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March 29, 2001

Failure to escape from the bathroom in time to answer the front door and sign for a parcel led Adam Christie to the delivery company’s website. He was far from impressed with what he found there.


Making no exception

HOW many company chief executives realise just how stupid their websites can make them look?

The answer – unfortunately – is probably very few.

This morning, a major delivery company tried to leave a parcel with me. As happens in such situations, I was in the bathroom. By the time I reached the front door, the delivery driver had gone.

A card had been left, with a consignment number and contact details. The telephone call centre was busy and the repeated message – which was cost a national rate to hear several times during the 12 minutes it took before someone answered - suggested using their website. So, I did.

The home page said the company provided 'an exceptional service provided by exceptional people'.

Was the marketing company which developed the page being serious? Which executive approve such a statement? If ever there was a claim that was tempting fate, derision and contempt, this was it.

If their service was exceptional, then the basic provision of their competitors must surely be dire. The implication was that if you want something delivered, there was no alternative, but to take it yourself. Did they really want to say that? Probably not.

If the company was so exceptional, why was its call centre still playing a message that was more than 12 months out of date? There were mentions of improvements 'in April', but which year? It was mid April 2001 when the check was made .... Sorry, CEO, but 'exceptional'?

The delivery card said the company’s terms and conditions were available 'on request' but didn’t say where from. Surely, they could have been posted – clearly – on the website?

The site had an 'about us' section – but there was nothing about the company’s corporate status, its directors, senior managers and executives, or even the snail mail postal address of its registered office. Exceptional? Perhaps, but exceptionally poor, not the exceptionally good that one suspects the marketing consultant who thought of the website’s front page had been hoping for.

The site also claimed that there was 'easy access' to the company. Waiting 12 minutes for a call centre to answer when time is short, is not 'easy'. Too many organisations and too many call centres have answering times for telephone calls that are equally long. Exceptional? I don’t think so?

This company’s website may have appeared impressive at first site, but the text invites contempt and dirision.

It says very little about the company’s senior executives that such an impression of the company – which, after all, has 100 percent control of what is posted on a website.

Are these individuals, who claiming to be 'exceptional' really so dumb and stupid? Who would want to work for a company or managers who give the direct impression that they cannot portray themselves sensibly? Who would want to invest in such individuals or such an enterprise?

Yes, the site looked good. The first page was pretty, the graphics quite attractive, but the explicit and implicit messages of the text have not only invited but achieved the complete opposite of the intended effect – because this column has been written.

One section says the company offers delivery services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but another says that its offices are closed on public holidays. Some mistake surely? Exceptional, I hope not.

It is additionally ironic that someone, somewhere, probably was paid quite well to produce this site. It is also probably quite good that the site does not credit its writer or designer, because apart from looking nice, closer examination shows that there is far too little to credit.

Many users may only visit the site to enter consignment numbers and discover that the parcels they are waiting for are “on a van” somewhere.

The site does – conveniently for customers and probably inconveniently for the company – say that all the drivers have mobile phones. It is possible, when you do get through to the call centre, to ask the driver to come back. Whether the 'contact us' facility on the website has such an immediate response was not apparent.

Websites may appear easy for people to design and write, but unless all of these organisational and operational questions are both asked and answered, then a site such as this is just asking for trouble. It is so, so, so important that text writers have the business knowledge to identify and ask such questions and then demand answers before a site 'goes live' – but, as in this case, unless executives appreciate them too, the effect can be exceptional ... exceptionally crass.