… they can make you look foolish, or they can suggest that problems exist where they really don’t.

For example, I ordered a book from Barnes & Noble yesterday. Here’s the timeline of communications:

2:38 p.m. — Received email from PayPal confirming the order was submitted.

2:49 p.m. — Received email from B&N confirming that the order was ready to ship.

3:47 p.m. — Received email from B&N confirming that the order was received.

So wait a second: The order was received an hour after it’s ready to ship? Was a second order erroneously placed? Is there something else happening here that I need to be aware of?

Something in the B&N system is sending emails out of sequence, or perhaps in proper sequence with erroneous content. The result, though, suggests the existence of problems where they probably don’t exist.

Given the volume of email I would expect B&N to be dealing with on a daily basis, those non-existent problems are undoubtedly creating calls to customer service, which incurs very real costs to address very avoidable non-issues.

Takeaway for marketers: It’s always a good idea to audit your customer communications so that you know how your messaging is being perceived at every point in the transaction flow. This is messaging that occurs on the front lines of customer-company relations; don’t take it for granted.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 at 9:07 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways.