Why is it that we are so quick to overlook customer experience?
Published November 6th, 2006 in GeneralDamian O’Broin raised a very interesting point recently about fundraising and marketing for non-profits and charities in Ireland. He conducted a short piece of research and donated a small amount to fifteen Irish charities online and was shocked to see that one third of the organisations didn’t send him a thank you note for his donation.
This may sound like a trivial point, but it’s something which rings true for plenty of industries. Once the sale is made, the customer is simply forgotten.
I had a conversation over dinner a couple of weeks ago with a colleague who had a terrible restaurant experience the night before. The restaurant was empty, yet he received shoddy service the entire evening.
Creating bad word-of-mouth experiences for customers like this means that people will spread a negative story about your product or service, ultimately that will impact on sales. Is it any wonder that my friend found himself in an empty restaurant that night? He must have been last to hear the bad news!
John Wagner raises a similar point.
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I think it’s a national character trait.
We just don’t complain as much as the English do.
I was on the receiving end of some shoddy customer service just a few hours ago and blogged about it here…
http://sxoop.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/perlico-sucks/
Walter
Damian’s report sounds familair. I bought a goat online (I’ve always wanted to say that!) through a charity site and never recived a receipt or any type of follow up. It was a corporate gift for a client at Christmas (the goat goes to the 3rd world family) so I put the lack of follow up down to the busy time of year etc. But not getting any follow up at all kind of ruined the experience.
Hi Piaras,
thanks for the mention!
Peter, Christmas or not, busy or not, common decency insists that when you make a gift to a charity they should at the very least acknowledge it and if they’ve any cop-on they should be making you feel great for making that contribution.
Sadly, mystery shopping tests consistently find major flaws in donor management by charities. I don’t know if some charities have a bit of a ‘ah sure we’re only a charity, they’ll understand’ or ‘we’re a charity we can’t afford to be pampering donors’ attitude. If they do, they need to realise that donor support is a fragile thing and if they don’t look after their donors, their donors won’t look after them.
at the time of the east asian tsumani, i decided to email various charities asking how much of any credit card donation i might make would be eaten up by bank fees. i blogged about it at the time. out of about a dozen charities, only two repllied within a day and less than half within the week. of the replies i recieved, only one followed up when the banks finally agreed to refund all fees on tsunami donations to the charities.
My girlfriend just bought few goats on-line.
I haven’t received any type of confirmation (email or writting) yet. Hope it gets where is supposed to.