Don’t Make It Hard For Customers To Spend Their MoneyI went online t0 Mrs Fields Cookies to place an order. However, after placing the order, providing the shipping address and credit card information, at the very last step, I discovered I was not able to place the order because the billing address for the credit card was in Canada.
I called the Mrs. Fields phone number and was told the only way around this was to set up an account. Not Interested. Total waste of my time.
So I went online to www.giftbaskets.comand placed exactly the same order for Mrs Fields Cookies without any issues with my credit card billing address being from outside the US. Within 5 minutes I had placed my order and received a confirmation email. Woo Hoo!
Now here’s the interesting part. At Gift Baskets I paid a premium of $2.00 v.s Mrs Fields on the initial purchase price. However, I received FREE ground shipping versus paying $14.95 through Mrs. Fields. Resultant my purchase was less to use a third party supplier than directly from Mrs Fields.
Mrs. Fields placed a barrier to me purchasing directly from them. This time I simply purchased the same product, so they still received a sale — but would probably need to sell it to Gift Baskets at a reduced price resulting in less profit on the sale.
More importantly, I now have been introduced to another company that offers a broader range of products — so in addition to not ever returning to Mrs. Fields, I will potentially chose different offerings from Gift Baskets in the future versus Mrs Fields cookies.
My Perspective: Are you putting barriers up that push your customers away because “that’s the way we do things”?
Mrs. Fields effectively turned me from a customer, to a dis-satisfied customer, to a non-customer in one easy step. Simply because they made it hard for me to buy from them. I was standing in line with my purchase and money in hand and they set up a barrier to purchase.
Review your processes. Are you looking at these processes from your organizational perspective — or are you looking at them through the eyes of your customer?
During some recent client research, one of the staff made the comment “All our clients work very hard to earn their money — they don’t want to work hard to spend it”.
Words worth remembering!
Other articles you might like:
- Credit Card Customers Finally Get Heard
- Do your customers have to jump through hoops?
- Make sure your service HELPS your customers
- Make it easy for customers to leave and more will stay
- Are Your Customer Service Recoveries Really Recoveries?
