Drive Up and OPU process

[GuestObsessed531]

In my opinion, the DU machine breaks down when one of the people take their break and no one is designated to assist while that person is gone. I see this especially when we only have 2 people doing DU and for 30 minutes or so, the other DU person is prepping and running while the people at the desk are folding clothes or doing damages. If everyone knew what their job was upfront, there wouldn’t be this confusion. Now the honk goes off and I’ve seen three people stand around chatting at guest service while one person is running their ass off prepping orders and bringing them out.

This is a situation that's happening at my store right now. We have a 2-7 shift on weekdays that's always labeled as an "OPU" shift, on weekends there's an additional 10-3 "OPU" shift. My store tends to schedule the male service advocates in these shifts and there's about 1-3 advocates that regularly rotate getting the shifts.

The process almost ALWAYS breaks down when there is less than 3 service advocates at the desk at any given time. I feel like for the Service Desk to run smoothly, there needs to be one person assigned to Returns/Exchanges/In-Store Pickups, one person assigned exclusively to Drive-Ups, and a third "floating" person to do in-between tasks of prepping orders, answering the phone, and keeping the desk/lanes clean. When there's less than 2, you either have choose between being backed up with lines inside, or going red in Drive-Up because 12 arrived at the same time. In between, we are also missing calls because no one is free to get the phone. More and more lately, people have been calling into the store to report that they are outside for a Drive-Up, which makes things confusing as well because it doesn't seem like people who order from Target.com can select Drive-Up for their orders. Especially going into Q4, there is just too much to juggle at the desk for only 1 person to be assigned to running Drive-Up and I'm worried how they plan to realistically make things run smoothly.

 

[Zxy123456]

best practice is to use 3-tiers but obviously some stores do not follow it

We have never used 3 tiers, the flex team uses them not enough for drive up to use too.

 

[sunnydays]

We have never used 3 tiers, the flex team uses them not enough for drive up to use too.

you are being sent 3-tiers specifically for drive up this holiday season. you should make sure you get them, since they are yours

 

[blugirlami21]

Very interesting about not having dedicated drive up people. My store tried to do that in the very beginning with just one guest service team member and it was a shit show. It quickly changed after that. We usually have two dedicated guest service team members to open and close and at least two to four drive up/guest service team members scheduled throughout the day. We are a strictly three tier for guest services and we get in trouble if we use carts. Listening to how other stores are doing it I'm grateful that we have scheduling support at my store for pick up. Its too hard otherwise

 

[susan9099]

Our store director gave us wagons to use for drive ups, they suck. We use random scraps of cardboard to separate orders and if people have large orders they take up the entire wagon and sometimes it doesn't even all fit. We are looking for other ways to transfer orders than these wagons because they obviously don't have the space to support our intense drive ups.