I'm Lost! Drive ups

[tracemick8824]

Have you guys pretty much just tossed the 2 minute time window out the door in the hopes of accomplishing better accuracy?

See I wish my HR would give us more scheduled there. We are all good at what we do, but we just don’t have enough bodies consistently, especially during the peak times

I really feel this. When I’ve been alone at guest services and had to do OPU and DU, I call for backup knowing I won’t get it but I think it gives the guests in the OPU line a bit of sympathy for me so when I get to them and apologize for the wait, they are usually very nice about it. I just try to keep a smile on my face (not that they can tell with my mask on) and apologize and get them on their way as quickly as I can.

 

[tracemick8824]

Are you finding that a lot of mistakes are being made? Like bags being given to wrong guest or just missing all together?

I am. And I think it’s because we don’t organize ourselves well. We are told who is doing DU but after reading here about teams who assign people the task of picking the order from the OPU room and others take them out to the guests, I see how we just scramble around and people call out a name and get those bags. It creates a situation where too many people are trying to do the same thing.
As usual with my store it’s a lack of communication. Not blaming anyone, especially now with it being busy, just want to come up with ideas so we aren’t constantly putting out fires when we don’t have to.

 

[tracemick8824]

IMO there’s little excuse for bag mix up. Missing items can happen but there is no reason to not A) look at name on bag (takes half a second) and B) asking the guest to verify items. That should ALWAYS be happening.
Missing items happens to the best of us but bag mixups should not be happening

I agree. Speaking to my experience, these mistakes happen due to lack of training of the team member at guest services (I don’t know about other stores but we had a lot of people take LOA or quit) and lack of training of the team picking and assigning the orders (a lot of new people as well). So many times, I go to a location to get an order and it’s not there. Unfortunately, we’ve learned to hunt it down on the next shelf over or on a self below. We just deal with it at guest services which is the worst thing we can do, in my opinion.

 

[seasonaldude]

We are having so many drive up/pick up orders that there are literally like 4-8 bags in most if not all of our holding Wacos. I get that there shouldn’t be any bag mix ups or missing bags but with the alert honking for hours back to back with new orders to be carried out that each have 3-5 + bags each and only 1 or 2 people manning SD... things can get overwhelming and confusing which is what causes these things to happen when otherwise they wouldn’t.

Partner with your Fulfillment TL. It's fulfillment's job to put things to hold properly in large part so that when things get busy it's as easy as possible for GS to get guests their orders. The busier things are, the more important it is for fulfillment to do things right. At my store, we're aware that orders are not being put to hold correctly and it's contributing to problems for our drive-up people. (They also have some idiots running drive-ups out at times and that doesn't help them either.) But, we have so many people picking orders right now that we have no idea who isn't doing things right. We need GS to help us out with that so that the issues can be corrected. When you guys see something wrong, try to figure out who picked the order. Everyone is going to make mistakes, but if you find that bags without labels, for example, often were picked by specific TMs, give that info to the fulfillment TL so they can look up the TM's name from the numbers and decide what action needs to be taken.

Our drive up people are continuously complaining to me and that's what I tell them. I don't know who to yell at (if it's a fulfillment TM) or teach (if it's a TM from another department dumped into OPU with little training) unless they get the info to my TL.

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

I really feel this. When I’ve been alone at guest services and had to do OPU and DU, I call for backup knowing I won’t get it but I think it gives the guests in the OPU line a bit of sympathy for me so when I get to them and apologize for the wait, they are usually very nice about it. I just try to keep a smile on my face (not that they can tell with my mask on) and apologize and get them on their way as quickly as I can.

If I say “hey ETLs it’s just me at GS and I’m helping a guest so I cannot get that drive up” either my etl or STL or etl ap/hr will come to help.

 

[NightHuntress]

And if a guest is opening their trunk for you to put in the bags, there’s not gonna be any guest Verifications going on.

Nope- no excuse to not verify. We walk near the driver door and still ask for the name to verify, let them know of any items they didn’t receive due to inf and then place the bags in the backseat or trunk.

“Most” issues during drive up can be solved with one simple thing. Slow down. While not all districts are the same ours is not focused on drive time score right now. It’s almost impossible. I’d rather people focus on getting the order correct the first time instead of making errors and ticking the guests off. Guests can and will wait at this time with the amount of orders increasing. It’s basically a given.

 

[Zxy123456]

Have you guys pretty much just tossed the 2 minute time window out the door in the hopes of accomplishing better accuracy?

Yes

 

[Corrin]

I second the have someone outside processing while someone else is inside pulling. I usually grab the cart attendant and send them out with a new cart of soon to be arriving orders every time I have them gathered. It's not perfect because there is a LOT of chaos but it's way better than one SD person running inside and outside constantly.

