“THIS IS MY SECOND INQUIRY!!!”
“THIS IS MY SECOND INQUIRY!!!” I don’t know how many times I have typed that sentence into an email or a “Contact Us” form on a company’s web page. Occasionally it solicits response. More often, I never hear back.
This is unfortunate; for them. I am trying to give them money.
I have tried to come up with a compelling reason why an organization would ignore a request to do business. Technical problems comes to mind, maybe they never received my inquiry, or my second inquiry. I’m sure this happens on occasion. But the regularity in which it takes place tells me it can’t always be technical difficulty. Not to mention that if you are going to go through the trouble to setup a website with a contact form or an email address and emblazon “CONTACT US,” “REQUEST AN ESTIMATE,” or the like, you better have someone testing it daily.
Acquiring new customers is a difficult and expensive process, be it on the web or through more traditional methods of direct mail, telemarketing, or in person sales calls. Panalysis has slick, simple calculator to estimate the cost of customer acquisition via your website. Regrettably, if you never follow up with potential customers who make inquiries through your website, this tool will do very little for you.
Poor customer service is discussed many places on the web like: here, here, and here. Hell, consumerist.com is dedicated to uncovering people’s experience with poor customer service. Everyone has a story about their bad experience with a company. Thanks to the internet it can spread like wild fire. It’s too bad that it usually takes a massive bout of bad PR on the web for companies to do the right thing. I guess my question about my experience above is,
can I really complain about poor customer service when the company never gave me the service I requested?
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