Web Critic

Monday, June 10, 2002

Yo!  Crucial -- ASP = Active Server Pages! I've been buying memory from www.crucial.com as long as I can remember them existing (96??? 97???  Back to when they just had a phone number???  A long time.).  They usually have a great web site but today it failed for me on two counts.  One was understandable and one was just plain stupid.  Here were the problems: They didn't list my computer.  The great thing about Crucial is you don't have to know a DIMM from a SIMM.  You tell them your computer manufacturer, category and model and they look it up.  It's never been wrong for me -- and I've bought a lot of RAM.  Perhaps Compaq didn't make very many Compaq Deskpro EXMs or maybe Crucial didn't like their color.  Sigh.  They broke my expectations with a promise to me.  And they did it in a way that indicates that they are kind of clue free.  When I couldn't find my computer, I looked a bit more closely at the home page and saw this: I figured great!  It may be 5:17 am in the U.S. but this is a big company, they sell globally, I'm online via IM to Norway.  I'll just click.  And I got this: BUZZ!!!! Do not pass go.  Do not collect $200.  Do not get that sale.  Your customer just decided to go somewhere else.  Seriously, here's what went through my head. Don't they know how to program ASP scripts to check if the experts are available?  Before giving me that option?  And then change the text to something like this: "We're sorry, our experts are currently busy.  Would you like us to email you when an expert is available to answer your memory questions?" If a customer needs to use an online expert, it's probably about 90% certain that they do it after the normal site interaction method fails.  In this case you are already doing poorly with customer.  So don't you want to get it perfect?  Not just right but perfect.  I did what the rest of us do: www.google.com and started looking for another option.  Will I ever come back and try again?  Not sure.  I'll now have found another vendor since I need to buy RAM and, if they are good, will I try again?  It really depends on whether or not the new vendor works out.  And if you run a web site and you don't think that customer affiliations can be this tenuous now adays, I disagree.  Everything I know about consumer psychology tells me this is true.  When we have a successful vendor, we do tend to be loyal (me and PC Connection) -- until they fail us in a way that kills their usefulness to us.  For me, what made Crucial wonderful, was that I didn't need to know the difference between DIMMs and SIMMs.  When that failed today since they didn't even list my machine (come on ... Compaq is #1 or #2 every single year -- what's going on).  Sure I recently had a problem with PC Connection but that problem was just annoying but didn't kill their usefulness to me.  They're still a great company -- and, to me -- an even better one than I knew. Just as a closing note, I added a new category, Web Critic, so all these types of web site related commentary can be accessed as one.  http://scott.blogs.at/categories/webCritic/.  Want to subscribe to just these items then use this RSS url: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/categories/webcritic/rss.xml 5:48:03 AM  Google It!  comment []