 

[tracemick8824]

We re-opened a couple of our holiday overflow stockrooms because the two or three orders per bin was causing so many errors. Our ETL SE got the shelves two Christmases agoWe haven’t resorted to using the extra ETL office spaces again.We’ve been very lucky to have enough coverage During a lull to try to keep RTS cleared out and open up some locations.

Definitely look in the bags To check over the order and repeatedly stress to fulfillment (especially the newbies) that stickers are cheaper than effed up orders. Encourage them to Sticker the heck out of those orders.

Our crew today is very good at communicating when we have an order together, and we make sure we have every bag pulled. Some SD crews I work with, we make one person pull an entire order and be responsible to check it. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. I guess That’s a judgment call based on who’s working.

Today’s crew, we worked together and made sure we had one person for OPU inside and to help pull and stage the drive ups. This person stayed back and pushed carts or handed Orders so runners could confidently take that order out.

Our store max dropped from 580 to 250 so we also had someone pulling orders for guests who couldn’t come into the store. We sometimes had a runner to take those orders over. It’s just Been crazy so all we can do is assign tasks and work together. For us, the SD opener and ETL have usually decided who will be doing what jobs.
HTH

I really like this idea and will strongly suggest it to my TLs. Thank you!

Yes

Hell yes

 

[tracemick8824]

My ETL told me we need to improve our drive up time because it’s consistently between 2:30 and 3 minutes. I’ve searched the forum and it seems like the process most use is to have a dedicated “runner” and a dedicated “picker” (assuming you have at least 3 people scheduled at gs)*. Team members at my store don’t want to be tied to specific roles for some reason so when a DU needs to be picked or a guest arrives one of three things happen: 1. Someone claims it and picks it or takes it out to the guest. 2. Everyone pretends not to hear the DU, until it’s obvious no one else is going to move, someone preps it or takes it out. 3. Everyone has gotten themselves into situations where they are doing returns, on the floor looking for an item for a guest, or doing something they can’t put down to get the DU so we call for back up and sometimes get it but sometimes we don’t.
If improving our times and making sure we aren’t forgetting parts of orders, having dedicated people doing 1 job makes sense to me. How do I get buy in though from leaders and team members?
*On the weekends especially, we could have 10-15 DU say they are on their way almost at once and have 8-10 in the parking lot waiting for their stuff so we do need to jump in and help when possible or call for backup.

 

[Yetive]

We have DU scheduled every day. SETL is the back up for when there are a ton at once.

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

Same re: SETL backup.

the key is dedicated. Whoever is scheduled as DU should not underany circumstances be doing returns unless there are no drive ups at all

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

Everyone has gotten themselves into situations where they are doing returns, on the floor looking for an item for a guest, or doing something they can’t put down to get the DU

This can’t be happening if you want good times.

also unrelated but GSTMs should not be leaving the desk to look for an item. Either the guest should look or a Salesfloor ™.

 

[jackandcat]

...GSTMs should not be leaving the desk to look for an item. Either the guest should look or a Salesfloor TM

Agreed. I've seen this in our store, this is frequently because nobody on Salesfloor is responding to calls on the walkie. We all know how large our stores are. If we work at the service desk or checkout lanes, we usually don't know every single inch of our store's shelving, product placement and signage. We tend to be short-staffed much of the time, yet having a TM walking away from the service desk or checkout lanes to look for an item or verify a major signage issue (not just a 50-cents-off discrepancy) creates unplanned and major delays for our other guests. 😕

 

[qmosqueen]

The challenge is on any takers
???

 

[Yetive]

I can't play the video

 

[qmosqueen]

I can't play the video

try youtube

 

[DBZ]

We put an "on the way" drive up into a new bin or 3 tier with their name visible on a dry erase page that is attached to the bin/3 tier. Having the names very visible is great.

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

We put an "on the way" drive up into a new bin or 3 tier with their name visible on a dry erase page that is attached to the bin/3 tier. Having the names very visible is great.

wait that is insanely smart I'm bringing this up... we put the big ones in shopping carts

 

[DBZ]

wait that is insanely smart I'm bringing this up... we put the big ones in shopping carts

It really is. We have always pulled them prior to guest arrival (assuming they don't just pop in), but now they have their special place (instead of the floor). It was adding the names that made it great. Our SD doesn't want us using carts, but sometimes we do. For a cart, we move one of the stickers from the bag, to the handle.

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

It really is. We have always pulled them prior to guest arrival (assuming they don't just pop in), but now they have their special place (instead of the floor). It was adding the names that made it great. Our SD doesn't want us using carts, but sometimes we do. For a cart, we move one of the stickers from the bag, to the handle.

We need a way in the pickup app to mark an order as “pulled”

 

[DBZ]

We need a way in the pickup app to mark an order as “pulled”

Yes! That would be AMAZING!!