I want to share with you my experience this week with an airline company. Being a very frequent flyer, I checked in at the Executive check-in. I arrived 45 minutes before the flight was due, but the queue moved so slowly that I by the time that I got to the front, the flight had been closed. Now this in itself is a prime example of poor customer service, but it is not the point of this article.
Relaxing in the airport lounge, whilst waiting for a later flight, I decided to write to the airline’s customer service division. I went onto their website, and I was easily able to find their ‘Customer Care’ section of their website. The marketing speak went as follows:
I am not sure why an exclamation mark was necessary, but I soon found their customer care website submission form, and began writing about my experience. After carefully composing the text, I pressed the submit button, only to receive an error message indicating that my session had expired!
Now you must appreciate that the website did not require me to login. This was anonymous access, yet after spending all that time writing to the airline company, they chose not to let me submit my comments. Ordinarily, the ‘Contact Us’ page is built to allow the customer a way to communicate with the company, and allow the company to receive this information in a format and manner that can get the company to respond at the lowest possible cost.
After re-typing and submitting my comments, I was relieved to see that the company did send me an email confirmation. However, two whole business days have now gone by, without a response to the issues that I raised.
For the sake of this airline company, and others, here are my tips for using websites and email to service customers:
1. If you are using a ‘Contact Us’ page, review your required fields carefully to establish whether you really must have the information, or whether it is nice to have. Make it easy for customers to contact you.
2. Treat webpage submissions and email as seriously as you would treat an incoming phone call, or face-to-face contact.
3. Don’t put your ‘Contact Us’ page in a password-protected area of your site, or stop customers from submitting because of session timeouts.
4. When you receive a ‘Contact Us’ request, send a confirmation email immediately, and then get a human to telephone or email the customer within one business day of receiving the request.
5. When you send a confirmation message, follow good email usability form. It would also be wise to let the customer know that you actually intend to resolve the problem, or that you are pleased to hear from them.
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