SiteCrafting Blah Blah Blog
Oct. 20, 2006 at 9:17am
What Customer Service Should be Like
I recently received a gift certificate to a popular online merchant, aka Company. I'm not telling who Company is, because I like them, and I don't want my comments to be taken the wrong way. The entire thing was a fiasco, but I ended up with a nice warm and fuzzy feeling, simply because the merchant actually cared about my experience.
Here's the important parts:
- If something goes wrong, tell the customer why
- Never have an action with out a success or error message
- If you can reasonably accomodate the customer's request, do so
- Respect your customer's schedule
- If the customer isn't happy, ask them why
I won my gift certificate in a raffle, and to actually get it, I had to email one of Company's marketing people. That part was easy, and so I pointed my browser to Company's online store. I happily added a bunch of stuff to my cart. Once I had filled up my cart with schwag, I went through the registration and information process, and ended up at the payment page.
On that page, there was a nice field for adding gift certificate numbers, and so I put mine in and hit 'Submit'. Nothing happened. No error message, no confirmation, no indication that I'd entered a valid number. There was no way that I would proceed from here, because I didn't want to deal with a refund hassle, so I just emailed my contact at Company. She told me that she would get in touch with the people that manage their store, and let me know when it was fixed.
The next day, she sends me an email saying that the store is now fixed, and that I should try again and let her know if the problem persists. It does, so I return the email. Then she connects me directly with the store managers at the merchant (Merchant), and I get a new contact (my third, there was one in-between the lady at Company and this one), and am told that I'll either have to call their toll free ordering phone, or order via email.
I much prefer to email people than to call them, especially if I don't know the person I'm calling, so I email off my order. I ask that they remove my credit card number from their mail program when the order is complete, and they happily oblige. Finally, my free stuff is coming.
About a day later, I receive a shipping notification from Merchant, which lists one of the items $2.00 more than is displayed on the site. Normally, I'd be a bit ticked off, but this time I decide the fight is not worth the effort, especially because I am getting a ton of free stuff from them. The following Monday, my stuff arrives, and I'm happy.
The next day, I receive a request to fill out a survey about my experience, and I let them have it. I give them the lowest possible score on their webstore, and on product knowledge (the difference in price caused that). I also put in that I'd like to see trinkety stuff in the store - keychain, stickers, pens and the lot - because it would have been fun to plaster Company stickers all over everything I own (I know, I'm a tool). I send off the survey, thinking "That's the end of that, no one follows up on these things". Two days later, I receive a phone call from a guy named Jason (name changed), right as I start my lunch break. Nice timing, Jason. That shows that they care enough to not interrupt my work day.
Jason wants to know if he can ask me some questions about my survey results. After a my brain resets, I answer his questions. (Conversation is paraphrased)
Jason: Why did you give us a low mark on product knowledge?
Me: Because the pricing was inconsistent between the website and manual ordering. I didn't want to pursue it because I got a free certificate, and it didn't seem worth it.
J: Oh, ok. And why the low mark on our website?
Me: Because your gift certificate processing system didn't work, forcing me to order via email. (It's probably because I got the certificate direct from Company, and something wonky happened with the database.)
J: I see. Well, we are working on that, and hopefully it won't happen again. Also, I want to let you know we're looking into getting the stuff you recommended.
Me: Wow, cool.
Even though the ordering experience sucked, I like how customer friendly both companies are. They were prompt, answered my questions, and made sure that I was a valued customer, even though I was getting most of the stuff on their dime. The survey follow up was especially important, because you have to actually pay people to call up customers and ask why they had a bad experience with the process. I imagine that job is terrible, but it made me feel like they care about me. And that's something you don't see very much in the Internet industry.
Posted in Critiques, Testimonials by Dave Poole
Comments (2)
I had a similar-if-less-obnoxious-overall experience with HP a few months ago. The upshot was that their camera's compatibility with my computer still sucks (to the point that I can't use it), but the people I talked to while trying to figure it out were really helpful, and it was super easy to find relevant information on their support site. Usability 0/10, Explanation of Nonusability 10/10.
Customer support is also the biggest reason we stuck with our ISP (Speakeasy) when we moved to our current place. It's conceivable we could have gotten a better deal from someone else, given the three-way phone/net/cable packages they're always babbling about, but the bigger companies' reputation preceded them.
The lesson, in my opinion? An imperfect product is far more acceptable than an inability to cope with error.
1 | Left by Relsqui | Oct. 25, 2006 at 3:21am
Dave says:
Definitely. When something breaks, I want to know why it broke, and how I can prevent that from happening. If they can't give me the information, my only possibility is to ditch the product.
2 | Oct. 25, 2006 at 9:03am