How forgiving are you?

Creating a positive brand experience is key to building a successful brand. Bad brand experiences are not.

I would normally focus my blogs on the positive, but since I’ve run into a streak of less than positive experiences, I’ve decided on a little healthy vent. Here I go!

Incorrect phone numbers
Not long ago, I was referred to a delivery service to help with a shipping need. I emailed the company. After waiting a couple of days for a response, I finally received a hastily written email with a number to call. The number was “not in service”! It’s so important to double check information — especially numbers — before you hit send! (When I finally got the right number, I never received a call back. Guess they didn’t need my business!)

The broken link
I was excited to find a resource I thought would be helpful to kickstart a new hobby. I was disappointed when the page I really wanted to read lead me to an error message. Ugh! An easy to navigate web page with few links and no broken ones, delivers a preferred web experience for its users.

Buried copy
Tunnelling through pages and pages of information to reach what you really want to read can be annoying. Organizing information into chunks and eliminating unnecessary or repetitive linking is a much more positive experience.

Pay before you play
Has this happened to you? You complete a number of form questions — too many, but you’re trusting — to get to your “free” app. Then, before you get it, you’re taken to a payment page. The only way you’re going to get what you want is to subscribe. Ugh!

Poor customer awareness
Have you ever found yourself waiting for a sales person to finish a casual conversation with a colleague so you can ask a simple question, use a change room or find a shoe size? This tells me my business is not appreciated and I’m out the door!

Dirty shops
A dusty film on products, dust bunnies lining the floor or water stains on the ceiling don’t create a comfortable shopping experience and might signal that the shop owner doesn’t care about their business and maybe not your business.

Wait to be seated
I won’t lie, I love to be seated in a restaurant. It lets me know the table is clean and the server will know I’m there. Not long ago, I stood at the entrance of a restaurant for a good 10 to 15 minutes waiting to be seated. Waitresses moved around the dining room doing what they do best, but no one came to seat me. Finally, patrons leaving the restaurant told me they had experienced the same wait and seated themselves. Had I not been looking forward to meeting a colleague for lunch, I would have left.

Will I forgive and forget?

These could be my pet peeves, but they’re also things that stop me from returning. They leave me with a less than positive brand experience.

However, consider this. If I already have a positive relationship with a brand I like and I have one of these experiences, I’m likely to overlook the annoyance. For example, I love IKEA. If a link is broken on the IKEA website, I’ll view it as an oversight on their part. I’ll let them know it’s broken and feel good about it. However, if this happens too frequently, it may change my view of their brand.

Brand experience is key. Think about some of your little annoyances? How forgiving are you when it comes to the brands you love?