Beware Consumers With a Grudge

What’s the old marketing adage? “Happy customers will tell two out of ten friends. Angry customers will tell eight out of ten friends.” Consumers have more opportunity than before to complain about your brand than ever before. Check out these examples: Read more

Details Are Necessary Before Claiming Something is Wrong With a Web Site

This really grinds my gears. Every 3-4 weeks, I’ll get an urgent email or call. The escalation chain goes something like this:

Consumer writes to Customer Service.
> Customer Service Rep forwards to Customer Service Supervisor.
>> Customer Service Supervisor forwards to Associate Marketing Manager.
>>> Associate Marketing Manager forwards to Marketing Manager.
>>>> Marketing Manager forwards to agency Account Manager.
>>>>> Agency Account Manager forwards to me.

Along the way, each person tacks on a message about how urgent this is, get back to me right away, yada yada yada.

By the time I see it, the email thread is fairly lengthy. When I scroll down to the original message, it typically says something like this:

“Your web site doesn’t work.”

[sigh…] I take application bugs seriously, but it never occurs to anyone that this is not enough information to make a guess as to what the problem was. So I’ll spend a half hour reviewing the site, testing functionality and forms, and looking at our Web Analytics to see if there were any traffic spikes or periods of no data that might indicate there was a problem with the Web hosting. 100% of the time I find nothing wrong. So I say nothing wrong could be identified by the information we have.

Of course clients want to hear that something was wrong because “the customer is always right.”

Then I have to reeducate everyone again that the user did not report any details that could help identify what the problem might be. It could be any number of things:

• User didn’t say what he was tying to specifically do.
• Maybe the user is not waiting for a Flash movie to play.
• User may be on slow dial-up connection, not broadband. Or possibly sharing Internet connection on a network that is congested due to heavy use by other users.
• User might be using outdated operating system and browser version we are not currently supporting. (e.g. Windows 98 and IE 5)
• User may be using a computer that is very old/slow, loaded with many applications or malware that freezes from Flash, video or other functionality.
• The user may be impatient and clicking everything and causing the browser/computer to freeze.
• We don’t know if user only tried once. If user tries again, it might be fine.
• Maybe the site is blocked by the military/school/company/organization that the user is accessing the Internet through.

Having someone say the Web site doesn’t work is too vague to confirm if it is a Web hosting issue, programming issue, database issue, hardware issue, software issue or user issue.

It is critical to try to educate the Customer Support team to ask more detailed questions when they get obscure comments. The following is the minimum amount of information we need to recreate and identify problems:

• What type of computer being used: brand, processor specs, memory (e.g. Dell Latitude D610 Intel Pentium M processor 1.86GHz, 2 GB RAM)
• What Operating System (e.g. Windows XP Professional)
• What type of Internet connection (i.e. DSL, Cable, T1, Dial-up)
• What Web browser and version (e.g. Apple Safari 2.0.4, Firefox 2.0.0.4, Internet Explorer 7)
• Specifically what day and time (including time zone) did the user try to access the Web site?
• What specifically did the user try to do?
• What happened as a result of the user’s actions?

Also, design contact forms to capture useful information. Clients tend to ignore this, but as a result, we waste a lot of time down the road troubleshooting vague claims.

The user was kind enough to report a problem. But without details, it’s unlikely any problem can be identified.

Please let me know if you found this useful.
Thanks.
-Roland

Review: Go Daddy Holiday Email Review

I expected to have received many more Christmas emails / Holiday e-cards by now. Sure I got lots of sales messages from Amazon, Buy, Verizon, Palm, etc. But I want a non-solicitation message wishing me the best. This is what I got.

My rating system is simple. By default, these companies get 1 star just for taking the time and effort to send me a stand alone Christmas/holiday email message.

You get another star if you have something interesting to say or pretty animation for me to look at.

Today’s review:
Go Daddy ( 3 stars )

Subject: A special holiday message from GoDaddy.com

Dear Roland Reinhart,
All of us at GoDaddy.com wish you and your family a happy holiday and a fantastic New Year.
All the best,
Bob Parsons
CEO and Founder
GoDaddy.com

Season’s Greetings from Godaddy.com

IMHO: This was the first cool email I got. It’s got a high energy feel, a dancing snow man and a rockin Brian Setzer tune. Thumbs up to Go Daddy.

