Fatface or flat in your face: how abuse of email and bad customer service damages relationships

Fatface, a clothing company, one of my favourites in the UK until now.  

For my birthday, I go online and buy a nice garment.  Decided to collec them in a store.  It is Sunday, and I get an email confirmation of the order,  the email says I should wait for another email telling me when the garment is in the store.  

I get another email on Monday, telling me it has been dispatched to the store.  I cannot wait.  My birthday is on Thursday, so I decide I will go there on that day.  Three more days...

Thursday comes, I drive to Fatface store in Weybridge, in the middle of a traffic jam. It is 11am.  I am anxious as I have little time to spare.  I show my reference number to the salesman, and I get the following: 

"Your order has not arrived yet.  I know it is confusing, but you should wait for another email telling them that the order has been received.  Sorry about this,  we can keep the item for as long as you need us to here.  When can you come back to collect it? "

I feel like falling flat in my face...

First I replied, I cannot drive to this store anytime I want,  I have a family and a job to look after.  

Secondly, why did I get an email telling me that the order was dispatched?  What is the value of doing this?

Third, you guys have a lousy transport system, it takes more than 3 days for items to arrive on store from wherever they have been stored.

Fourth, can I cancel the order now? 

To this last thing he then replies: 

"I am sorry but you have to wait for the item to arrive, collect it and then claim a refund"

That was the icing on the cake really..

Ok, I may have misread the email on Monday, but why did I need confirmation of dispatch? Many companies email you when they are about to deliver the item to you.  This email did not add anything. It confused me.   

Many companies misuse information systems.  As a customer, they get you involved in the mess of their supply chains through badly conceived emails.  And they top their inefficiency with a lousy customer service. All because they think that a supply chain is about saving money in transport and doing so by inundating customers with emails.  

This week I got another email reminding me that the item is in store, and that at the end of the week it will be returned to the warehouse and I will be refunded if I do not collect it.  It is still my fault, not theirs. 

On the day of my birthday, I told the clerk that I teach a course on e-business, and the apologised again but did not allow me to explain that a key idea is to think of the customer journey, the things we do online and offline to get what we want as a product.  There are customers who can afford to get to a store, and in my case I was also thinking of saving a bit of money in the delivery (£4.95 for a delivery whose delivery day is uncertain, so we still pay for Fatface inefficiencies in transport!). 

Understanding the customer journey means looking at me as a human being, what I do, what I expect.  Then we can design email and service systems together as a 'whole'.  As customers we do not need things that do not add value to our journey and our busy life in general.  We need convenience, opportunity, a helping hand, a shoulder to cry and a professional response from companies.  

You can re-read the above paragraphs and make up your mind as to what I got from Fatface. On the day of my birthday. 

A more careful consideration of this journey for people like me (even if I am in the minority of Fatface customer segmentation) would have made my birthday mor enjoyable.  So after falling flat in my face I decided to enjoy the rest of my birthday without Fatface. And perhaps I will enjoy the rest of my life without them.  

I have also learned that it is good to teach, it gives you ideas to check every day.