While writing my longish mail on
Amazon's 'Subscribe and Save' category and tweeting it to Amazon, Amazon India
and Jeff Bezos Twitter handles, I had not expected a prompt reply.
It was based
on my previous experiences. I have done this exercise with many companies - on
this or that issue related to them.
So far, my best experience has been with Dell India
- its customer services team and its social media extensions.
And about my worst -well, there
are many and picking a particular one is difficult. But if I am asked to pick
one -I would say Eureka Forbes.
After consistently following multiple
times, through phone and Facebook extensions, I was forced to hang up but the
Eureka Forbes folks refused to buzz from their eternal slumber. Apart from many
product and service related issues, I was not sent even my receipt that I was
promised after making online purchase for an Aquaguard Enhance water
purifier (along with a freebie, that, too, never came).
Though a response from Amazon
India over phone line has been efficient so far, its Facebook version was dull,
and on the line seen so far, with so many companies.
I posted my write-up on the issue
I am facing on Amazon India's Facebook page. Obviously, it was the headline
followed by the link of the write-up. Soon, a message popped up, a reply from some
guy entrusted to monitor Amazon India's Facebook page. On expected, and worn-out
line, the person told me that 'I needed to be specific' in what I wanted to
say.
Well, what can I say on this!
We folks spend a great deal of time writing about issues we face and we expect that the concerned organization would
at least take the pain to read them.
I don't know if that
happened.
Because there was no further
reply from any Amazon staff after I wrote back requesting that the person
should open the link attached - where I had written 'very specifically' about the
problem I was facing.
And it was when it was not an
outright criticism - but a suggestion conveying a potential problem
that may see more of it in the days ahead.
And on Twitter?
Here again, I tagged
Twitter IDs of Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Amazon India and Amazon Help along with my
write-up's link.
But no response has come so
far and its almost 24 hours now.
Yes it was a weekend and there
might be slippages but it looks quite awkward given the fact that there would
be dedicated social media teams, even for Jeff Bezos' personal Twitter handle.
I hope there is still time given Amazon India's track record and given the fact that E-commerce or online
retail cannot dominate a business scene if it is not customer friendly.
I do this exercises randomly to get some handy information
about how companies are treating their customers - about their marketing
communication and public interface practices in the B2C environment of E-commerce
that is slated to grow manifold.
Most of the companies and their honchos fail
here, some miserably.