savings? You’ll Need to Offer Both
Some shoppers say they’ll go slower if it saves them money. But there’s a growing and valuable customer group who won’t compromise. These are the customers who leave it late, buy in a rush, or simply expect better. They want fast delivery, tight time windows, and multiple options at checkout. And if you can’t give them that, they’ll buy from someone who can.
This is where click and collect proves its real worth. Not as a standalone service, but as the backbone of a broader, more responsive last-mile network.
If you’re doing click and collect well, you’ve already solved some of the hardest bits: you’ve got live stock visibility, trained staff picking and packing on demand, and operational workflows that can handle a surge. All of that can feed directly into same-day delivery and local fulfilment models.
Think of it this way: every click-and-collect order that’s picked and ready to go could just as easily be handed to a courier as to a customer. You’ve done the hard work. Don’t stop at the door.
Testing Season
Spring and summer are your testing ground. Run mock surges. Stress-test how your team handles increased order volume. Make sure your handover points to customers and couriers are slick and reliable. The more your staff are trained and ready to switch between in-store pickup and last-mile handoffs, the more confident you can be when the Christmas rush kicks in.
It also means fewer surprises when things inevitably go off-script. If there’s disruption to national courier networks, you’ve got local delivery partners to fall back on. If one channel slows down, you can push customers to another. You can never have too many options.
Delivery Is the Customer Experience
Ultimately, delivery is no longer just about logistics. It’s about experience. Customers don’t just want their orders – they want to know when, how, and where they’ll get them. And they want that power of choice. Whether that’s same-day delivery to a neighbour, click and collect on their commute, or a nominated-day drop-off, your fulfilment offer needs to flex to meet that demand.
So now is the time to get that same-day delivery offer in as best a place as possible, in time for the festive rush where you can’t afford to drop the delivery ball.
