Home Depot Regional Store

CUSTOMER PRODUCT SELECTION NTERFACE MODULE

Home Depot requested a web based tool for commercial customers to select products from their local store’s current inventory actually available into a basic purchase order format that the customer could then email or fax to the local store. The store employees then in turn could pull the inventory, put it into customer pickup so that all the customer had to do was come to the store and load the products onto their truck and sign for the purchase.

Home Depot (NYSE:HD) was having a very serious problem with a high return of incorrectly ordered materials often out of their original packaging and sometimes damaged. This caused a serious problem with customers because of lost time, refusal of the return of damaged or unpacked products. This issue was costing each store thousands of dollars in lost employee time re-stocking and re-packaging the returned materials, and the problem between the store and their commercial customers.

The goal was to develop a platform that offered customers a more involved process in each of their orders, with an inventory interface to pre-select products from the existing product inventory existing in the local store. This greatly reduced the confusion of the customer ordering a product that was not in inventory, resulting in errors by store employees cross referencing products from the existing inventory that often did not meet the need of the customer’s particular requirements.

The platform that Online Behavioral Marketing developed for Home Depot allows the customer to select the product from a simple dropdown interface, the product listing would show with the proper sizing, SKU coding, pricing, as well as other pertinent data to allow the customer to review the order before finalizing it with the store. Once the order was placed, the inventory required would be immediately put on hold for customers to ensure it was waiting for them to pick up. This platform created a tremendous amount of goodwill between the customer, the store employees and the store.