On 7 November, Becom rolled out the red carpet for the most innovative, customer-focused and successful online businesses with the Becom Awards. Our webshop broekmans.be, the online extension of our drinks shop in Zolder, was also among the nominees for the second year in a row. Even more: we got to go home with the Logistic Champion Award in our 35th anniversary year.
The Logistic Champion Award is one of the five "awards by research" presented annually. These "awards by research" are granted on the basis of a cross-section of 75 completed surveys from real customers of the participating shops. The "Logistic Champion Award" focuses on the entire process from order to delivery: is ordering easy, does the web shop offer a wide choice of delivery options, is the customer kept well informed during the delivery process and is receiving and unpacking the order a pleasant experience?
Jan Broekmans, manager of Drankenshop Broekmans and spirits aficionado: "In our physical shop, we have been able to work on a pleasant shopping experience for the past 35 years, and we have already undergone several metamorphoses in order to continue to meet our customer's expectations. So one of the biggest challenges we had to overcome at www.broekmans.be was figuring out how to provide online customers with such an experience as well."
To find out, we did a lot of fieldwork ourselves. We listened to our staff and to you, our customers. That way, we mapped out what online drink shoppers like and, more importantly, what they don't like so much. "From that, a number of key insights emerged very quickly, which we immediately implemented in our webshop without hesitation," says Jan.
"It quickly became apparent that customers, for example, want to be able to specify exactly when they want to receive their parcel and would like to be able to choose between home delivery, delivery to work, delivery to a parcel machine or delivery to a postal point. In addition, they would like to be proactively informed in case of any problems or delays, without having to ask for explanations themselves. The modern customer has also become ecological: he would like the option to merge orders to save unnecessary transport and handling, he prefers not to see bubble wrap or plastic as padding material anymore and he also appears not to be a fan of paper shredding."
For a company shipping fragile goods, the latter is not easy to meet. By investing in our own custom-made shipping boxes and using only paper cushioning material, we manage to reduce the number of breakages caused by transport to barely 0.1% of the total number of shipments that go out the door each year. In 2024, for example, fewer than 5 shipments were damaged in transit, an exceptional statistic that underlines how rock-solid our team packs and ships all orders with bpost.
"The unboxing experience has also always been important to us," continues Jan. "The industry we are in is anchored in perception and experience. To surprise a customer during an online experience, you have to be able to be extra creative. After all, you have to reveal a lot of things in advance, either because it is legally required or because your online customer wants a lot of information before he can and wants to trust you. For us, this award confirms that we know how to exceed our customers' experiences and expectations one last time even while receiving and unpacking our packages. But to find out exactly how we do that, for that you will have to order from us yourself sometime." Jan concludes smiling.
Becom is the new federation representing the interests of E-Commerce in Belgium, and came about after the merger of the former BeCommerce and Safeshops.be . Becom currently has more than 64,000 member e-commerce companies, and since their creation in 2023, they now organise the Becom Awards annually, replacing previous separate initiatives "Safeshops.be Awards" and "BeCommerce Awards"
All winners of the Becom Awards 2024 >
Marketing • IT • Klantenservice
I've known Broekmans since I graduated in 2006 and thanks to Jan I've come to know the passion for spirits. I dedicate myself every day to the webshop, customer service and all the IT involved. In my spare time, besides whiskey, I can also really enjoy rum, but just as much as a gin tonic or a simple bellini. In the words of Martien Meiland, if there's no alcohol in it, don't call me!
