Tis the season…to be wowed by fabulous customer service. Are you feeling the love?
I do a lot of shopping online for Christmas. I find it easy, efficient and productive. This year? not so much. Cyber Monday was a disappointment for me due to a variety of bad online experiences. I understand if I was shopping on December 20th, but promoting products that aren’t available early in the shopping season is frustrating and does damage to the brand.
Here are my bad brand experiences to date followed by my one wow experience so far:
1. Negative – Timberland. Their top sellers are out of stock yet they promote 30-40% off online. The reality is you can’t get the product you want in any ‘normal’ sizes. Who planned their inventory for the holiday season?
2. Negative – Vineyard Vines. This brand has taken off like a rocket, yet their inventory was wiped out very early – I am talking November. Their catalog arrived and immediately I checked on some items and there was limited to no availability by color, size and item. Bummer.
3. Negative – Carbon 2 Cobalt. I like their styles and last year had great luck with this store and ordering online last Christmas. This year? Not so much. I found a sweater I wanted to buy for my nephew, went to the site, searched for the item number – nothing. No message. Searched by name – nothing. Searched by product type – Men’s Sweaters. The sweater I wanted to order was the featured image on the landing page – perfect I think! There it is – now I just need to order it. That was the problem. The sweater is nowhere to be found on the website. Huh? No one thought to have a message appear that the product is sold out, out of stock, something? I left the site and they lost my business.
Being a glass half full person, I kept on shopping online, determined to find something I liked. I started to do a search to address my frustration with BOTH Vineyard Vines and Carbon 2 Cobalt and I found the online Bloomingdales website with available product for me to order. Not only did I find items I liked, they had sizes in stock! Bonanza! As I started my order for 3 nephews, I noticed a promotion to get an additional 10% off by signing up for emails. Perfect. The 10% represented a decent savings so I signed up, received my text alert that I was enrolled…but then there was no promo code to complete my online order. Bummer. I picked up the phone and called customer support as chat was not available at the time. (Odd as chat should be available late afternoon during Christmas don’t you think?) Anyway, my wow moment was about to happen so back to the point. The customer service person was great – friendly, empathetic, and resourceful. I explained I did not get a promo code for the additional 10% off my order. She explained that that code would not be sent for 1-3 days (no where on the website) and she apologized for that not being clear. She offered to give me 15% off my order and placed the order for me to ensure it went through and the discount was applied. WOW! She exceeded my high expectations. Kudos to Bloomingdales for doing what no one else has done this holiday season. I got great deals and had a wow experience.
Let me know what business is wowing you this Christmas season. I want to know!