Friday, March 18, 2011

Your friendly neighbourhood internet store

The internet makes the whole world a marketplace for your customers if you so choose. But it also allows companies to automate and essentially become lazy on their customer service.

Someone buys something and gets an automated email response with the order summary, shipping info and receipt - it's pretty standard practice for e-commerce.

But what happens when you change things up.

I recently ordered my girlfriend a bouquet of flowers because i'm just such an awesome boyfriend and I was looking online at the various flower shops in Vancouver that delivered. I finally settled on a florist and ordered the bouquet and of course received an automated email confirming all the details.

Then, to my surprise, later that day I received an email from the florist letting me know that he "would be delivering a beautiful bouquet to ------ on March 16th for me. Thanks, Joel"

That simple email that took him 10 seconds to send just earned him a repeat customer. The next time I look to suck up to my girlfriend I will definitely be going to the same place.

It's that easy to turn your standard online store into one that makes your customers feel more important than a standard automated reply.

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