Great to Not So Good

This is one of those good news, bad news stories. While on Christmas holidays we travelled to beautiful Victoria, BC, Canada. While doing some Boxing Week shopping, we went to a tea shop my sister had told us about. Well, from the moment I walked into this shop, I was struck by the incredible customer experience.

The Silk Road Tea Shop is located in the trendy downtown area of Victoria on the edges of Chinatown. Victoria's Chinatown is only possibly rivalled by Vancouver and San Francisco's for authenticity and size. As soon as we entered the Silk Road Tea Shop we were greeted by one of their friendly staff who offered us a sample of the feature tea of the day. She was both gracious and knowledgeable, explaining in just the right amount of detail, where the teas came from and their uniqueness.

The shop itself is very well done. Victoria's downtown area has some great buildings that have retained the character of the British Victorian era. The shop's interior, their branding and the experience created, is a 10 in any marketer's books.

As we checked out with our purchase of over $100 in various teas, I noticed the small brochure that heralded the ability to purchase online. I snapped it up and we headed home.

The next day, my experience with the Silk Road brand took a hit. First, after visiting the website it was immediately clear that the website did not match the in-store experience and then it got worse.

As I clicked over to the 'online ordering' section, major disappointment set in. The options I was offered were to a) email my order by I guess copying the content of the product pages and prices into the email and then sending it ALONG WITH my credit card information b) phoning in my order or c) faxing in my order??????

Seriously, who uses a fax when they are online these days?

I was astounded and when I am in that state of mind I usually try to help. I emailed the only email address I could find on the website and told them exactly what I thought about all of this. Even explaining in the kindest terms I could, that asking someone to email their credit card information was a BIG NO-NO from a security perspective alone.

Guess what. No response. It has been almost two weeks and NO response.

This is so sad. Here is a company that has a great product, a wonderful brick and mortar experience and yet, they are prepared to throw it all away by ignoring the importance of the online customer experience.

Are you doing this? Please don't. If you cannot reply to your customer emails (positive or negative) in a timely matter (maximum 24 hours), it would be better not to have a website.