My 18-month-old son will soon graduate from his crib to a big-boy twin-size bed. So last week Laura and I turned to the Web.
We picked out a new bed on 1800mattress.com. We used its mattress calculator to select a model and then ran a few comparative searches externally to make sure we got the best deal. After confirming 1800mattress.com had the lowest price, we tried to purchase our selection online. After going through the hassle of entering all of our product, delivery, payment and contact info, the site crashed upon hitting the submit button. I received a bunch of garbled code. I was in Firefox, so I tried Safari to ensure there was no browser/version compatibility issue. Again, same error! I gave up and just called the 800 number. The rep was nice and quickly expedited my purchase. However, he told me I was better off just calling my order in anyway because it would be expedited faster and and less prone to errors. That was an odd thing say, and worrisome if true!
The sales funnel and mental purchasing model today can be ruthless for a retailer. 1800matress.com won our business because of price, presence and trust. But let’s not ignore the friction of two crashed e-payment attempts, along with a strange insight about the viability of the store’s e-payment platform, directly from the telesales agent. If you ask me, 1800mattress.com is lucky it sill got our business! What sustained ? The good experience Laura and I had 10 years ago when we bought our bed for our first apartment. Good experiences the first time buy you patience and loyalty for when you screw up later.