The Return Is Just As Important As The Purchase - Make Sure It Works
Author: Gary Barnett
With the holiday spending season upon us, I thought today was an appropriate time to share with you a true but disconcerting tale that I just heard about an online shopper, her incorrect order, and her inability to reach a contact center for much needed assistance:
‘Twas a few weeks before Christmas and Alice was online selecting presents for her friends and family. She decided to purchase personalized playing cards for her father, and visited a well-known online digital photo developing service to place the order. The process was simple and intuitive and within a few minutes, Alice had made her purchase and selected her shipping method.
For several days, Alice waited anxiously for her playing cards to arrive. Then finally one day, as she pulled into her driveway after work, Alice spotted a package on her front step. She sprang from her car to see what it was, dashed into the house and ripped it open. Then she exclaimed as the wrapping flew out of sight, “Who is that?”
Much to Alice’s dismay, she didn’t know the person on the front of the playing cards – that little kid was a total and complete stranger. Alice needed to return the cards she was holding in her hands but, even more importantly to Alice, she really wanted the cards that she had ordered.
Alice grabbed the phone and dialed the 800 number for the digital photo service company, which was included on the packaging. “Your call cannot be completed due to technical difficulties…” She found a local number in the ”Contact Us” section of the company’s website and called it several times only to hear it ring again and again and again. She visited the ”Frequently Asked Questions” section of the company’s website and simultaneously checked her email confirmation to see if she could find clues about how to complete a return and replacement. Alice was able to easily and quickly find information about how to return an item, but still nothing about how to replace it.
Alice finally decided to complete two email forms – one for returns and one for generic inquiries; and submitted both of them to the company. The first yielded a form letter-type response. But the second inquiry, which requested that the product be replaced with the correct photos and asked that an actual person respond, produced results. Alice received an answer from a live agent, and she ultimately received the correct gift.
The moral of my story is that it is important to provide your customers with a variety of channels they can use to access your company – telephone, email and Web; but it’s even more crucial that you regularly check those modes of communication to ensure that they are still viable, and respond in a timely and appropriate fashion. Have you made this your new year’s resolution? If not, now’s the time!
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