WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. (WKBW) — Ever since the Coronavirus affected the U.S., services like Instacart had longer wait times than usual, and order volumes increased by 300 percent last week alone compared to the same period the previous year.
Tops Friendly Markerts said a number of measures were put into place to help alleviate wait times, including:
- expanding the hours where its Instacart employees (known as “shoppers”) can shop Tops stores, allowing them to be more prepared to fulfill the orders.
- continuously hiring and on-boarding thousands of new shoppers each week.
In addition, Tops' own associates began picking online orders to help Instacart shoppers in a pilot store on Thursday, with more stores to follow.
"COVID-19 is affecting every one of us over a sustained period of time, and, as a result, we’ve had to reimagine and rescale our Care operations overnight to best serve customers and shoppers across North America," saidMark Killick, Vice President of Instacart Care.
Over the past few weeks, Instacart launched new features to help minimize contact and increase safety for employees and customers, including:
- an employee Safety Center to provide masks, hand sanitizer and thermometers at no cost.
- “Leave at My Door” default option for contact-less customer delivery.
- Fast and flexible option where customers receive an estimated delivery window and are notified when a shopper starts to work on their order.
- extended the ordering window from 7 days to 14 days.
- evolving their Help Center and increasing their number of agents.
