Business Articles
Customer Communication
My wife got a letter yesterday from our chocolate retailer of choice, Hotel Chocolate, to say they were changing their delivery charges. Fair enough, couriers are costing more and more as prices go up for the first time in a couple of years and fuel prices are high. So instead of all chocolates including first class delivery Hotel Chocolate have taken the decision to reduce the prices of almost everything and charge £3.95 delivery for one item, or £4.95 for multiple items to the same address. This means most orders work out about the same, but if you order just one item you’ll probably pay a pound or two more.
The letter was an excellent piece of customer relations – you should never try to hide price increases or changes from customers, they don’t like it and it can destroy trust you’ve spent months or years building. Hotel Chocolate did miss a couple of tricks, though. First, they didn’t say when the changes took effect (in fact, it was immediate). Lesson one: if you’re telling customers something is going to change – for better or worse – tell them when it will happen. Second, they missed the opportunity to have one or two weeks before the new charges took effect to have a physiological sale; by which I mean people would think and behave (and most importantly, buy) like there was a great sale on but it wouldn’t cost Hotel Chocolate any money at all. If marketed properly this could’ve been a huge sales boost going into the Easter season.
So, we got the letter telling us the delivery charging policy was changing but we had no idea when it would change. So what did I do? Straight onto their website, log in to my account and add a few things at random to be basket (stopping by at the special offers section as usual, to see if anything especially tasty was on cheap). This is how I learned the new delivery pricing was already in effect. I’ll admit: it annoyed me. I felt used. Let’s repeat that: I wasn’t going to buy anything but I felt angry and used. And I’m a long standing, loyal customer of this company and I’d never dream of getting my chocolates from anywhere else. Something to think about, isn’t it? But anyway, I had a few things in my basket, noticed the new delivery policy and left the site. This morning I found in my email inbox a note from a Customer Service rep from Hotel Chocolate saying they’d noticed I’d left the site with items in my basket, and did I have a problem or need any help? How lovely, such a personal touch is fantastic. I really felt as if they cared about me. Until I noticed the time the message was sent: 1:05 AM. Oops – very obviously an automatic email! Nice thought, and pretty well implemented guys, but next time, have the emails sent at a sensible time of day eh?
About the author:
Nathan is a marketer, business consultant, accessible website developer, carer of more animals than he can count and an all-round nice bloke. He hangs out at The TIYB forums and http://www.vigo.org.uk
All articles reproduced with permission from This Is Your Business