A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about my experience with Wedding Registries, specifically how Canadian Tire has closed theirs down and what a royal pain that was to me (and I’m sure so many others).
As a consolation, they were to send me a “gift” within two to four weeks of me confirming my address with them in their system.
I’ve been eagerly waiting to see if they read my post and I will magically have a snowblower delivered to my front door. However, it’s been five weeks now and I’ve not seen hide-nor-hair of a gift, let alone any communication about said gift.
It’s not about the gift anymore, but now about how I’ve been disappointed yet again. First I spend hours of my time creating the registry only to find out within a week that it was all for naught. Then they tell me they are going to send me something for my troubles within two to four weeks and don’t deliver.
If you set expectations for your customers, it’s important to ensure that you can actually follow through on your promises.
I’m not sure whether they had more registries than they realized, or whether everyone immediately confirmed and they can’t handle the demand. Either way, they have my email address and could send a note to me just to let me know.
Keeping your customer apprised of any delays or changes in the expectations you’ve set for them is as important as anything else you’ll do. It will stop people like me from posting about my bad customer experiences with your brand.
Rebecca Atkinson (Muller) is a freelance web marketing/analytics consultant with more than seven years of direct experience helping businesses create and implement online marketing and communications strategies. Her clients come from all industries including finance, technology and not-for-profit. She specializes in helping her clients determine how to improve their advertising programs, focusing on visitor behaviour – beyond the inital click-through. Full bio available
Rebecca:
I think you are right that companies that have your email address and have a problem fulfilling their commitment to you should contact you. Maybe they thought they could fix it? Maybe no one was authorized to send out the emails? Maybe they didn’t know how? It’s curious that they didn’t contact you.
Chris Brown
branding & marketing blog
What I haven’t put in the blog post is what I did after writing the post Chris.
I searched through my emails and found the original email they sent me telling me that they were closing down the registry. At the end of the email is an an email address and a note to please send any and all questions to “x” email address.
So I sent them a note and pointed them to my blog posts and let them know it had been nearly five weeks.
That was Monday. Today is Thursday and I have no gift still and no email response from them. It’s rather shocking really. I can’t get over the lack of common sense in the customer service department.
You bring up a good point about no one being authorized, that could well be the case. But doesn’t somehow at least know how to hit forward to a boss who might be?
I just stumbled upon your blog while googling the canadian tire closing (disappointing – i was looking forward to registering for some camping gear)…keep us updated!
Thanks for visiting! I will definitely keep everyone posted. Look out for a new blog post coming soon with an update (or shocking lack there of).