I don’t know how many times I’ve sent an email to the Customer Service of an online retailer or service provider and received a templated customer service email response that does not answer my question.

Just today I emailed a major general merchant about an item I purchased that arrived damaged. I informed them of the damage and asked if they could send a replacement immediately (before receiving my return) because I need the item for a date-sensitive reason. Of course, they replied with their return policy and no answer to my question at all.

Now, I realize that the templating of emails saves a ton of money in regards to costs, but someone should be reviewing these emails before they are sent out to ensure that the templated reply answers the question. If it does not, it wastes time for both the customer and the company (having to answer yet another email when I reply with the same question) and wastes money for the company. Surely, it would cost less to answer the question correctly the first time.

It makes me not even want to use email as a method to deal with CS, which is a real shame because it is much more convenient than using the phone.

I got a letter in the mail today from the IRS encouraging me to e-file my taxes. Although it would be easier to e-file, I have steadfastly refused to do this over the past few years because they charge for this service. Why should I pay to make their lives easier? (Surely it is a cost savings for them when people e-file.)

But wait! Myth number one about e-file, according to this letter, is that 96 million taxpayers are eligible to use this service for free. Wait again! What about the other 200 million?

This reminds me of the Ticketmaster “TicketFast” program, where they charge you $1.50 to print your tickets immediately, but don’t charge at all to mail them to you. How is it better for Ticketmaster to mail the tickets? They have to be printed out, put in an envelope and mailed. The other way, they don’t have to do anything.

Instead of trying to convince me to spend money to save them some, shouldn’t the government be improving their service? How about creating a TaxCut / TurboTax clone and putting it on the IRS site and allowing people to use it for free? I don’t know much about the IRS, but it seems like this would be the best way to get tax information in a standardized format that would really cut costs.

Talk to any die-hard college basketball fan about CBS’ coverage of the NCAA Tournament and you’ll hear mostly grumbling about their lack of understanding of what the viewers want. I wonder if they actually do any user research?

- Their choice of which game to show and when to switch between games is generally horrible. Instead of trying to figure out what the people want, why not take NBC’s lead (with the Olympics) and ESPN’s lead with pretty much everything and show all the games on different channels? Viacom owns Spike, BET, and CSTV, all of which would be reasonable options.

One point that was mentioned several times at eTail’s recent Multi-Channel event was the importance of consistent pricing across channels — how important it is to give customers a uniform pricing experience. Thinking about this, however, in terms of shipping costs on the web (a problem that continues to exist for eRetailers — hence the plethora of creative “free shipping” offers), I realized that if the additional shipping cost is considered to be part of the total cost, pricing an item consistenly in-store and online actually does NOT keep said cost consistent across all channels.

I would be interested in an analysis of the cost of running a web store versus a brick and mortar — a web store must be cheaper, right? The transaction cost itself on the web (or any automated ordering platform) is signficantly less than a transaction that involves interaction with an actual human. Obviously there are costs for running a website and distributing products, and honestly I have no idea how this cost compares to that of running a store and distributing products to a store. However, these costs are obviously different, and as such I have to wonder how this affects both the cost and profit margin of any item. The bottom line here is that if items are priced consistently across channels before shipping cost, customers are NOT paying the same total amount across channels, and as such perhaps consistent pricing is not the most customer-centric way to handle things.

What if we integrated the cost of shipping into the cost of running a web store (just as we integrate the cost of running a brick & mortar into the cost of items sold there)? In person, customers are not asked to cover shipping to the store, or to pay wages of the employees of that store on top of the price of the item — that is integrated into the cost.

When I interact with the customers of the company I work for, the most common request is always free shipping — people see it out on the web, but we rarely offer it — and this upsets them. Some friends of mine at another online retailer shared some promotional testing that they ran –”10% off” coupon versus a “free shipping” coupon. In many cases, the 10% off turned out to be a larger discount off the overall price, however the free shipping coupon was FAR more effective. Why? Presumably because customers feel that paying a premium to shop via their preferred channel is unfair; depsite the fact that they would save more with 10%, paying shipping in any scenario just seems like a rip-off.

Is the pay-for shipping model inherently flawed and doomed to fail? How can we fix it?

On my recent trip to Chicago I flew United, who now offers “Economy Plus” on all flights — seats that are towards the front of the plane and offer about 5 inches more legroom than the normal coach seating. Upgrades were offered during check-in for $34 per leg from Philadelphia to Chicago (the round trip ticket was around $225).

Is it worth it?

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently stayed at the Courtyard Marriott on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile while attending Creative Good’s LabFest.

Normally, this would not inspire anything remarkable, but the check-in process at this Marriott was truly remarkable. There was nothing new, but the speed and efficiency with which it happened was phenomenal. I walked up to the desk and said “reservation for Madaio”. The clerk asked for my credit card, scanned it, and handed me my keys, all in less than a minute. That was it!

