Get all your ducks in a row: ONLINE SHOPPING

I'm not exactly a beginner online shopper, but I'm a buyer or customer offline.  Like any new restaurant you want to try, you are apprehensive about trying something new.  Online shopping is kind of like that.  One's age and comfort with computers and navigating online are far outweighed by safety, security, privacy or hacking being a real threat.

I set up Pay Pal to be on my blogs so that maybe a few souls who have read my blogs, extrapolated some value, may want to donate a few bucks or even $1 to compensate for the value of what you read.  Unfortunately, some place I've never heard of had taken $15 from me.  Not very convincing as a hesitant first step you reckon, eh?

Online buying is a patient affair isn't it?  Many companies hitch up their website and start selling way too soon.  Long before they're ready or have process or infrastructure in place.

Fortunately, unlike a store, you don't have to be concerned with whether the owner or manager has to come to the front to see you because the likelihood of you telling that person that you will never go there again, will tell all those willing to listen about the shoddy service.  A public relations nightmare.  So you may get a coupon for 10% off your next visit (to guarantee you will revisit ... or maybe not with only 10 percent off).

We're not buyers or shoppers really anymore.  We are consumers.  How apt that is, no longer customers.  Yet all the brands clamoring and competing online are trying to get that magic reaction hit, when keeping up with demand and managing growth becomes a very large accomplishment to achieve.

Remember, your earliest customers, or consumers or buyers or whatever it is you call them, they are your first critics.  Pay attention to them.  They are helping you get better.  [ find quote from Bill Gates on customers to insert here ]

Here's an annoying experience recently from somewhere I've shopped before.

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I N T E R A C T I O N

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The security answer is the order number.  Should I re-order again?

I entered a 30% coupon code of "samsbirthday" or something like that which was a pop up when I logged on.  Unfortunately, when I entered it on my cart page, I received an error message that "the coupon had expired".  

I can be your customer service thermometer if you would like.  Sharing customer experience and how you are doing from my perspective or what went wrong.

That would be worth the same as any affiliate discount.   Whoever manages your social media Twitter account is sluggish.  That is usually a sign of someone who is hungover or too busy with their smart phone.  

Now is the time to get your act together.  Make your mistakes.  Iron the kinks out of the system.  Put customer service advocacy your most important goal.  Create a culture that because you genuinely like the people you work with, you don't want to let them down, you step up to do more of your share.  That resonates with the customers they serve.  Without customers, you have no business which equates to less for people to do, followed by less people required to do what is declining.    

Start a recognition program:  my most favorite was getting a plastic OSCAR statue where we started the first day of the week, Monday, at 9 am huddle with someone holding the KUDOS trophy, telling the group what spectacular or thoughtful thing one of its members did the week before.  How they helped the team achieve some pretty big goals, their part in it, but more of how they did more than what they had been asked.  Then the significant emblem of team work and respect is displayed where they work for that week.

Sincerely, 

Jeannette