Saturday, September 13, 2008

"A Funny Thing" -- A Customer Feedback Loop Disconnect

This article's title links to a great posting by George Dinwiddie, about how a financial institution lost a customer -- him -- through, not bad interface design, but an unwillingness to deal with customers reporting that bad interface design.

I had to laugh, because just yesterday my wife was venting about a similar situation. She'd placed a first order with an online vendor, for half a dozen items, and received multiple "confirmation" emails, with different confirmation numbers -- and all showing the same items. Confusing, not at all typical, so she called the vendor to make sure the order wasn't somehow submitted multiple times. The response? "Oh, that's just the way we do things."

No interest on the part of the person taking the call in using the opportunity to learn how to improve their relationship with their customers. Sad, and that company probably won't get any more of her business, either.