Waitrose
Listens
When I
started this blog on elementary logical errors on websites I stated
that its aim was less to chastise website owners than to improve
customer experience, thus benefiting both the website owners and
their customers, a potential win-win situation. When I note an
error, I send the note to the website owner for a reaction. Alas,
the message seems to have fallen on deaf ears, arrogance or
indifference seeming to be the norm. ……...until now. Waitrose
has given me my first potential success story.
Just
before the new year I wanted to order some groceries from Waitrose
for delivery to my son in Weston Super Mare. Having chosen the
groceries I found that Waitrose apparently required a land-line
telephone number for the delivery address and the house where my son
lives has no telephone land-line; all the occupants have mobiles. I
emailed Waitrose pointing out this impediment which, on the face of
it, excludes all such households from their potential customer base.
I understood the requirement for a telephone number at the delivery
address but not the requirement for a land-line number. The first
response from Waitrose was not promising, simply stating that I could
register with Waitrose without giving a land-line telephone number.
That totally missed my point and I feared I might have encountered
another website where the robots have taken over.
However,
I was asked to give feedback on this response and did so, restating
my point. This resulted in another email from Waitrose acknowledging
my point. It stated that I could have inserted a mobile telephone
number where a compulsory land-line number was requested and that
would have been accepted but agreed this was not clear on their
website. Waitrose said the matter would be referred to their
technical team. A fix could be very simple, simply removing the
asterisk from land-line number field which denotes it as compulsory.
That would also make one of the telephone number fields possibly
redundant but that is not of any consequence. The important point
for me is that I have at last found a website owner that acts
positively to benignly intended criticism. Waitrose listened and,
hopefully, will act accordingly to the benefit of all concerned.
