I wanted to share with you my recent experience with e-commerce customer service. You decide which service I’ll be using from now on. It’s an extremely interesting exercise with a simple idea that will make your online store stand out from the mediocre masses!
Experience 1:
A week ago at my wife’s school, the staff decided to order flowers online for a co-worker’s birthday, which was on Tuesday. My wife placed an order the previous Friday with a large Canadian online florist requesting a Tuesday delivery to a local school. While placing the order, she saw a large red notice indicating, “Delivery will take place from 9am to 5pm on the delivery date you selected.” Inconvenient, since celebrations usually take place at a specific time. My wife requested in the order notes that the flowers be delivered before 3:30pm because the school closed at that time.
Sure enough, on Tuesday at 2:30pm, my wife called customer service to confirm if the flowers had been delivered.
“Not yet. All deliveries are from 9am to 5pm.”
“But the school closes at 3:30pm. Nobody will be there to accept the delivery!”
“Sorry, Ma’am, all deliveries are from 9am to 5pm. if nobody is there we will try to deliver again tomorrow.”
“What time tomorrow?”
“All deliveries are from 9am to 5pm.”
Not surprisingly, the flowers were not delivered on Tuesday but arrived Wednesday, ironically before 3:30pm. I suppose it could have been worse. They could have delivered after 3:30pm for a week until the flowers died.
Anyway, the flowers arrived according to the company’s delivery policy. Good enough, could be worse.
Experience 2:
My mother-in-law’s birthday is today. She’s in Russia, nine hours ahead of Toronto. At 7am here we decided to try an international florist one of my Russian friends recently recommended (don’t ask me why we didn’t think about this yesterday). That service operates out of Ukraine and processes deliveries all over the world. It seemed like a long shot to send flowers the same day to Russia considering our local experience just a week ago. I placed the order and they asked when I wanted the flowers delivered. Today? Tomorrow? What time? I specified today between 4pm and 9pm destination time (it was already 4pm in Russia), thinking I at least made the effort without expecting anything more. I paid via Paypal and waited to see how this would play out.
It was 11am in Toronto and 8pm in Russia, so I decided to check the status. The order was received and delivery was scheduled tomorrow between 4pm and 7pm. How come? Still in a state of shock, I called them in chat and they told me there were two orders. The original order I placed was scheduled for delivery today, but was cancelled after my wife decided to change the flowers. She placed a new order keeping the default delivery date and time, which is the next day between 4pm and 7pm. Unbelievable!
“Any chance of delivering the flowers today? The birthday is actually today and we made a mistake on the order.”
“Let me call the florist.” (it was already 8pm in Russia!)
“Your order will be delivered in two hours.”
“Are you for real?”
“Yes, thank you for using SendFlowers.ua”
I got SMS notification in 1 hour 45 min confirming that order was delivered. We called the birthday girl. You could imagine how happy she was!
How many people do you think will hear about our negative experience with the ‘great’ North American florist? Five, maybe ten. The experience was too disappointing to talk about. Companies like this with such poor service will probably be out of business in a year or two blaming the high cost of flowers, cheap customers, cold winter or whatever excuse they decide to use. Would I have ordered flowers online again if not for the excellent service provided by the second service? Probably not for a long time, if at all.
Now how many people will likely hear my praise about the service from Ukraine? Everyone! Will I order flowers online again? You bet I will! I’ve already scheduled a delivery for my sister-in-law’s birthday in Australia and my parents’ anniversary in Russia.
Who do you think is my go-to florist now? Local big .com or a florist five thousand miles away? Do I care that they’re in the Ukraine?
It makes you think. Is adequate good enough to beat your growing online competition? Do your customers praise your service the same way? Do you want them to?
In case you’re wondering, the international florist that just earned two very loyal customers for life is SendFlowers.ua.
And if your Russian is a bit rusty, they have a website and service in English.
Anton Pachkine
FinestShops E-Commerce Management
Hosting | Customizations | Design | Marketing
www.finestshops.com | 1-800-675-0162
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