Editor’s Note: Just in case you missed on Jesse Oguns’ rant on his experience with the ‘No 1 Online Retailer in Nigeria’ Kasuwa, you may want to read that first before going on to read Kasuwa’s response. I have tried to segment the response into different sections that address issues that Jesse raised. Enjoy
* Open *
Hello Jesse, we acknowledge the experience you had and we appreciate your taking the time to write this constructive feedback.
Invoice and where the stock come from. . .
Let me speak to one of the issues you raised – that of the order versus invoice dates. A bit of context will help. Some of our stock is sourced from local suppliers. Others, like our books, we bring in from international suppliers. We believe Nigerians reading needs far exceed what is available on the market locally so our aim is to gradually grow our portfolio of books to 4million titles. We have already acquired the relevant licenses. Since it is not feasible to physically stock 4million titles in a warehouse, we are building a just-in-time supply chain to enable us bring these books into the country immediately customers request for them.
The invoice you received is from us – Kasuwa.com, not our international supplier. The invoice date is the date we issued you an invoice for the product. The time between the date you placed your order and the invoice date is the time it took for the book to get into Nigeria. It should normally be 3 days. In this case a delay at the airport caused cargos to be held up for about a week leading to the longer delivery time.
So that this kind of experience is not repeated. . .
To try to answer each of the pertinent questions you raised will be to write a litany of explanations & excuses. The fact is we have had various challenges and we have put and continue to put measures and structures in place to ensure that our customers get world-class experience with us nonetheless.
Here are a few of the things we have done (over the last 4 weeks) to ensure an experience like yours is not repeated:
- Within the 4 weeks that we have had the book category up, we have gained intelligence on what Nigerians are reading so we are now stocking the most popular items upfront to create a buffer to enable us deliver to our promise.
- We have since grown our organization from the 20 people with 2 customer service agents to 60 people with 10 customer service agents to handle the large demand for our services. We expect to grow even further in the next few weeks.
- The MTN number has been replaced by a fixed line (012 77 88 99) underpinned by a dedicated fiber optic internet line with E1 technology to enable up to 40 Customer Service agents to answer your call.
- We are currently actively recruiting more Customer Service agents & Logistics professionals to handle the growth we expect going forward. In case your readers are interested, CVs can be emailed to careers@kasuwa.com
- We have changed the delivery promise for our internationally supplied inventory, including books to ‘delivery within 7-10 working days’ to reflect the realities on the ground and accommodate for various things that can introduce delays into the fulfillment process.
- Internally, we have implemented a new order management system to ensure your order goes through in a shorter time and we are able to serve you better.
We are sorry but we are growing. . .
We are grateful that you gave us a try and that you are willing to use us again. I assure you that your experience if you try us today will be significantly better than the last.
Kasuwa.com is a 7 weeks old company and we have room for improvement. We however remain fully focused on building a best-of-breed company to provide Nigerians with an excellent retail experience so every feedback is an opportunity for us to improve. We remain committed to building Nigeria’s #1 online retailer.
Thank you for choosing Kasuwa.com and keep up the good work.
* The End *
So what do you think? Should we give Kasuwa a break, after all, it’s gone from being Nigeria’s #1 online retailer to actually ‘building’ Nigeria’s #1 online retailer. We are watching.
