From wine shops to builders’ merchants, businesses are finding that customers expect quick and easy digital transactions – and rapid solutions if they reach out for help
For Kirby Bryant, the latest lockdown feels different from the first. For most of the 16 years she has run Cambridge Wine Royston, in Hertfordshire, Bryant saw e-commerce as directly conflicting with being local. But at the start of the Covid pandemic, she added a simple price list to the shop’s social media pages and invited orders by phone. She was promptly inundated “to the point where we had to unplug the connection”.
Since then, Bryant and her team have not only developed a simple website but have invested in connecting with customers via social media, email and phone, alongside other forms of remote interaction such as virtual tasting events. “The pandemic dragged us into the 21st century,” she says.