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Advice to Marketers: Next time, send me something like Go Daddy did or this. It’s hysterical and fun. And a lot more memorable than any of the above.

Merry Christmas!

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Review: Continental Airline Holiday Email

I expected to have received many more Christmas emails / Holiday e-cards by now. Sure I got lots of sales messages from Amazon, Buy, Verizon, Palm, etc. But I want a non-solicitation message wishing me the best. This is what I got.

My rating system is simple. By default, these companies get 1 star just for taking the time and effort to send me a stand alone Christmas/holiday email message.

You get another star if you have something interesting to say or pretty animation for me to look at.

Today’s review:
Continental Airlines ( 2 stars )

Subject: Happy Holidays from Continental Airlines

Happy Holidays
The end of another year gives us the chance to wish you a happy holiday season and say thank you for your continued support. We appreciate your business as a valued OnePass member and look forward to serving you in the new year.
View your animated greeting.
Best Wishes,
Continental Airlines

IMHO: The photos from around the world were interesting. But honestly, I wasn’t wowed. Clicking the snow globe to “shake” it was useless. But they did put more effort into this email than the other companies.

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Merry Christmas!

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Review: Delta Airlines Holiday Email

I expected to have received many more Christmas emails / Holiday e-cards by now. Sure I got lots of sales messages from Amazon, Buy, Verizon, Palm, etc. But I want a non-solicitation message wishing me the best. This is what I got.

My rating system is simple. By default, these companies get 1 star just for taking the time and effort to send me a stand alone Christmas/holiday email message.

You get another star if you have something interesting to say or pretty animation for me to look at.

Today’s review:
Delta Airlines ( 1 star )

Subject: Thank you for your loyal business

In this season of thanks, we thank you for your loyal business

Hello Mr. Reinhart,

On behalf of the 45,000 Delta people dedicated to serving you worldwide, “Thank You!” for continuing to choose us as your preferred airline.

We’re transforming Delta into an even better airline for you, and hope you have had the opportunity to experience the improvements and new product offerings designed to make our airline even more convenient and enjoyable, including:

* More than 70 new international destinations
* More comfortable aircraft interiors with all-leather seats
* State-of-the-art entertainment systems available on demand
* Better food and beverage offerings on Delta flights worldwide with celebrity partners like Michelle Bernstein and Rande Gerber
* Advanced technology offering improved self-service kiosks, better delta.com functionality, and automatic notifications of delays, irregular operations, alternative service, and more
* Major improvements in airport facilities in Atlanta and New York/JFK
* Horizontal lie-flat seats in BusinessElite®, coming in 2008

In addition to our enhanced customer service and offerings, we are pleased to report that we are on track to complete our restructuring and exit Chapter 11 in the first half of 2007, as planned. Of course, our customers aren’t the only ones taking notice of the new, ever-improving Delta. As you may have seen in the news, US Airways recently made an unsolicited merger proposal.

Please be assured that your travel plans, your SkyMiles, and the many benefits you enjoy from the SkyMiles program and our global alliances are secure and are in no way affected. It is business as usual at Delta Air Lines. Today, as always, you can rely on the excellent service Delta’s proud team of dedicated professionals provides.

Going forward, Delta will evaluate US Airways’ proposal carefully, as we are obligated to do. But you should know we are concerned that this particular transaction would not be in the best interest of our many stakeholders including our customers, employees, travel partners, and the communities we serve. We are moving full steam ahead with our own plan to emerge from Chapter 11 as a strong, independent, stand-alone airline dedicated to providing you with world-class service and
superior performance.

Please continue to book on Delta with confidence knowing you can count on the convenience and choice you’ve come to expect from the more than 14,000 daily flights to 445 destinations in 92 countries that we along with our SkyTeam and codeshare partners provide worldwide. We appreciate your loyalty and the opportunity to meet your personal and business travel needs — now and in the future. Thank you for choosing Delta, and warm wishes for a safe, happy and healthy holiday season.

Lee Macenczak
Executive Vice President of Sales and Customer Service

IMHO: There was no link to a Flash animation to make me feel warm and fuzzy. Instead, the EVP of Customer Service bores me with 7 paragraphs of statistics.

What the heck are they thinking? Do they honestly believe anyone would read this? Next time, please let the ad agency take a crack at writing the first draft. Thanks for nothing. Expect a lump of coal from me.

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Merry Christmas!

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

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