Coupang Sets New Standards for Customer Experience and Operational Excellence
Coupang, a leading e-commerce company, has made significant strides in delivering exceptional customer experiences while driving operational efficiency. In its recent 2024 Q4 earnings conference call, Bom Kim, Founder and CEO, highlighted the company's achievements and future plans.
Over the past 12 months, Coupang grew net revenues by nearly $6 billion or 23% in constant currency, excluding Farfetch. This growth was driven by a focus on innovation and operational excellence, which enabled the company to break the traditional trade-off between experience and price. As Bom Kim noted, "We work backwards from a vision of a world where our customers have it all, the best experience at the lowest price." This orientation is the company's most important advantage.
One key area of improvement was in fulfillment and logistics processes. Coupang made significant changes to upgrade its services, which enabled the company to increase same-day or dawn deliveries by 45% this quarter. The order cutoff for same-day delivery has also been extended by two hours. Next-day Rocket Delivery has been expanded to provide customers with next-day installation services on thousands of items, including large appliances, furniture, electronics, and even tires for automobiles.
The company's fresh assortment was increased by over 30% in the quarter, with 100% of its selection coming with the promise of free same-day and dawn delivery. This ensures that customers receive their orders within hours, as demonstrated by a customer who ordered fresh flowers, ice cream, and cake online just before midnight and had them delivered at his doorstep when his significant other woke up the next morning.
Coupang's culture of relentless innovation fuels growth while driving continuous improvements in processes and margins. The company believes that customer experience and operational excellence can advance hand-in-hand, with better processes leading to better outcomes for customers. By innovating tirelessly on behalf of customers, Coupang is simultaneously driving down costs and raising the bar on service quality.
The company's efficiency improvements were driven by significant investments in robotics and automation, which have nearly doubled the portion of its fulfillment and logistics infrastructure that is highly automated over the past year alone. As a result, line-haul costs improved by 16% in the process of upgrading the company's fulfillment logistics network this year.
