It is important to know what your customers think of you. Feedback enables you to celebrate and reward those aspects of your service that people like, while enabling you to address and remediate any problem areas that are flagged up. As a result, it is now common practice to be asked to go online and comment on your experiences.
What happens though, if the very process of leaving feedback is the most painful part of being your customer? An example:
Out shopping this weekend, we went into one of the stores of a Famous Footwear Manufacturer, as Mrs Goldcat had her eye on a particular shoe she'd seen online.
Although the shoe Mrs G went to look at wasn't suitable after trying it on, the young saleswoman who served her was very good indeed. Cheerful and perceptive with a clear instinct for gently closing a sale, she made exactly the right alternative recommendation and Mrs G went for a more expensive pair which she now adores.
At the till, the same saleswoman asked if we would mind leaving online feedback about the store's performance that day. No problem we said, we always leave feedback for great service. She highlighted a couple of relevant areas on the receipt - her name and the customer service website address - and flush with success Mrs G and I left, heading for the restaurant table we'd booked for lunch.
At the restaurant, Mrs G decided to log the positive feedback straight away before the food arrived. She dug out the shoe receipt to get started and then looked up at me, clearly pained.
She handed me the receipt. The feedback website had 31 CHARACTERS in its URL.
Instant problem. Most people faced with typing a huge website address into a phone whilst in a restaurant for no reciprocal benefit would abandon the idea instantly.
We proceeded. After all, we'd promised the saleswoman that we would do so. After mis-typing the gigantic URL three times (printer ink was obviously low at the shop's checkout which made some letters indistinct) Mrs G eventually reached the correct site.
And then:
Question 1: Transaction number?
Nothing on the receipt indicated which of its half-dozen number sequences identified the transaction.
Question 2: Store number?
Nothing on the receipt indicated which of its half-dozen number sequences identified the store.
These were both mandatory fields, so we couldn't proceed further without the correct information. We took turns to minutely pore over 8 inches of till receipt for some clue as to what to enter but without success.
Mrs G grimaced sadly. "You know, leaving customer feedback has already taken more time than it took to actually buy the shoes. And we're still on the first page."
Tragically, the receipt did clearly feature the name of the saleswoman and her employee code together with the date and time of sale. All we wanted to do was tell her employer how great she had been, but the convoluted process prevented us from doing so.
Before we could investigate the issue further, our first course arrived at which point the phones and receipt were set aside. Valuable customer feedback thereby lost because the process for submitting it was overly clunky and time-consuming.
Sorry Grace - we so wanted to praise you but your employers made it too difficult.
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