I just received an email from Chapters. Here’s what I saw:

Wow. They are going to save me 99 cents! Generous!

Usually the savings are in the range of 25-30%. I’ve gotten used to that I guess. So when I see a 9% discount (that amounts to less than $1.00!!), I think it’s pathetic, and I’m sort of irked that I bothered to open their email. I wonder if I’ll be quick to open subsequent emails from Chapters…..

Don’t even ask. Oh god don’t ask.

I found myself at pamelaanderson.com a moment ago. There are so so so many hilarious things at this site - from the illustrations to the content - that it’s actually worth a visit. Go, take a minute and visit the site. Go.

One of the funniest things about the site is the first line of her “Bio” page that reads: “Pneumatic blonde Pamela Anderson is an American icon, born and raised in a small town in Canada…”

Pneumatic? What? She is filled with “or pertaining to air, gases, or wind” (Dictionary.com)?? (At least now the ‘mystery’ of those enormous bazookas has been solved!)

This is the definitive case study of “When you create a website, you really should hire a writer. A real writer. Not a pneumatic writer.”

UPDATE: While I don’t take any of this back, or agree with the usage, according to the Urban Dictionary, “in the novel “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, the word ‘pneumatic’ was used to describe the sensation of sex with the main female character Lenina. In this context it means well rounded, or bouncy, in reference to her breasts and her body.”

Bouncy. Not really a surprise, I guess. But I feel like I am learning (or plagued to visualize) more about Ms. Anderson’s horizontal life than I bargained for when I made my innocent trip to her site. But then again, I guess that’s the goal, the visualizations, of most of her website visitors…… I am so not her target audience.

I found myself at Moo.com today, directed there by Flickr to get some free mini-cards.  Aside from the fact that the end product looks very cool, and I can’t wait to get my 10 free cards, the interface is completely amazing.  Quite simply, it simply works.  Perfectly. Go try it yourself and you’ll see what I mean.  It’s ultra intuitive, smart and a little sexy too.  And I’ve been looking around for some non-business business cards so the timing of their launch is near perfect too.

Bravo Moo.com.

From this Reuters report:

A parental advice Internet site has sued Google Inc., charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning…….

….. KinderStart charges that Google without warning in March 2005 penalized the site in its search rankings, sparking a “cataclysmic” 70 percent fall in its audience — and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.

“Kinderstart - Because kids don’t come with instructions.” This site should be called: “Lawyers - Because we never learned to play well with others.”

This company (kinderstart.com — no link because they don’t deserve it — you’ll have to cut and paste) so clearly doesn’t understand the web. This lack of understanding always surprises me. I am not surprised that there’s a lawyer wanting to get some fame by fighting the case but I am surprised that the company behind Kinderstart is prepared to go head to head with Google.

Kinderstart, from first glance, appears to want to be a child / parent-related search engine itself. (Though it’s hardly sophisticated, or world-class, or innovative, or even well done. I am a parent, and I’d never use this site. Why would I?) Given that they’d like to be an engine of some sort, themselves, I’d bet there’s another motive behind this law suit other than the site’s decline in revenue. I am not even sure I understand this site’s revenue model….. the irony is that it seems that this sites may get its primary source of revenue from Google Adwords.

I don’t imagine that Google is shaking in their boots.

My friend Phil would like this I think - if only he lived in London. I think he’d like the mapping / running / sharing parts of this site. I am not crazy about the actual interface and while has been an attempt at added content, (such as training schedules), this stuff is pretty weak. There’s such great opportunity here - for a global running site full of visitor submitted maps, localized info and good content. I love that this site is lightly branded - seems very appropriate, value-add, yet at the same time, there’s no mistaking who is ’sponsoring’ the site.

I realize that there are a few similar, often non-branded sites on the web, such as this one, or this one or this one, but I think this RunLondon is interesting from a marketing perspective - there’s a lot of potential in this site.

Oh, this is good. So good. This is why I often hesitate to tell people I’m involved in ‘marketing’. Because this is what they think I do. Yikes.

Wow - this is compelling. According to research by Gitte Lindgaard of Ottawa’s Carleton University, we make judgements about websites in the flash of an eye. And these snap judgements stand up to judgements made after longer scrutiny. So apparently we CAN judge a book (website) by its cover (home page).

Lindgaard and her team presented volunteers with the briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as being either easy on the eye or particularly jarring, and asked them to rate the websites on a sliding scale of visual appeal. Even though the images flashed up for just 50 milliseconds, roughly the duration of a single frame of standard television footage, their verdicts tallied well with judgements made after a longer period of scrutiny.

Pretty interesting. The explanation of why this happens makes humans seem pretty fickle but no doubt it is true. We are fickle creatures.

Bottom line: Hire a designer if you’re serious about having a presence on the web.

And trust your designers - if they say that dancing bears (or flashing banners, crazy flash designs, or any other common web sin) won’t help to sell your product or service… trust them.

The headline says it all. If you are a high profile, consumer facing business, specifically Canada’s largest book seller, closing your call centre 2 days before Christmas so that your employees can take a holiday is just bizarre. So bizarre, that the CEO herself couldn’t believe it was true, even as it was happening.

