Point Glitches & Frustrating Rewards

Life's little mishaps are funny, so it's hilarious when a business has a problem. Yea, not so much. We are experiencing a small glitch in our loyalty/rewards software. We are doing the best we can to fix this, but another issue undoes each repair.

A glitch example would be the current state of our "Rewards Program." Our Rewards Program is a points system which was to serve our oldest, dearest customers by offering them percentages off their purchases in the form of discounts. The great thing is you can take savings whenever you choose. It is a constant, unofficial customer driven sale, and a way for us to make a deeper connection with you & express our appreciation for your patronage. We have friends who have been with us since 2004, and in the small business world that is a biggie!

Now the glitch comes into play when we opened our new website. The aggravating design flaw is causing difficulty for customers as they try to locate the proper place to insert the code, which redeems their reward points. It's not funny, and it has left a lot of customers thinking, "Karen's people forgot to add the slot for the redemption of reward points."

The rewards point entry slot is there on the page; however, you must scroll down the page to find it. Its location is at the bottom of the page. And secondly, you must be on the correct page to locate the entry point. The exact page for redeeming is titled Your Shopping Cart. This space appears one page before you proceed to the checkout page.

After hearing from many of you, I decided this must be a problem, so I too tried to place my points into the system from a cell phone, and I found it most irritating. "Yes," even I said a bad word after trying to locate the right spot for entry on my phone. I see this is frustrating when you can not find an entry point and even more so when using a telephone to place your order.

I looked at my assistant and asked, "exactly how long has this 'glitch,' existed without anyone finding out what people were saying?" The response was "user error." In other words, the technology is never wrong, and, "Your Customers are doing it Wrong!"

Hum, "Wrong Answer!"

OUR CUSTOMERS ARE ALWAYS RIGHT - period.

We are currently in the process of changing this rewards system to make it more customer friendly. In short, I am getting out of the glitched game, and I'm going to fix this problem immediately. I Mean what good is a rewards system that is so frustrating that you feel challenged by a computer each time you want to buy something beautiful for yourself?

Our software glitches are festering into a snafu. We all know that if a snafu goes unattended, it will morph into a full-blown albatross overnight; which everyone knows is an encumbrance to efficient business, and not so funny. Life is full of little comic frustrations, but shopping with Karen's Botanicals should not be one of them.

Hum, "Wrong Answer!"

OUR CUSTOMERS ARE ALWAYS RIGHT - period.

We are currently in the process of changing this rewards system to make it more customer friendly. In short, I am getting out of the glitch game, and I'm going to fix this problem immediately. I Mean what good is a rewards system that is so frustrating that you feel challenged by a computer each time you want to buy something nice for yourself?

Life is full of funny little frustrations, but shopping with Karen's Botanicals should not be one of them.