Monday, April 18, 2005
A Tale of Two Pizzas
I was working on the first newsletter for One Stop this afternoon, when my wife reminded me I had promised to order pizza for supper. I quickly navigated to my shopping bookmarks and looked at the two pizza chains we usually order from.
One of them we like because they usually have some interesting specials that satisfy our desire for adventure (ordering pizza an adventure? I have got to get a life!). The other one has pizzas we like, but hasn't had any new specials that interested us lately.
I looked at them both for a second, deciding which to check first. Then a little bell went off in my head. I had had problems with the one I was leaning toward, the one with the interesting specials. I've found their online ordering process to be an adventure—in a negative sense—with failures to properly subtract discounts, confusing navigation, pages that would be there one second and gone the next.
More than once, I had called the local delivery place after placing my order to make sure I got the discount I was entitled to. At least once, I reported technical problems to their technical support. My calls to the local store convinced someone there to grudgingly apply the discount to my orders. My technical support e-mail got no response. (I hope they fixed the problem but it would have been nice if they had at least responded that they'd work on it.)
Now, there've been more times that I've had no problems with them than times that I did. But guess which pizza chain fell out of contention for our order the second that little warning bell went off.
It's a shame, but a fact of business life. Mess something up for a customer and no matter how well or how many times you've come through for them in the past and what they'll remember are the negatives. And once they start remembering the negatives, you probably won't see them again.
There's a lesson for all of us in business. Make sure things work. Answer e-mails promptly. Make your process as smooth as humanly possible so people don't have to endure mistakes.
Because there's no faster way to lose a customer than to treat them like they don't matter to you.
Jeff
I was working on the first newsletter for One Stop this afternoon, when my wife reminded me I had promised to order pizza for supper. I quickly navigated to my shopping bookmarks and looked at the two pizza chains we usually order from.
One of them we like because they usually have some interesting specials that satisfy our desire for adventure (ordering pizza an adventure? I have got to get a life!). The other one has pizzas we like, but hasn't had any new specials that interested us lately.
I looked at them both for a second, deciding which to check first. Then a little bell went off in my head. I had had problems with the one I was leaning toward, the one with the interesting specials. I've found their online ordering process to be an adventure—in a negative sense—with failures to properly subtract discounts, confusing navigation, pages that would be there one second and gone the next.
More than once, I had called the local delivery place after placing my order to make sure I got the discount I was entitled to. At least once, I reported technical problems to their technical support. My calls to the local store convinced someone there to grudgingly apply the discount to my orders. My technical support e-mail got no response. (I hope they fixed the problem but it would have been nice if they had at least responded that they'd work on it.)
Now, there've been more times that I've had no problems with them than times that I did. But guess which pizza chain fell out of contention for our order the second that little warning bell went off.
It's a shame, but a fact of business life. Mess something up for a customer and no matter how well or how many times you've come through for them in the past and what they'll remember are the negatives. And once they start remembering the negatives, you probably won't see them again.
There's a lesson for all of us in business. Make sure things work. Answer e-mails promptly. Make your process as smooth as humanly possible so people don't have to endure mistakes.
Because there's no faster way to lose a customer than to treat them like they don't matter to you.
Jeff
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