About 15 years ago I had a sales job at Aldo Shoes, one of the more trendy shoes stores in Canada and while at that job we were always worried about the mystery shoppers that the head office would send out to gauge the level of customer service a buyer would get. Basically a mystery shopper is someone hired by a company to pose as a customer in order to evaluate the quality of its service. I’m a very outgoing person who always tried my best to make the customer’s experience one that they would go and tell their friends about… after all my paycheque depended heavily on commissions. If you’ve ever been to a shoe store and you feel the sales person is trying to get you to purchase a purse to match the shoes or force shoe care products onto you… that’s just what they’re told to do and they can’t tell if you’re a genuine customers or a company spy!

A couple days back I contacted a company to inquire  if they had a drop shipping or reseller program that I could possible create an account for. Though the outcome was negative, I was quite impressed with the way my email/s were handled. That experience had me thinking… I wonder what are people’s experience when they contact the support team at any of my online stores? Should I be testing my system personally, or do I rely on hoping that they’re making a good impression? Do you do business online? Have you tested your support system?

Here’s the experience I was quite impressed with.

1. I made contact using the site’s online inquiry form.

2. Moments later I received an email confirming that they received my query and that someone would be getting back to me within 24 hrs. (ok so I now know that they got my message and I know how long before I get a response).

3. Checked my email and sure enough there was a response for one of their customer support agents. (within the time they said in their autoresponder message I would) I must also mention that the agent was very polite, addressed me by my name (not a typical canned email) and he ended with a professional signature.

3. I responded that though his answer was helpful it still didn’t address my concern specifically.

4. Moments later he responded with the exact response I was looking for (again very professional and continued to address me by my name. Normally by now you’d get those unprofessional replies with just a response and no .. “Hello name”….)

5. I responded by saying thanks for the help.

6. I got a response (though one wasn’t expected) asking if there was anything else he could assist with and a reminder that should I have a question in the future, to be sure to get back to him.

Do you think your support team would have handled this in the same manner? Do you even have a process in place for responding to customers and general inquiries?

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