My wife is a demanding, yet fair, customer. She’s willing to
give service providers the benefit of the doubt—unless the service provider in
question makes it virtually impossible to engage in a dialogue.
At issue is an order that my wife placed with Snapfish, the
online photo sharing and printing service that is owned by Hewlett-Packard. She
has been a loyal customer for years; indeed, she regularly receives special
offers via email as a “special thank you for being such a loyal customer.”
The problem is that on the last two occasions, Snapfish’s
“special offer codes” were not recognized by its order entry system. The error
was not registered until the credit card was already billed. The first time my
wife just let it go—the dollar amount was small and the customer service
process onerous. When it happened a second time, however, she was irritated.
Again, the dollar amount was small (at issue is a $2.99 credit toward an 8x10 print)
but no longer did she feel like such a “special customer.” It got worse when she tried to send an email
to customer support.
The company makes users choose from 12 pre-determined
customer service categories. None of them apply directly to my wife’s question,
i.e., “Why don’t your special offer codes work?”, yet she had to choose a
category in order to proceed. Next, she was forced to choose from one of 5
pre-determined customer service questions. Again, none matched directly but she
tried to pick the closest one. After typing a lengthy explanation of the
problem at hand, she hit “enter” and a big red message appeared: “Please limit
your text to 240 characters.”
At this point, she had already invested 30 minutes of her
time. Now she spent another 10 minutes trying to edit her question down to 240
characters. Once the email was sent, she received an auto-response saying that
someone would be in touch within 48 hours. Well, 48 hours came and went and she
didn’t hear anything back from Snapfish’s customer support team—although she did
receive yet another offer as a “special thank you for being such a loyal
customer.” Instead, she’s thinking about moving three years worth of digital
photos over to another online service.
What are the lessons? First, customer support should be for the convenience of the customer—not
the convenience of the company. Snapfish’s email support system is the online
equivalent of getting trapped in voice mail purgatory. Second, you don’t win
customer loyalty with a $2.99 coupon. You win it through good products and great
customer service. Third, a $2.99 coupon will cost you a lot more money in terms
of lost revenue if you cannot execute it properly, so make sure your systems
can keep the promises you make.
