Although this isn't strictly about fundraising, I thought you might be interested in a comically bad experience a colleague had with a company in the last week.
He wanted to get in touch with the company to discuss potentially working with them and asking them to come in and have a chat (the company concerned was in the fundraising sector) about their services.
This is where the fun and games began...
First step, was checking out their website for further details and a contact number. Unfortunately you needed the latest flash player and our IT team hasn't upgraded our browsers yet so we couldn't access the site.
Lesson 1: Make sure your site is accessible to people with older web browsers.
Second step, he decided to give them a call to speak to someone. He got through to reception, explained what he was after and asked for a contact name in the sales team. The receptionist refused to give out a name, contact number, e-mail address or put him through as it was against company policy and asked him to e-mail a generic e-mail address and that the e-mail would then be forwarded on.
Lesson 2: Ensure your reception team is trained in basic customer relationship skills and you are prepared to take calls from prospective customers!
My colleague is a determined fellow though and duly sent the e-mail, asking for a response by the end of the last week. No e-mail was forthcoming...
Lesson 3: Respond to e-mails (basic I know, but these people seem to need such advice!)
Now by this point, he'd already decided that we'd never use this company, but he wanted to see just how high the level of incompetence went in the organisation.
He used a contact he has to get a number for one of the directors and decided to give him a call. Now to be fair, the director was highly apologetic and was embarrassed by the level of service we'd received. He promised us he'd look into it and get back to him by the end of the day.
That was Monday, my colleague is still waiting...
Can you beat that for a bad customer experience?
