Think about the order of information…

Getting frustrated may be part of life, but I don’t find it particularly enjoyable. It’s even worse when it could have been avoided so simply, too.

There is some software I am considering purchasing to use for a client as the freeware doesn’t have al the features I need. There’s a question I need answered first so I looked through their FAQs which didn’t answer my question.

They suggested asking intheir forum so I did. Only to discover, in small print in a directory listing not linked to originally, that the forum is old and questions unlikely to be answered. I wish they had made that clear elsewhere – or stopped people being able to ask questions instead of wasting my time.

So, then I used their contact form – filling in name and email and a nice message explaining what I needed. Form worked nicely but the next message was “You can’t contact us directly anymore”. Again, why not tell people that before they fill in your form? Why waste their time and, presumably, cause more emails to come to their inbox?

Whatever their reasons for not providing customer support, I don’t think there is any excuse for not putting messages in place to save people’s time. It would cost them nothing to have put the message before the contact form instead of afterwards, but would save aggravation for customers and give them a much more positive image.

So remember the sequence of messages can be critical for efficiency and estalishing good relationships.