Love and Customer Service

Ah Valentine's Day. A day of organised commercial goo, horrible padded cards with bears on them and icky cheap chocolate -  custom designed to make you a) miserable (singles) or b) inadequate (couples) . Three of my least favourite things are commercial goo, horrible padded cards with bears on them and icky cheap chocolate so I rebranded Valentine's to become the night 'I Was Cooking'. Basically it was going to feature all the things we love - mainly Jamie Oliver's tuna meatballs with Ben and Jerry's for afters .  Turns out there actually was no avoiding goo on my Valentine's Day. The real life kind. Two hours after putting my precious Fairly Nutty in the freezer......the ice cream was soup. Fridge/freezer was broken. Ouch.

I knew the fridge/freezer was under guarantee but I had a sneaky suspicion I had recently ignored one of those 'your guarantee is about to run out buy a new one for a zillion ££££'s' letters. After checking the order email for the fridge I realised it was purchased on  -  14th January 2010 - one month out of guarantee....NOOOOOOO.

But - ever optimistic and in possession of the finer points of the 1984 Sale of Goods Act I phoned the site I bought it from to see if there was anything they could do to help. I Googled the phone number, I wrote down all the things I wanted to say, I was prepped , I was ready for a fight. I didn't honestly believe a fridge should last 13 months. *deep breath*.....

I phoned the Co-Op...they agreed! I didn't even have to roll out my ‘I’ve been working in retail since ...yada yada’ patter. Within about 15 seconds of me telling my Ben and Jerry's trauma the customer service agent said they would contact the manufacturer who they'd expect to honour the guarantee and if not they would support the replacement of my fridge/freezer for up to 6 years (as per DSR's and SOG Act). Wow, I was in raptures. I was fully expecting a long drawn out argument which would culminate in me a) crying b) shouting c) calling the small claims court or d) all three. None of these things happened. It actually was amazing. Co-op phoned me back when they said they would, they contacted the manufacturer who is coming round this week to look at fixing the fridge/freezer and if they can’t fix it then we can talk about what they can do for me. It's all good!

And how many people have I told about the fabulousness of the Co-Op Electricals. About 50. I've tweeted, I've facebooked, I've bored my colleagues to tears. And now I've blogged about it.

The power of turning a bad into a good. Nuff said.

ASOS f-commerce review

Ah f-commerce. Never has there been a more mentioned phrase at eCommerce networking events (other than 'eurgh what is this I'm drinking it looks like red wine but the taste resembles paint stripper' - but that's by the by). Anyone who wants to appear 'on trend' with their finger on the pulse of social commerce is talking about it. In my experienced they are pretty much the only people that are talking about it..the rest of us are too busy using facebook for it's primary purpose - stalking our secondary school boyfriends /best friends/enemies and observing how fat/ugly/the same they look. Anyway what was I saying? Oh yes f-commerce...it bores me.

All that said when a major player like ASOS tears themselves away from updating their friends on the number of olives they've eaten in the last ten minutes and start putting the 'book to a use that should resonate with all retailers - selling stuff, then we should be taking notice. ASOS has 445,401 followers on their facebook page, which up until recently was mainly used for promotional activity and engaging customers in discussion as well as competition campaigns etc. (They also have a customer service page but that's a whole other post). No one can blame them for seeing the £££'s that an audience of that size can represent. And the online retail community is waiting with bated breath to see if they do indeed convert into real money (and I'm sure the ASOS bigwigs have their pinkies crossed under the table as we speak).



Two paragraph's in I'll get to the point. A few things I personally don't like:

• It's slow to load - the content is clearly going via a third party and it shows. I'm so bored of the waiting wheel I almost went back to studying my high school boyfriend's wife/kids/whatever. 
• It refreshes every time you choose a colour/size/image. See above
• The text is pretty small- it looks like it's been scaled down to fit in the minimal space fb allow. I'm old, it makes me squint.
• Weird image refreshing/no zoom. Can't work it out. One of ASOS's plus point is their catwalk vids. Not here.
• Error messaging. Eeek!
• The delivery type selection journey is a bit odd. You choose it in checkout instead of on your 'Shopping Bag' page, and it's hidden in a tiny dropdown. Not sure this is quite as good as it could be.

Things I do like:

• As expected for social commerce the emphasis is on 'Share'. Big buttons. Nice
• The user journey in general is pretty consistent with the normal site and it's not overly lengthy. I'd imagine you could see an item that your mate has liked, navigate to it, view it and buy it within two shakes of a lamb's tail.
• Despite the obvious space issues they have managed to maintain the brand - it's very ASOS and it reflects the site content well.

Now I feel bad that there's more things I don't like compared to what I do like. Partly this is due to me being not really their target market - I admit I do like facebook and I probably do check it everyday but it's on my iPhone on the train rather than spending hours browsing and chatting. Also I work at a desk with a PC on it. If I want to buy ASOS I'll erm....go to ASOS. Whether other people do the same will no doubt be publicly announced at some point in the future. Either way my pennies are going into ASOS's piggybank so ultimately who cares?

I guess that's the key, as long as customers are shopping on ASOS be it on their site or their f-commerce site then all is well in the world. Horses for courses. f-shoppers can shop, and f-stalkers..well they can just keep on stalking.

H x