When multichannel retail fails badly

I needed to buy new software package for my new Mac. After a little research I settled on a highly rated application. The price on the company’s website: $199. The representative who helped me purchase the product by phone was knowledgeable, friendly and enthusiastic about how their product would improve my productivity. I made the purchase and felt good. At this point, I would have scored the transaction as:

1. Price paid: $199
2. Overall satisfaction or Net Promoter Score on 1-10 range: 9
3. Interactions with customer service: once; short.

Unfortunately, the story didn’t stop there. A few minutes later, while scrolling down my Facebook page, an ad for the software I’d just purchased appeared. On a whim, I clicked over to learn a more about the package I’d just purchased. I was chagrined to see that the software was now being offered to me for $174. Twenty-five dollars thrown away. Bummer.

And then it got worse

To fix things, I called the customer service number to cancel my first order and place a new order at the discounted price. I was told they couldn’t cancel my order because it was in a different system. Also, they could offer me the product at $119. My world grew darker. I had just almost thrown away $80.

Something else also happened. I now “anchored” the value of the software in my mind at $119 and felt like a fool for having paid $199 just fifteen minutes earlier. I’ll skip over the details of rest of the story that involved submitting cancellation forms, calls to customer service, etc. Instead, I’ll jump right to the final scorecard:

1. Price paid: $119
2. Net promoter score: 5 (all people were very competent and nice, software still looks good, pricing is infuriating).
3. Calls and emails to customer service: a lot, too much time.

This is a costly way to do business. That $80 represented pure margin. Few companies can afford to give that away. The lowered Net Promoter Score might represent even more.

Responding to threats in real time

Twenty-first century businesses seize opportunities and respond to threats in real time – while actions underway still matter. The knowledge that I could get the product for $119 represents a real time threat to this business, especially when they actively promote it into channels I’ll likely see.

The key to solving a problem like this is to have a real-time architecture instead of a too late architecture. A real time solution looks something like this:

• Master Data: Have a single version of the customer, whether I’m calling or chatting or talking to customer support – through any contact number or system.
• Events: Customer has called more than x times in y time period. Customer has spent an average of z amount of time with customer support.
• Rules: For example, if customer purchases product at full price, do not offer discounted prices, across all channels, within 60 days.

Some of the smartest companies out there are putting together systems that follow this pattern. They know that today’s channels won’t necessarily be tomorrow’s, but consistency no matter the channel matters enormously. In a world where anyone can rate anything at any time, this kind of architecture will be a survival issue.