Your website might be why you’re losing customers.
Back in the mid ’90’s someone smart wrote a book about why companies go bust called the great barrier thief. The crux was that companies drive their customers away. They put barriers in between them and their customers by their own policies, behaviour, staff attitudes and operations that people get sick of and then they leave.
I first came across this from a presentation by Mike Donald, the MD at Terralink. He’d just taken over the role and was charged with turning the business around after it had been put into liquidation. His philosophy works and Terralink is once more a thriving business that as many loyal customers.
How does this apply the internet? Here are two recent examples ..
1. I’d used my mobile phone provider for a number of years on a prepay account and they had performed well. So I switched to an account. The barriers then began to spring up:
- I tried to switch online and it wouldn’t work (I ended up joining in store and they took a number of weeks to get me across).
- I went to their website to view a bill and it wouldn’t let me.
- I tried to pay online after getting the amount and it wouldn’t let me.
- I even tried to set up global roaming online and same result.
This went on for a number of months until I threw my toys and left. To be fair, once receiving my final complaint, they tried to fix the issue but it was too late for me.
Not having a fully functional online service is a barrier and the staff attitudes I initially encountered lacked interest in resolving the issue. They drove me away.
2. I recently bought a book off this UK website. It didn’t arrive after the promised shipping time. I tried to track the parcel on their website but that wasn’t available, nor was the shipping company’s name.
While on the website it turns out the period shown on my online receipt was wrong. The timings were different.
I kept waiting the additional time. Upon receiving nothing I emailed in. Turns out the website I bought from doesn’t in fact own the store the website promotes as its own. I don’t mind affiliate marketing but their should have been some form of disclosure. And because of that I would have to contact the store owner.
I contacted the store owner by email and they passed me on to their fulfillment provider. The fulfillment provider said they didn’t have a relationship with the original website so they couldn’t help me. Hmmmm …
Naturally all three businesses will never darken my web browser again. I wrote to all three CEO’s and the Office of Fair Trading to complain.
Then out of the blue I got a letter from business number three to ask why I had returned the book to them and where they should send it. So clearly non-delivery was my fault. I must have got it and posted it back!
They obviously had the right address but I wonder if they put enough international postage on it. I’ll never know.
I now have the book. But they no longer have a customer and that value chain involves three businesses.
Not having the correct information, not being clear who I was dealing with and not taking responsibility are barriers.
The point of both of these examples is that the website and the subsequent fulfillment need to be correct and need to work. If this doesn’t happen you are putting a barrier between yourself and that customer returning to you.
Marketers, business owners, designers or whoever it is responsible, get your website right. Otherwise it will become a reason to lose customers, not win them
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