In a recent post titled, “The Customer Service Satisfaction Gap” I presented that the key to customer service is getting as close as possible to a customer’s expectations. Well yesterday I became very dissatisfied with the store location search at Pizza Hut.com. Here is what happened and the reason for my displeasure.
I had a full day of coaching and returned home without a plan for dinner, so I asked my son what he wanted. Well, he wanted to try the new take home pasta dishes he’d seen on TV from Pizza Hut. I quickly opened up my laptop, looked up Pizza Hut’s home page and then clicked on their location tab. The page had an entry form for my street location and zip code. Well I put in my zip code and it demanded that I enter my street address. I thought to myself, “why do they need my street address?” And, what if I were traveling down the road and trying to find a location for let’s say Woodbury, do I put in, “I’m traveling 70 MPH down I494″ - find a location. So here is the first lesson of Customer Service:
Lesson #1: Keep it simple - the less information a customer needs to provide to complete the service request, the better.After being turned off by their persistance to provide my street address to them, I decided to check out their customer complaint form. Guess what? They wanted more information to process my complaint - aka. advice. What did they need now. First, they wanted to make certain that I was at least 13 years old (not certain what that was for) and now they required that I provide them my full name, my address (street address - they must like street information), city, state, zip code, phone number and email address - I was somewhat surprised that they didn’t also require credit card information for me to process my complaint. That is probably coming in the next version. So I asked myself, “Why would they want all of this personal information just to process a customer’s feedback?” The only thing I could surmise was that “Marketing” interfaced with “Customer Service” and the two created a hybrid. So here is lesson #2.
Lesson #2: Customer Service is customer service, and Marketing is marketing. Keep them separate, because marketing’s input will simply complicate and hinder effective customer service.Well, when they demanded more information, I simply input B.S., with an email address. And here is the computer response I received.
Dear Customer,
Thank you for taking time to share your feedback with us. We are continually looking for ways to improve your online experience and we value your input.
We appreciate your business!
- Pizza Hut Customer Service
In the end, Pizza Hut did not provide customer service, even when I took the time to provide them customer feedback. Secondly, I did not place an order with Pizza Hut, and therefore is facetious for them to state that they “appreciated my business.” I actually took my business elsewhere. And lastly, this leads to lesson #3.
Lesson #3: Customer feedback is a valuable component of the customer service equation. Make the customer service interface as simple and uncomplicated as feasibly possible.Bottom Line: In today’s marketplace, customer service is more important than ever, and therefore, the value of good customer feedback is also heightened. Don’t allow customer feedback become a reason for Customer Dissatisfaction.
What is your customer dissatisfaction story?