On December 23rd, having long ago completed my Christmas shopping (mostly via online shopping, thank god) I planned to spend the snowy afternoon at home, happily sipping nog and wrapping gifts. I had done quite a bit of shopping at Chapters.Indigo.ca and had stashed all of the boxes, unopened in the closet. When I opened one of the boxes and discovered Sugar Cookie Floating Candles inside, I knew there was a problem. Who in their right mind orders Sugar Cookie Floating Candles? Not me. Not even my mother, a woman who has lots of Christmas kitsch, who the original ordered gift had been for, would want Sugar Cookie Floating Candles. There must have been a mistake - mistakes happen, I know this, and I wasn’t really concerned. But I wanted Chapter.Indigo.ca to know about the error and to find out how we were to correct it.

So I called the customer service number listed on the accompanying invoice (that also indicated that I had not ordered these Sugar Cookie Floating Candles) . “You have reached the customer service department of Chapters Indigo. We are currently closed due to the Statutory Holiday. We are open Monday through Friday……” Wait a second. This was Friday, December 23rd, 2 days before Christmas, at 2:30pm EST. What stat holiday were they talking about. I called again and again, thinking that perhaps the lines were just so busy that I had been routed into the wrong voice mail. Nope. They were indeed closed. I called one of the Retail Stores and spoke to a Manager who too was very surprised that Chapters Online customer service would be closed.

I started searching for a number to call at Head Office. My discontentment was now escalating towards slight anger - again, not that I had been sent the wrong gift but that I couldn’t reach anyone - no one seem to care that I was having a fulfillment issue, just 2 days before Christmas. I do online strategy, including search marketing for a living, so I am pretty good at searching on the Internet. The only Chapters Head Office telephone number I could find anywhere belonged to Sorya Gaulin, Vice President, Public Relations. I called Sorya but received her voice mail. Choosing not to leave a message, I emailed Sorya, and based on the format of her email address, guessed the email address of Heather Reisman, CEO and copied her on the email. See? I was getting angry and escalating the issue in a hurry.

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Ms. Gaulin:

Perhaps as the Public Relations director, and the only human I can track down at Chapters Head Office (which is incredibly annoying though no doubt done on purpose to save you all from the customer) you can tell me why the Chapters Indigo Online customer service telephone line is CLOSED for “the statutory holiday” at 3pm just 2
days before Christmas? What stat holiday? Closed? Are you kidding me? Try to call the number (both the 1800 and 905 number) yourself and you’ll see what I am talking about.

Clearly I am annoyed. I received a shipment from Chapters a few days ago but didn’t open it. I just opened it, as I was preparing to wrap gifts, only to discover that it’s the completely wrong item - the invoice lists the right item but the box has something else entirely.

All of this is a drag, as we have now left the city, and were preparing to relax…… oh what fun it will be to explain to my mother just why I decided to buy her SUGAR COOKIE CANDLES?! Why this product even exists, let alone why I received it instead of the gift I ordered, is beyond me.

Happy holidays?!

I look forward to your response.

It’s from here that Chapters starts to shine. Almost immediately (less than 20 minutes) after sending this email, Heather Reisman emailed me back from her Blackberry saying, “I can’t imagine this line is closed. I will look into this immediately, Heather Reisman“. Clearly even the CEO was surprised that this customer service telephone line was closed! She copied several people within Chapters Indigo as well. And again, a couple of minutes later, I guess when she had spoken to her team and learned that yes, the line was closed, she emailed again, sending a longer email with the name of an Executive VP (Jonathan Ehrlich) who would “do all he can to make this right”. Momentarily, this EVP did email, telling me he “I can help”- note that he didn’t say “I may be able to help”, nor did he offer any excuses, but instead wrote that that he CAN help me. I sent him my tel number and before I had a chance to get up from my chair, he called.

Jonathan Ehrlich did not offer any excuses for the closed phone line, only agreeing that it was really dumb that the line was closed, just 2 days before Christmas. He did explain how the decision had been made to close the line (all of Chapters Indigo distributors were closed, and they wouldn’t be able to ship on that Friday to arrive by Christmas, so they closed - whoops, forgetting their customers….) but he agreed it was a bad decision. He immediately solved my problem of the error in shipment, allowing me to collect a loaded gift card in Ottawa.

An hour or so later, as the incident was being mulled over in my brain, Jonathan Ehrlich emailed me again - “FYI = phones are back on. Thanks for your patience and for alerting me. Crazy holiday!!! Hope you’ll give us another try.” So while some poor customer service representative is cursing the evil woman who made her come in on her holiday, I appreciated that Jonathan emailed me to let me know that not only had he solved my particular problem, but that the larger issue had been corrected.

As a final follow up, another PR representative called me back a few days later, following up on my original email to Sorya Gaulin, making sure that my issue had been solved. I assured her it had been, and that I was satisfied with the solution.

All in all, a very poor taste in my mouth very quickly turned into a positive experience, first by getting a reaction from the CEO, and then excellent follow up via Jonathan Ehrlich. While the situation should never have happened for so many reasons, it did, but it was resolved properly. Thank you to all.

In the last year, the agency I work for ran a contest for a National QSR (quick service restaurant) chain. I manned the email-based customer service ‘line’ and after my stint, I wrote a document for internal use called Managing Customer Feedback. The most important point from this document was to “Empower the Complaint Department”.

While in the case of Chapters.Indigo.ca, the complaint department itself was closed, I am thoroughly impressed with the commitment to the customer demonstrated from the top, when I finally figured out how to reach someone. While part of me is delighted that the braintrust of Canada’s largest online retailers screwed up (proving we all have stuff to learn) I am certain that next year, they won’t close their customer service telephone line 2 days before Christmas. Lesson learned I am sure.