Aspire to Deliver a Seamless Experience

We all like to celebrate when we have a great brand experience. We rarely share those experiences, unless they seriously shock our expectations. Unfortunately, bad experiences are as common as the sun setting everyday and boy do we share the heck out of those!

Over the last month and week I’ve had a few bad experiences: my hosting provider and an artisan in Mexico.

I visited Oaxaca two months ago. Great place, highly recommend visiting for many things; not just Mezcal. During my trip, I was taken to see artisans who build custom rugs and ended up purchasing one. I didn’t bring it with me because I asked for a custom one; my own design. The artisan promised me he would have it ready within two weeks and ship it to me once I had seen the pictures he’d sent me.

I haven’t gotten the rug yet. For another room I was working on recently we really struggled to find a rug that was big enough, until we discovered this great supplier of extra large rugs as they had just what we needed.

Next story, my hosting provider. Just over a month ago my website (this one) got hacked really good. It wasn’t something that I could fix myself, as I’ve done in the past, so I ended up purchasing a security package from my hosting (basically a firewall and a malware monitor).

The support person told me I was in a legacy hosting package, and that I should upgrade to their newer hosting package so I would be better protected. Migrating to the new hosting would take 18 days and it would cost me additional $. “Roger that, let’s do it” I said.

Fast forward 24 days later and migration process was halfway done. Next day I get an email telling the migration was done. Call the provider up only to find out it wasn’t. What’s going on? Was told the hosting automatically migrated all customers who were on legacy hosting to the newest package. Therefore, my website was ready and on the new hosting. Which also meant that taking my website offline for 24 days was unnecessary and a huge waste of time.

What these two experiences have in common is lack of communication. In the case of my hosting provider, lack of communication between departments which resulted in a bad experience for me. With regards to the artisan, I’ve communicated with him through Whatsapp. He’s told me there were some problems sending it, but I shouldn’t have to care about that. Nor do I have to be the one texting to find out what the hold up is. As a merchant, it’s your job to communicate with me about any issues in advance.


Bottom line: As a service provider, a merchant, you have to hold yourself accountable to providing a seamless brand experience. Being inconsistent is easy because you don’t have to try. Aim to be consistent on a day to day basis, your customers will love you for it and tell everyone about it!


Also published on Medium.