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The Worst Shopping & Customer Service Experience EVER: Littlewoods Ireland

[fa icon="calendar"] 25-Jul-2016 10:00:00 / by Iliyana Stareva

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I am going to tell you a story today. A story about the absolute worst shopping and customer service experience EVER with Littlewoods Ireland (I feel terrible about giving them an inbound link now but I need you to see it and never ever shop there!)

So two Saturdays ago (17 July) I am running around Dublin to find a fascinator. Yep, a fascinator, because I am going to the Galway races this Friday. I am very specific with what I need as to colours, size etc. Unfortunately, I cannot find anything in the shops in town so what do I do? Well, I go shopping online! And I find Littlewoords Ireland. They actually do have something that fits what I need! So I order it. I go through an incredibly long process of creating an account. Regardless, I'm content because I've found a fascinator to fit with my outfit! 

Turns out I am never going to get that fascinator. Why? Because on Monday Littlewoods Ireland decide to reject my order and cancel my account because they cannot deliver to a business address! I repeat, they cannot deliver my online order to my office! They only do home address! Yep, seriously... You know that emoji in skype (headbang)? If you don't, try it. That's how I feel. I deliver absolutely everything to my office because I am barely ever at home and if I left stuff to be delivered there, I would end up receiving a note with an address of a super distant post office that I would need taxis to get to and a day off from work because usually these dispatch offices are only open from 9am to 4pm the most hence no way I can make it there. 

I decide to dig into why they cannot deliver to my work address.

Stay with me for this story. I promise you, you'll have so much fun reading this.

First, I receive this email: 

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Then I head over to their chat online, hoping to figure out why they do not want to deliver to my office address. I am already very angry at this point as this is happening at 8pm after a Monday - usually a tough day at the office. 

chat_littlewoods_ireland_2.png 

As you can see, they cannot tell me either (and you'll see how angry I am getting!) and they point me to their phone line where I wait for over 5 minutes to be connected, then 4 minutes for the person on the phone to ask me all about my account, my order etc until she can actually get to my issue. Then, she says we should try and place the order again. I ask her if we were to do this, would they now deliver to my office. She says, I don't know, we'll have to see. She's just wasted 12 minutes of my time so I just hang up saying that I cannot deal with this anymore. To top this off, I am paying for this waste of my time since the line is not free! 

I head over to their Twitter and post an angry message, hoping to get their attention and get this solved.

Then I head over to their Facebook wall as well for the same reason. The more noise, the better. 

You see, they responded to my rant on Facebook, pretty quickly. 

littlewoords_ireland_fb.jpg 

Then the same guy who has already responded to me on Facebook, responds on Twitter asking if he can help. All of this is happening within less than 10 minutes so I would have hoped he would have at least noticed my name (it's not a very common one, you see). Nope. He then apologies saying it's his colleague taking care of Facebook, but did he not sign this message with his name? (Am I blind?)

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So anyway, we take it to Facebook messages and they are asking me to send them an email so that they can take a closer look. And so I do. 

The next morning I receive the following email:

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I am utterly shocked! So I need to de-register with my home address and maybe then try again and place that order. 

You see, until now, no one has actually explained to me, why they do not want to deliver my simple order to my office address because I am never home. 

So I hit reply and ask in an email why they cannot deliver to my office. This is what they tell me:

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Again, they ask me to call the same line I had already called and where I did not receive an answer or help at all!

Do their departments speak to each other? Can't they track their interactions with me? Do they have a CRM maybe? 

And so I tell them again that I had already tried the line and the person on the phone could not answer this question and could not help me and ask why are they still pushing me to that line? 

OMG and they tell me the same thing!

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Then I tell them that I am tired of calling a line and waiting for forever and paying for all that and I am requesting a call back. 

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They are still pushing me to call that line! I can't believe this. And they tell me they are the social media team so not the right people to speak to. Really? I have to put the effort and you can't forward this email chain to the department that should be able to call me? 

I am just speechless... 

What I also did was to submit a customer complaint via their website. You won't believe the response I got!!! They told me to write them a letter! And post it! Post it! That means weeks of handling this. OMG! (headbang)

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This is the most inflexible service I've ever encountered. I didn't even think that something like this is possible in the 21st century! Littlewoods Ireland, do you even understand the workforce today? At least you are active online, but please enable your workers to actually be able to answer questions. I am getting the same response from your different departments and no one seems to be listening to my issue. I still don't know why you do not want to deliver to my office address. 

Here's my advice to you, Littlewoods Ireland. There are two key things you should start doing and educate your customer team to follow too: 

The 2 Key Steps to Dealing with an Angry Customer: 

1. Call me! I'm pissed off - turn the fire down  

I am obviously a very angry customer at this stage, you have all my contacts information, including my phone number. Why don't you call me directly to handle this? You would have spared yourself all the emails, the tweets, the Facebook messages and this blog post! I even hinted this to you (well, actually said directly twice!) - in the chat and then in an email. I wanted to save you the trouble, you didn't. 

2. Do your research - it's pretty easy

Your social media team and the people behind those emails should have all checked out my Twitter, my Facebook or my email signature. They would have seen there where I work, what I do and that I do have a nice little network built up with an active and popular blog. They would have also seen that I have a background in PR. If I want to trash your reputation, I can. Do your research and make informed decisions. If you had checked out who I was, you may have come to the conclusion that point 1 as mentioned above was necessary.

Regardless, you need to enable your people to really listen to customers and respond to their issues with a relevant approach instead of having them resort to the same statement over and over again. 

 

So, dear readers, how did you like my rant today? 

 

Why don't you share this and comment to help me get this viral? 

 

Topics: Brands and Business

Iliyana Stareva

Written by Iliyana Stareva

Iliyana Stareva is the author of Inbound PR - the book that is transforming the PR industry. She's also a keynote speaker and a consultant in inbound and digital for fast-growing companies and agencies. Currently, Iliyana is Chief of Staff to the EMEA President at ServiceNow. Before that, she held global and EMEA-wide positions at Cisco and HubSpot. She is also certified by the PMI as a Project Management Professional (PMP)®. In her free time, you can find Iliyana writing for her blog, dancing salsa or travelling the world.

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