Know Your Audience…

I am a big fan of all things online – usually – and even use good online services in my home life (Qu’elle Surprise!). We’ve been using Buy4Now for years, and they really do get a lot of things right, so I’m happy to recommend them. One of the things I’m not so mad about is that they do send the odd email promoting a partner’s product or service, but I put up with it because sometimes it is something interesting.

This morning in comes this quite tantalising offer – sign up for an online women’s magazine and you have the chance to win a luxury spa weekend worth 1,000 Euros. Now, I’m not so good on the women’s magazine bit – no kids, can’t abide the hairdresser, hate fashion, eat like my ancestors rather than all that “tasteful”, low fat but “tasty”, grainey stuff that most recipes seem to be promoting. But I thought I could really really really do with a break just at the moment… I know Christmas is coming, but I gotta say that the idea of taking off to a luxury retreat for a couple of days sounds fantastic. (I should just head off to the Osprey or Carton House …)

So, they caught me at just the right time, Sunday morning, checking email, stressed at the amount that has to be done today before I can take the time off to go buy a Christmas tree. I was intending to sign up and then unsubscribe when I didn’t win, but there you are… Off I headed to sign up.

Then I got a reality check. I’m definitely not one of their intended. In the registration form there was a drop down list for “Title” and you could choose Mr, Mrs or Miss. Hmmm…. Have I ever told Buy4Now what my gender is? thinks I. Off I hop to my stored profile – I gave them permission to store certain details and they obviously use them. Yes, I had told them I was female, and my age range and that I had kids, but the number was zero. So I probably did look like a good candidate for a women’s magazine. Although I haven’t ticked any of the interest boxes like health & beauty or food & wine – but maybe they thought that was an oversight

I think this is a really good example of knowing your audience. They had some clues, so they went fishing with good bait. I bit, they went to reel me in but on the first handshake, we realised we were not for one another so they threw me back. Are you confused on how we realised we were not for each other? Well, any woman who refuses to have herself addressed as Mrs or Miss is probably not interested in health & beauty, lifestyle, food & wine, fashion and family – obvious! 

So well done Buy4Now and LivingOnline, (genuinely!) you know your audience and you’re walking the talk! 

You Learn Something Every Day

Hallo Campers, today I want to share with you the customer service lessons I’ve learned. I’ve decided that instead of ranting about having my time wasted I will take the attitude that there is something I can learn from these (more and more frequent) frustrating incidents.

Today’s lesson number 1: Make sure your support staff understand the products they are supporting

Today’s lesson number 2: Obey at least some of the current legislation regarding data protection and in particular the protection of highly sensitive data such as credit and debit card details.

See below the full transcript of my live chat (a concept which I love, and fair play to everyone who implements it) with a kind gentleman by the name of Stanislaw between the hours of 09:10 and 09:35. I went to renew a domain name, followed the instructions, entered my card details and reached an error page. So I opened the live chat and here’s how it went. Some details have been obscured for protection of the innocent:

09:10 Stanislaw: Welcome to our real-time support chat. How can I help you today?
09:10 Sarah: your system kicked me out when trying to pay for xxxxx.com.
09:11 Stanislaw : let me check it
09:14 Sarah: Are you still checking it?
09:17 Stanislaw : yes
gimme 5 minutes please
09:17 Sarah: OK (editor’s note – I went and got a cup of cofee)
09:19 Stanislaw : yes the payment stuck
09:20Sarah: what do you mean stuck? Was it not authorised at the gateway?
09:22 Stanislaw : I am seeing few Payments Profiles on your account
09:22 Sarah: and that means????
09:23 Stanislaw : it’s our fault no worries, but please tell me what CC you want to use to pay
I need to charge you for the domain
you haven’t been charged yet
09:23 Sarah: you have got to be kidding. You want me to put my card details into a live chat window?
09:24 Stanislaw : nope
I got your CC details
please only choose the credit card
you got 2 Laser and one Visa
not sure which one do you wish to use
09:26 Sarah: So I see. Please delete these immediately. At no point have I instructed or authorised you to retain my card details in your system.
I will pay for this domain name using electronic funds transfer as per the invoice emailed to me.
09:27 Stanislaw : ok but you can delete them yourself
09:27 Sarah: How?
09:28 Stanislaw : in Uber
09:29 http://cp.register365.com/
09:29 Sarah: Where in “Uber” does a delete payment profile or card details appear?
09:31 Stanislaw : please log in there and remove the payment profiles
09:31 Sarah: Dear Stanislaw, I am currently logged in and looking at the payment profiles page. I see that you have stored three cards in there but I do not have an option to delete them.
09:33 Stanislaw : yes, you are right
please send us such request via mail
from your admin mail, then we will remove all payment profiles
09:33 Sarah: Dear Stanislaw, I now have to send you an email to ask you to remove payment information from your system that I never authorised you to store in the first place?
09:35 Stanislaw : yes, because of our security policy
09:36 Sarah: Oh I wish you could see me laughing now. OK, enough time wasted on this, time for action. Bye
09:38 Stanislaw Kodzis: bye

I took a quick look then to see how I could have missed the fact that these guys are storing my card details in their (it has to be said) pretty flakey and not very user friendly system. Sorry, I can’t resist letting you know about the last chat I had with Stanislaw where he told me that I had to e-mail him a list of all the domains I had registered with register365 as they didn’t appear in the control panel. Eh, excuse me? I register a domain with register365 and then they lose it?

Back on point – I went through the renewal process again just to see had I missed something. Went to the renewals page, clicked the right buttons, logged myself right on in and – there it was – the screen to enter my credit card details. No terms, no conditions, no indication that the card details were going to be stored on their system. And most particularly, no option to use one of my stored profiles which would have given me a clue that my card details were being captured and held on their database.

I logged into the control panel separately, no way to use a stored profile to pay for a renewal. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I know that I’m a harsh and demanding beeitch – honest! – and I know that poor Stanislaw is not to blame, bless him. I would think that the largest hosting company in Ireland would be ever so careful to obey the data protection legislation. One of basic pillars of which is that any sensitive data which is collected and stored must be collected and stored with the express permission of the data owner.

Big lesson learned…

Happy Birthday to the IIA!

The IIA – the Irish Internet Association - is now 10 years old – hard to believe! As the professional body for those implementing the internet as a medium for business, it has an interesting brief and mandate. Members come from all sorts of sectors, from large corporates, freelance designers and SME’s. The Net Visionary Awards are highly contested every year, we’ve been shortlisted once, nominated every year, but have never won… and the IIA Annual Congress last year was a brilliantly run event.

So happy birthday – enjoy your debate (You Cannot Make Money out of Blogs) – [I'm on the side of Why would you think you can?] and we’ll see you next year!