It’s all about results
Customer Experience | 10:01 am Monday, Aug 13 2007 |
TWO websites this morning that I visited gave me great reminders about rembering the customer’s point of view.
We are after vinyl magazine holders/files. Believe it or not, our huge, massive office stationer doesn’t have vinyl ones anymore — just cardboard or hard plastic.
After discovering the search terms I needed, I found a couple of websites.
The first — blasted music from EVERY page — on a stationery website. What are they thinking? Every time I clicked a link on the site, the music started playing. I had to turn it off manually EVERY time. Crikey. I gave up, it wasn’t worth it.
The second — every product had “call for pricing” — with an email link. Another sales brick wall, on several levels. Firstly, most of their competitors are upfront about pricing, why aren’t they? Do they price differently for different callers? Where is the trust? If I email them, will they slap me on a mailing list without permission?
I took the step to email them… now waiting for a reply.
In the meantime, I found the page on their website that talks about shipping — orders over $50 free, under $50 it costs $6.60. That’s fine. NORMALLY, I would pick a few more products we need (we always can do with more office stuff)… and bump up the order for free shipping. But — in this case, doing that would involve an email for every product.
Crikey. Again, too hard from the customer’s point of view. Easier to just wear the $6.60 shipping and not bother. Not showing pricing took away my desire to spend more!
Are YOU thinking about your customer with everything you do?
Update: while I waited for a return email, I found another supplier with pricing online — $4 each. The email came back pretty quickly from the “call for pricing” people — but the price was $7.95 each for the same thing, and it was too late — I’d already ordered (and ended up spending $89 for some other bits and pieces too). They missed the sale — and we spent about 400% more than originally planned, adding in other items.