Tag: sears

Customer Experience: The Vanishing Reviews

SJE is an excellent supporter of the online economy. However, she is also very focused on the experience she suffers through on many online retail applications. The question I get frequently from the other end of the living room (Retail and Wardrobe Management Control Center – see image) is: “Is Company X a customer? Because their site (is slow | is badly designed | doesn’t work | sucks)!”.
Most of the time, there isn’t much to do, and the site usually responds and SJE is able to complete the task she is focused on.

Last night, however, a retailer did something that strayed into new territory. This company unwittingly affected the customer experience to such a degree that they actually destroyed the trust of a long-term customer.

This isn’t good for me, as I wear a lot of fine products from this retailer. But even in my eyes, they committed a grievous sin.

This retailer decided, for reasons that are known only to them, to delete a number of negative comments, reviews, and ratings for a product that they have for sale.
I just checked, and sure enough, all of the comments, including my wife’s very strong negative feedback about the quality, are gone.

I can think of a number of really devious and greedy reasons why a company might do this. It could also be an accident. If it was an accident, you might want to note that reviews and comments for this product were accidentally lost.

Now, if you went to a retailer and saw that your comments and reviews had been deleted, how would you feel? Would you trust that retailer ever again? What would happen if the twittering masses picked up the meme and started to add fuel to the bonfire?

A strong business, a solid design, an amazing presentation, and unrivaled delivery aren’t enough for some businesses. As a company, there is substantial effort, time, and treasure dedicated to converting visitors into customers. And it sometimes takes only one boneheaded move to turn a customer into the anti-customer.

To measure or not to measure; that is the question…

Remember how Comcast Re-IP’ed the entire neighbourhood this week? Well, I can measure the Sears hompage again. For those who don’t know the story, you can read more here.

The ethical question that I face is whether I should or not because I can. In the Web performance business, the companies that I work for have always held that if the site is public, then it can be measured, even if the site owner is not the one requesting the measurement (competitive benchmarking, public performance indices, etc.).

I am not going to burn the bridge with Sears at this point, but does anyone else have an opinion? How would your company react if it found itself being measure/monitored without it’s knowledge/consent?

Copyright © 2024 Performance Zen

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