Container Store is in the midst of a national rollout of last-mile delivery service Dolly.

The service is aimed at shoppers who are buying expensive items that are difficult to deliver, such as the retailer’s furniture and custom closet systems.

The Dolly-branded service costs $69 per order, which is more than double the cost of its prior delivery services; Container Store had previously used a patchwork of last-mile delivery companies in different markets, typically charging $20-$30 per order.

Despite the increased cost, the shift to Dolly has provided a boost to Container Store’s Net Promoter Score among shoppers who use the service, says Paul de Freitas, store operations manager at Container Store, No. 457 in the 2019 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000. He declined to share specific figures. Retailers like Container Store use Net Promoter Score, or NPS, to measure customer satisfaction based on shoppers’ responses to the question, “How likely is it that you would recommend [the brand] to a friend or colleague?”

Those results aren’t surprising given that Dolly has reduced the retailer’s delivery window to 30 minutes from the four hours it previously allotted, he says.

“That’s a huge convenience to our customers,” de Freitas says. “Consumers grow anxious during a four-hour window. But a 30-minute window is short enough that they’re willing to wait.”

The time savings stems from Dolly’s unique approach in which a driver handles a single order at a time. The retailer’s previous delivery providers would handle several deliveries from Container Store and other merchants that they’d deliver on a route. Dolly’s approach helps keep deliveries on schedule, he says.

Expanding the service

Container Store initially tested Dolly in spring 2018 in Denver, a market where it hadn’t offered a delivery service. At first, the retailer…

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