Delco Foods Saves DSRs up to 20 hours each week after two months of going live with Pepper

A legacy eCommerce platform leaves both sales reps and operators wanting more

Delco Foods, a specialty Italian foods distributor servicing the midwest, was facing a major problem: Their legacy online ordering system that they had used for nearly 20 years was becoming an obstacle to growth. 

Their platform was clunky, hard to use, didn’t contain item images, and didn’t load on mobile devices. Worst of all, however, is the fact that operators couldn’t even search the item catalog to find new items. Just listen to how the team describes their experience:

Mark:

“it was really cumbersome. People just didn't search. so there was not going to be any growth from the order guide, if that makes sense. It was something we had to push from our side. And even if they wanted something, you would have to make sure it got added to their custom order guide . . . Not too many people wanted to use it.”

Kent:

“From the very beginning when I came into Delco, it was explained to me that yes, we technically have our online ordering system, but we really don't actively promote it. Customers that want to use it really need to be customers that buy nearly everything through us or are not looking for new things, because it was very hard to look up new items. 

So, it was basically a data entry site so they could put orders in, but they weren't really looking things up . . . More likely than not, the majority of them either called me, texted me, occasionally called the office, or didn't look things up.”

Theresa:

“[Our prior solution was] only available on desktops, and is very basic . . . There's no real photos unless you really dig into an item. definitely not on the order guide.

‍It did some things but it was just not fun to use. It was almost for a coder to understand more than a lay person.”

On top of missed opportunities to upsell and get operators to try new items managing old tech was taking an incredible burden on the team, both professionally and personally with reps working 7 days a week around the clock to enter orders for customers:

Kent:

‍“I was putting in, 15-16 orders on Sunday, maybe more than that. and Sunday would start as soon as we got done with church in the morning, and I was usually getting done at roughly 4:00 in the afternoon. So, a good bit of the day was spent with the computer in front of me riding in the car while my wife's driving and I'm putting orders in. 

During the week it would be the same thing. If we had manufacturer reps that wanted to ride with us, as soon as they sent schedule out and asked for people to sign up, my initial answer was always ‘don't send them down here Monday or Wednesday, I just physically cannot do it. I do not have time; I've just got too many places I have to go to get orders’

Mark:

“I was doing 12 to 14 orders on Sundays. If I went on vacation, my grandson and everyone in my whole family knew you can't schedule an outing till 3:00 in the afternoon…. and even after that I'm going to do an order probably. Then for years and you go on vacation you either have to have three people try to cover your Sunday or you're going to do it.”

Rich product imagery and intuitive item search with Pepper’s mobile-first e-Commerce, complete with personalized support leading for smooth onboarding

At a certain point, all the additional hours punching orders for customers that never order anything new from Delco became too much to bear. Fortunately, that’s when they found Pepper.

With Pepper, the team has rich product imagery for their entire product catalog, alongside easy order guide management and an intuitive search that allowed their operators to easily find other items that they weren’t currently ordering.

After a short implementation period, the team was ready to begin rolling out the new system - but change is never easy. That’s why the Pepper team was there with hands-on support and a full library of personalized training videos for the team:

Theresa

“Our Salesforce has been asking for an online ordering app that's better than our existing one for years, and I've always had to keep saying ‘we don't have anything yet. Nothing's in the works.’. So I think first of all, they were excited to finally have it in their hands. 

Having Nick [Pepper VP of Customer Success] come out to do the demo and training and taking two hours to really go through everybody's questions was huge. We're also lucky we have a very small sales team, there's about 20 people so it was easy for him to come in the room with everybody there and it wasn’t virtual, he could walk around the room and kind of explain how to do things. 

I requested that Nick make me a series of tutorial videos, and we now have a page on our website that's password protected with actual tutorials of things that our customers can watch such as changing an order guide or updating your contact information, things like that that if the sales rep gets scared about getting too into the weeds, we just can refer to”

With the product in DSRs’ hands, the team gave them a ‘soft’ rollout of a month to warm up to the app - but once sales reps saw how easy the app was to use, they immediately took to what they could do for their customers:

Mark:

“We kind of had it in our pockets for a while and we could fool with it. We could punch orders ourselves, but we couldn't allow customers to access it. I kind of started right away working on order guides and that's where I realize ‘okay this is going to be nice.’

You could actually easily put it together for customers. I went from customers that were very unorganized to being able to make them organized in just minutes. I had people that would just walk around the store with a pad with no clue. That wore you out because they forgot a lot of stuff. Now [with Pepper’s shelf to sheet Order Guide] you have a guy that can walk around a store, and I placed items exactly where he's walking, so he's got to the next thing immediately”

Kent:

“A lot of my customers are used to seeing some type of online app or portal of some sort where they're able to look products up, whether it's from another place that they've worked or a competitor that they're currently working with. so it was not anything overly new for a lot of these individuals. I've had a couple of them, once they logged in and kind of played around with it a bit, they're like, ‘This is really easy’. 

And one of them that used to use our own old system every Sunday would log in, look at pricing, but would never place his order that way, he would always send it to me. Once we went to Pepper. He logged in. He goes, "This is really easy… This will save you a lot of time on Sunday, won't it?". I said, "Yeah, I kind of get a little bit of my time back.".

He goes, ‘Yeah, I'll start doing my orders this way now.’”

A better buying experience leads to Skyrocket adoption among reps and operators

After just a few months, Delco was able to migrate hundreds of operators onto their new Pepper app, realizing the benefits nearly immediately. 

But Pepper has helped their team in plenty of other ways that haven’t shown up in the bottom line as well:

“No lie, It has saved me 20 hours a week. I've got some customers that when I was doing their orders over the phone, it was going down the order guide line by line. And every time I have one of those calls, I know I'm knocking out 20 to 30 minutes to set on the phone to take that order. and that person is on the app doing his own order and I'm like, ‘Hey, good. We're done.’. - Kent

“Crazy enough, the ones that we would used to always chase seem to be getting their orders in on time now. The customers that you would be after cut off or wouldn't even think about doing their order until cutoff, some of them are doing it the day ahead while they're in the shop. It's just so simple to do, so, why not knock it out? And it blows me away when I get them two days ahead or a day ahead from people that we have to run down to get their order.” -Mark

“I'm able to actually go out and do what I was hired to do - to go out and sell. Monday and Wednesdays used to be just running from account to account, taking all the phone calls and doing a bunch of data entry. 

And now all of a sudden on Wednesday, I was able to actually stop into some prospects, knock on some doors and work on some projects that I needed to get done. And it was less data entry, less order entry, and more time actually trying to go out and sell and grow the business.” -Kent

“For a sales rep that works on Sundays, on Monday you just don't feel like pushing it the whole day. You really have in the back of your head a voice saying, ‘I did work Sunday, so I'm going to pull up short today and go home.’, I think that's human nature. But now that the work on Sundays are gone, you have two good days off. so I think it's going to affect me as far as not having that excuse anymore.” -Mark