Laundry industry is an ever evolving industry as so does its challenges. A few important challenges that need to be definitely addressed are-
- Logistics:
When compared with a normal food delivery company or an e-commerce company the logistics of a LDC(Laundry and Dry-Cleaning) business is quite different. In this sector the delivery executive should visit the customer’s place twice for the same order.
He has to visit the customer’s place for pickup, take the garments back to the processing center. Once the garments are processed he should again deliver them back at the customers place. Effectively for one single order the delivery executive should visit the customer’s place twice.
In case the customer wants to rewash the clothes then again the logistics doubles.
- Customer Issues:
Customers give their most sentimental clothes to the service providers and they expect them to return in a nice and hygiene way. There is no wrong in this but the service provider has to be very careful while collecting the clothes from the customer
Example: PKC Laundries (customer care) one of the best laundry services in Hyderabad had one of a kind peculiar experience. PKC’s delivery executive has picked an order from a customer’s place.
A husband and wife were there at the time of pickup of the garments. Husband gave 5-white shirts, 1-green shirt and 1- pink shirt. At the time of delivery husband was like he didn’t give a green shirt for processing as he never had a green shirt. In place of green shirt he was demanding for a white shirt.
PKC’s people were pretty sure that they picked a green shirt. Due to the customer’s harsh behavior they checked internally and they didn’t find a white shirt that the customer was asking. PKC’s customer care got in touch with the customer and they told him that, it was definitely a green shirt and not white and asked him to check with his wife.
Still the husband was not convinced. At last when PKC s executive spoke to his wife, she was like that green shirt was her husband’s shirt and he has bought that one recently. So many customers’ don’t know what colors and branded clothes they wear.
There will be so many issues of this kind and the staff should be trained to handle such kind of issues.
- Human resources:
LDC is any time a labor intensive industry. 90-95% are blue-collar workers. Blue-collar workers are always tough to handle. The problem is that as most of these people are uneducated it is very difficult to make them understand the importance of working.
Attrition will be always higher. People leave without any reason. Service providers will give training for people but they will be leaving without any notice. They will be giving training for other set of people and they will be leaving again.
It is difficult for people to get adapted to heat in the ironing department, chemicals in the washing department. My advice for all the LDC service providers is prepare SOPs. These SOPs will make sure that everything will be in place and they are like constitutional guidelines for an enterprise.
- Payments:
Payments in the B2B segment is a major challenge. Credit period will be around 60-90 days and in some cases it will be more than that. Therefore it is better for people entering into this segment to be a bit cautious.
Hence these are the major challenges faced by LDC companies.
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PK,
PK Enterprises.
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