CBC News has a tool on their masthead to report a typo.
Some people like to report typos (I’m one of them; I also like to be notified of typos). But there’s also a comment here on ways to listen to customers; CBC perhaps noticed some patterns in type of feedback they were getting and decided to create a channel just for that type of input. As well, by offering that link they are encouraging people to participate in the site on a very simple level, as typo submitters.
We’re sorting out the accommodations for our Dec/Jan trip to Japan, and I noticed this distressing bit of interaction with Expedia.
After booking our hotel in Kyoto, we get an itinerary named (loosely) Kyoto, and details of the hotel (including its name, which has the word Kyoto in it), and just generally good confirmatory feedback.
Further on down the page comes the upsell.
Osaka? But we’re not going to Osaka?! This caused a definite brief panic verifying the rest of the information in the itinerary to be sure that Expedia didn’t just put us in some other hotel in some other city.
Tip: if you provide automated upsell information that appears to reflect some contextual understanding of your customer, make sure it’s right, or you will cause them distress and extra work, reducing confidence
A number of months ago we had an unfortunate experience at the usually stupendous local restaurant, Cafe Gibraltar. Our reservation, made long in advance for dinner with out-of-town visitors, evaporated. The error was theirs but I was made to feel as if I was somehow in the wrong, and it really created some awkwardness on what was supposed to be a special dinner.
I wrote a letter about it and didn’t hear back until recently. But wow, what a response!
Some times we make mistakes, as is human, but not properly dealing with our mistakes is unacceptable. We are only as good as those who represent us.
Seemed a good time to post a great apology after Sunday’s NYT piece about the Southwest employee who is in charge of writing apology letters to passengers – the “senior manager of proactive customer communications.”
Some interesting innovations in products (both aimed at kids) that help you complete a feedback-less task more effectively.
Squidsoap [via Strange New Products] is a pump that puts black ink on your hands when you pump out the soap; your hands are clean when they are free of ink (and happily, also free from invisible germs and gunk).
Listerine Agent CoolBlue is similar to good ol’ Disclosing Tablets; it stains the placque on your teeth so you can see where you need to go back and brush.
Cleaning is a great category for this sort of thing; as we are more afraid of germs that we can’t detect, we need some mechanism in our tasks to ensure that we’re completing them properly. Consider vacuuming; one way to know you’re done with the carpet is that you stop hearing the noise of dirt shooting past the rollers.
I’ll be keeping my eyes open for other examples like this.
These feedback forms in the SFO Long Term Parking bus shelter are always empty. Someone has written Ha Ha Ha as a sarcastic bit of feedback, presumably about the implied hypocrisy of an unmaintained feedback mechanism.
There’s a phone number (that would ideally be covered by feedback forms) that you can call from a telephone (if you’re carrying one) or a courtesy phone (once you get into the airport itself, a 10 minute drive away), for parking information. Parking information? You’ve already parked, if you’re seeing this. The sticker is out of sync with the feedback form holding function.