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Today I want to share some personal experiences. I work in the CX area all my business life and therefore I developed a sensitivity for all those customer experiences and, I must admit, I am judging companies all the time about their ability to deliver those. And judging is, of course, not always in a negative way, I am by far more fascinated when a company is delivering an exceptional experience, rather then the moments when I have a company let me down. In this blog I want to share my latest experience and, sadly, it is not a positive one. It is not a negative one either, it is more like an eye-opening moment for me. I ordered an indoor cycling trainer, yes it was part of a new year’s resolution, to be more active and do some sports. No sooner said than done I ordered my designated model from an online vendor; the excitement was kicking in and I felt like a little boy before Christmas.

But then the reality got me, I was waiting for the delivery and then noticed that I never got a shipping confirmation. So, I checked my account on the vendors website and found out that my order was still in process. That was a surprise, and to admit, not a very pleasant one. The item is in stock and was even labeled as “sofort versandbereit”, what means that it can be shipped immediately, and it was even mentioned that it should be at your premise around 2 – 4 working days.  But obviously the item had not been processed, but online I could not find a reason why this was the case. As I said earlier, I am active in that space for some time and usually prefer self-service if it is done right, as well because I know that phone calls are the most expensive type of support. Since there was no way to find out what happened, I was forced to call in. The person on the line told me that they were flooded with orders over the holidays, and they are still working on the backlog. That is an info that you could have easily displayed on the store, or in the self-service area via a banner. I did receive their apologies, but that was mainly it. Nothing could be done, I had to wait more than a week until I received finally the message that my order was about to be transferred to carrier, to mention that this is not a shipping confirmation. It was less the fact that the item was late due to high volume at their site, it was that I, as a customer got used to either way fast processes or at least transparent communication. There is always room for things that can happen, wrong stock levels, items get lost etc. But there is nothing worse, in my opinion, than assuming everything is right and then painfully finding out that nothing has happened.

To this point I am still waiting for that bike, and I still want it. I only hope that I keep to my resolution until I finally get my hand on it, so that I at least have fun with it for a few weeks 😉