Why are other check-in processes any more complicated than that? The speed in which they did this instantly created a positive experience at this hotel for me. Other than that, it was somewhat pedestrian, but I left with an overall positive feeling towards the place.

On a somewhat related note, Phil Terry also spoke of hotel experiences in his Keynote speech at the conference. The CG folks were staying at The James hotel, a hip, trendy boutique that was by all accounts extremely nice. One thing, however, was missing — in a downtown hotel that caters to business travelers, none of the rooms had desks!

(Oh — in case you are wondering, go here for my other Marriott story.)

There is nothing I hate more than waiting in line. It’s excruciating!

So, I was quite pleased to see that my local Acme supermarket has ust added a nice twist — TVs in the checkout line! It’s a win-win too, because I’m sure Acme makes money selling advertising space on the little show it plays (think “The 20″ at the movies).

Acme was once the laughing stock of the local supermarket scene, but store renovations including self-checkout, healthy/gourmet sections and now in line TV has made me really miss having one on the way home from work. Now that’s customer service!

I was looking over my credit card bill today and I noticed a charge from “CC of COATESVILLE” on a day that I did not use my credit card. Not having any idea what this was, I was a bit freaked out. Did somebody nick my card and charge a game of golf in C’ville to me? So I called Chase to find out more — and the CS operator had a phone number: 1-800-COMCAST. Oh! Comcast Cable of Coatesville! My automatic bill pay — how could I not have figured that out? (Yeah, right)

This is the type of “customer experience” issue that often gets overlooked. It’s just a credit card bill, right? Not at all — a company must realize that every time they interact with the customer in any way, they run the risk of creating a negative experience. Because of their lack of customer focus on this issue, I had to take time out of my busy day to call Chase. Had they taken a minute to realize that “Comcast” makes a lot more sense than “CC of Coatesville” on my bill, they would have saved me a real headache (and I wouldn’t have had these negative feelings towards the company).

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day regarding Dunkin’ Donuts and their latest marketing push to move more towards the Starbucks coffee shop model. What struck me most was the research methods they used — they paid a group of die-hard DnD customers and paid them $100 to switch to Starbucks for a month, then also paid some ‘Bucks regulars to frequent DnD at the same time. At the end of the project they conducted interviews with everyone to find out each customer’s impressions.

The data showed two distinct groups — which DnD refers to as “tribes” — of people. The ‘Bucks regulars felt DnD was unoriginal and boring, while the DnD tribe felt Starbucks was pretentious and snooty.

As a result of all this, DnD is moving towards a more “coffee shop” model, completing their transformation from purely a donut shop in the 80’s to a coffee-first destination with food today. Newely remodeled shops include granite countertops, curved espresso bars, constant music, yogurt parfaits and open pastry shelves. Because their customers, however, are not quite ready for the Starbucks schtick, they are trying to keep this model more down to earth, more straight up coffee and bite to eat and less coffee, cd and witty magnet set. In fact, they recently changed the name of their new “paninis” to “stuffed melts”, since customer feedback suggested that “panini” was too snobby. (One step at a time…)

It will be interesting to see how the remodeling, along with some new marketing campaigns that we should see shortly, will change the perception of DnD over the next year or so. At the very least, their creative research should be applauded.

“Customer loyalty” is a big buzz-term in the industry, but how important is it to “customers”? Case in point: I love Circuit City — they have a great website, the stores are nice, and the employees are usually very helpful. I feel quite differently, on the other hand, about Best Buy — the stores are impersonal, the employees indifferent, and the website clunky and difficult to use. (Although, to be fair, I did have a great night at Tommy Doyle’s in Cambridge with the BB web folks during UI9…)

That being said, I was just shopping for a new DVD player and, upon making a decision, found that BB had it for $15 less than CC. So, I bought it at BestBuy. Would I have preferred to interact with Circuit City? Definitely. But, when dealing with two known commodities (as opposed to Abe’s of Maine, for example), for me price trumps loyalty every time. What’s important to you?

Edit: The experience of picking up a product at Best Buy is quite frustrating, as you have to wait in long lines and deal with indifferent employees. Perhaps I need to up my $$$ threshold to settle for an inferior company.

It’s been a while since my last post, but I’ve been quite busy. Aside from the holidays, moving and being out of town, work’s been extremely hectic too. However, at Shop.org’s First Look conference recently, I came up with lots of blogging ideas, so hopefully I’ll be a bit more active in the coming weeks. (See, you can relax now)

Today, however, some catching up from the holidays. I ordered a number of items from Barnes & Noble and Amazon, and my experiences were far from optimal. Interestingly, before the holidays, Carrie Johnson of Forrester predicted that customer satisfaction with online shipping would to go down this holiday season. And, although satisfaction in general continued to rise this year (according to numbers from Shop.org), from my own experiences Carrie was right on the money.

A quick recap of my experiences: Read the rest of this entry »