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How to really confuse and annoy a customer

Sears.com has a different way of handling your order than you'd expect, and that can lead to customer confusion and a bad experience.  This would be a good case for discussion in business or user interface design classes.  Here's what happened to me.

I ordered a small tool from sears.com on a Thursday and promptly received an email confirming the order.  Then on Friday I received another email informing me that the order had shipped and provided a UPS tracking number.  It told me that I can expect delivery mid to late the following week - so far everything sounds great and I'm happy Sears shipped the order so quickly.   Then things start to go downhill.  Late Friday evening the UPS tracking page still shows the state of "Billing Information Received".  Then by late Monday it's still in that same state.  In UPS speak "Billing Information Received" means that the label was printed by the shipper, but UPS has not yet taken possession of the package.  If I were buying something from an individual on Ebay this can easily happen, but doesn't seem to make sense from a major shipper with regular pickups like Sears or any big name online retailer.  It is natural at that point to question whether things are working correctly and whether the package will be received around the promised time.

This is when Sears.com went horribly wrong.  On Monday night I used their customer service online chat to ask what was going on.  The service rep gave me a song and dance and tried explanations like "Billing Information Received" means progress and that I should be worried if the state was "Billing Information NOT Received".  I typed back that UPS doesn't have a "Billing Informatoin NOT Received" state in their system and she responded by asking me if I worked for UPS (inappropriate to talk with a customer that way, especially when you're giving them incorrect information!)  She then tried to tell me that sometimes UPS doesn't scan the package right away - not likely, scanning everything is a key concept in how their system works.  I wasn't getting anywhere so I gave up for the night.

Through Tuesday the UPS tracking information still hadn't changed so this time I called, but got pretty much the same incorrect information, but this time with 100% more attitude.  She told me that my only option was to take it up with UPS, or they could submit a tracking request to UPS whihc would take 2 days and after which would take up to 10 days for UPS to respond.  I asked to speak with a supervisor and then the rep got downright hostile and argued with me that the supervisor could give me no information that she hadn't alreeady given me, I said that was fine but I'd like to speak with a supervisor anyway, she got huffy and put me on a very long hold - I eventually hung up, pretty convinced that Sears doesn't want my future business.

At last I got a sensible explanation of what happened

I happened to have the number for Sears executive relations so I started over and after a few transfers got a much clearer view of how Sears handles orders (and why this can lead to customer confusion.)

When Sears filled the box, printed the UPS label, and sent me the the UPS tracking number they didn't actually give the package to UPS from that location.  Instead they shipped it via a Sears truck to another warehouse in another state which is where they will turn the package over to UPS, but this takes a few days after which time it will get its first scan by UPS.  So the order had shipped, but not in the way that their email would imply to a customer.

If this simple explanation had been provided by either of two service reps I would have understood what was going on and it would have ended there, but it is clear to me that they didn't understand it themselves.  It took a call to Executive Relations to find someone who knew what was going on.

What can be learned from this from a customer relations or user interface perspective

You take a big risk when you design a system which works contrary to the expectations of your users.  When you send a customer an email saying that a package has shipped and provide a UPS tracking number, a normal user will expect that tracking number to show that UPS actually got the package within a day or so.  When this doesn't happen the customer gets confused and loses confidence that things are working correctly.  While this was happening I did a Google search with the term Sears and "billing information received" and received a lot of hits.  I bet that most of these are the result of the same confusion I experienced with my order and could have been avoided.

If you do have a nonstandard process at least make sure your customer service people understand that process and can explain it to customers/users.  Your company really starts to look bad when your customer service department starts to give out obviously incorrect information.  Lots of people these days know how UPS operates and what to expect, so when your people give out obviously incorrect incorrect information and then try to point the finger at an organization the customer trusts more than they trust you, you lose all credibility.

Under any circumstances it is not acceptable for customer service agents to be rude to customers!  I'm sure there are times when we deserve it, but you just can't do it.