Sending a bloke flowers

April 10, 2009 Email Communications 2 Comments

This week I saw evidence that either:

a) I’d turned gay;

or …

b) Companies shouldn’t rely too heavily on the basic data supplied to them but should look at the human side of things.

Thankfully (for my fiancee) it turned out to be the latter …

I’d planned a surprise engagement couple of days away (including hotel) and needed to book flowers to be delivered to our hotel room for our arrival.  Found a company called Arenaflowers.com and the process went like this:

1. Made the bespoke request online (I wanted something specific).
2. Got the price and paid.   Made it clear that the hotel booking was in my name but supplied details to go on a card with the flowers (for my soon-to-be fiancee).  The idea was that the flowers got delivered, the hotel knew they were for my room and they’d be there with the card on arrival.
3. On the day I got a text saying they’d been delivered – a nice touch.
4. Sure enough, the flowers were in the room on arrival but alas, the card greeting wasn’t with it.  Still, not a big deal.
5. One happy fiancee.

Got back home and found the email from Arena Flowers which said:

Dear Andy,

Your order was delivered to Andy Harris at Ettington Park Hotel at 8 April 09 @ 9.01.  We hope that Andy Harris enjoyed the flowers (and has said thank you!).

!!!!

So it was an email TO me, hoping that I had enjoyed the flowers (or some other man).  You can see how this happened because all the details entered into their system would have been related to me and because the hotel was booked in my name, that’s the name that was assumed to be the recipient of the flowers.  Various fields of data entered to their database but without considering the real story that was right under their nose because I’d also included in my email to them who the flowers were actually for, including the details that were supposed to go on a card with the flowers.

If they’d thought a little bit more about the depth of the order instead of making assumptions that everyone orders flowers that are directly for the recipient by name as per the order details, then I wouldn’t have a daft looking email in my inbox and wouldn’t have this tale to tell.

However, apart from that mistake and the absence of the message card I’d still probably use them again because the flowers were lovely and were on time, which, at the end of the day, was all that mattered!

 

 

How Customer Focused Are Google?

April 6, 2009 Google Adwords 1 Comment

I had an email today asking me to provide Adwords Feedback to Google.  I could win a Google beach ball. 

Wow!

I filled in the survey as an excuse to rant at Google and repeat my “you guys don’t really understand what your advertisers want” message, and at the end of the survey it became clear how unfocused they can be.

First of all, there’s the page that comes up near the end of the survey which says:

Would you like to provide your name and address so that we can enter you into the prize drawing and send you the special Google gym bag as a gift?

To which my answer is: “lovely, but the gym bag was last time and you’re supposedly offering me a beach ball – perhaps it would be a good idea to update the survey page”.

Then the next page says:

Please provide us with an address for your gift.  Your Google beach ball should arrive in 6-8 weeks.

To be sure that the XXX is delivered, be sure to give us your whole address (including office number, if necessary).

Well, that’s progress I suppose – they’ve now decided it WILL be a beach ball after all.  Sadly, in the next sentence they decide they’re going to send an ‘XXX’ instead, whatever that is!

Throughout the survey there’s a copyright 2008 message at the bottom of each page.  Last I checked we were a quarter of the way through 2009.

OK, these are all relatively small points but they do add more fuel to the fire that Google aren’t customer focused when they don’t even have the ability to accurately create a survey.