Have you ever had the feeling that people are ignoring you? I’m not normally paranoid about these things, but a recent experience I had as a customer left me wondering whether I might have suddenly become invisible...

As my colleagues at the Lyris office in London will testify, I am a keen cyclist and I use my trusted Brompton folding bicycle to commute to work (and often to go to client meetings, which often seems to raise an eyebrow or two when I turn up!) But my cycling geek credentials would be no good if I didn’t own at least 2 or 3 other bikes - recently I needed to find a replacement part for the hybrid I use in the fantastically cycling-friendly city of Cambridge where I live. As I wasn’t sure if this part was available, I decided to use the manufacturer’s Web site to find the details of the local dealers so that I could ask them.

I found three different shops, and I followed the links through to their Web sites. They each had a "contact us" form page, so I sent them each a message asking whether they could get the part that I wanted. So far so good.

But none of them replied.

I was quite surprised about how bad that made me feel. It was only a stupid mudguard clip I needed, but I was just amazed that when I’d gone to the trouble of asking, nobody could find a minute to even acknowledge receipt of my email. It definitely made me think that I wouldn’t want to use those particular shops again, but it also made me think less of the bike brand too.

I can absolutely understand why this might have happened. In the old days (about 10 years ago - a lifetime in online marketing), it used to be so much easier. Anyone running a customer service enterprise just had to answer the phone and then check the fax machine and the letterbox occasionally. Now we have to do all of those (well, probably not the fax machine), as well as answer email inquiries, respond to SMS messages, and look out for tweets. (The whole issue of customer service via Twitter is a fascinating one - it’s been really interesting to trace how customers have gradually got hold of the idea that they may well get better service if they tweet about their problem - particularly if they have any kind of profile on the system.)

While this may explain the situation, it doesn’t excuse it. If a company has a channel open then they have to be prepared to listen for incoming communications. I’ve written before about the importance of being able to respond when people reply to email marketing, and I think this is an extension of that.

One of the challenges of customer service is that it’s very hard to assess how your organisation is responding when you’re on the inside. You only really know there are problems when customers start to blog and tweet about their bad experiences. What you really need is for someone friendly to put your company's customer service to the test and see what happens. It’s just an extension of what mystery shoppers have been doing for years - but I’m not sure anyone is yet doing it systematically for the online world.

So as an online customer service experiment, I'm happy to volunteer to check out a few organisations and to report back the results confidentially to you. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you're interested!

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About the Author

Kieran Cooper is a senior account manager for Lyris' UK office. Located in London, he is responsible for account management, implementation and support of Lyris online and email marketing solutions.

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