Case Studies
Chocolate Now!
Who is Chocolate Now!?
Chocolate Now! is an internet retailer specialising in luxury Belgian chocolate gifts. They allow the customer to create their own custom box of chocolates online, choosing each chocolate individually and then selecting from a wide range of gift wraps. The gift is then dispatched directly to the final recipient, along with a personal message from the sender.
Why did they come to us?
Because the Chocolate Now! website offers the customer such a wide degree of flexibility, it was not possible to use an off-the-shelf shopping cart so a custom system had to be built from scratch. The shopping cart was originally developed in 2005 and is being continually improved, adding new services and enhancing the customer experience.
Before using PostCoder®, customers were required to type the delivery address in manually. However, because over 90% of purchases are gifts being sent directly to the recipient rather than to the cardholder, a significant number of customers were entering incorrect or incomplete delivery addresses. So Chocolate Now! decided to implement an automated address lookup to try and resolve the issue. Customers now have it easy - they either simply enter the Postcode and the delivery address is completed automatically, or they can enter the address details they know, and the full address and Postcode is looked up for them!
What are the benefits?
Flexible pricing
Chocolate Now! chose the Allies® PostCoder Web SOAP service because of the flexible pricing structure which provides an affordable entry level solution while offering significant discounts as turnover increases.
Seamless integration
The SOAP interface allowed them to develop their own user interface using Perl and JavaScript giving the same "look and feel" as the rest of their website.
Quick to implement
"The getMatchAddress and getThrfareAddress examples allowed our developers to get a basic system up and running quickly. We then made some modifications to provide our users with an interface that matched the style of our site."
Nigel Croft, Chocolate Now!
Saved money
Since implementing the address lookup, Chocolate Now! has seen a 50% reduction in the number of non arrivals reported by customers, saving them on average £63 per month from replacement and reposting costs after deducting the cost of the address lookups. That's around £756 net saved per year!
Workload reduced
It has significantly reduced the workload of administrative staff who were previously performing manual checks on incomplete addresses.
Fantastic service
"We have always found Allies® customer service and technical support to be very prompt and helpful. Once the system was set up and working, we have had remarkably few problems."
"The 21 day free trial was ideal - it allowed us to do our development and perform extensive testing before going live, and to iron out any minor problems before we started paying for the service. We are very pleased with the Allies® system. It is robust, reliable and easily pays for itself by reducing the number of queries our staff have to deal with."
Nigel Croft, Chocolate Now!