A former colleague of mine had a handy metaphor for describing poor Customer Relationship Management (CRM):
You work at an information booth. Someone walks up to you and says, ‘where’s the nearest gas station?’ You reply, ‘isn’t it a nice day?’ The person tries again: ‘I’m just looking for directions to the nearest gas station.’ You say, ‘I think it might rain later.’
I was reminded of this concept recently after a back-and-forth with the Borders customer service department regarding their newly launched rewards program.
Two months ago I purchased a book at Borders and the chipper sales associate behind the register convinced me to sign up for the program. The gist: for every purchase you make in a year, Borders gives you five percent to spend at the end of the year. Buy $100 worth of books and you’ll have $5 to spend at the holidays. Neat concept. All I needed to provide was my email address. (Can you see where this is going?)
Four weeks later, I got fed up with the weekly flow of promotional emails. I wanted to remain part of the rewards program, but I didn’t care for the relentless emails pushing new books or items for sale, so I tried to unsubscribe from the list.
Yes, tried to.
Unsubscribing from an email list sounds easy. You may have unsubscribed from lists once or twice yourself and thought nothing of it. But apparently unsubscribing can have significant consequences. Here’s the language from the unsubscribe link: “unsubscribe and cancel your membership.”
Why would any company want to tie these two things together? I emailed Borders customer care and made clear that I wanted to unsubscribe from the mailing list, but wanted to remain a rewards member. Their response:
Thank you for contacting us regarding becoming a “no-email” member. Currently, the only identifier with your account is your email address and removing it without adding another identifier could prevent you from earning rewards.
Um — what? At no point did I say ‘remove my email address from your system.’ I simply said ‘stop sending me so much promotional dreck.’ But apparently you either receive all of Borders’ emails, or you get booted from the program.
I did have one other option: I could provide another unique identifier, such as a phone number or mailing address, or even some random 7 digit code of my choosing (just what I need, another password to remember).
My response:
Thanks for your reply, but I fail to see why you cannot keep my email address as a unique identifier while removing it from the list of email recipients. You may certainly contact me by email if there’s a problem with my account, but please stop sending me weekly promotional emails. I also don’t care to provide any further contact information, as I’ve already given you my email and received numerous promotional emails as a result — I can only imagine the same would happen if you had my mailing address.
So — please either unsubscribe me from the email list, or if that’s not possible, cancel my membership altogether.
Their response:
We have removed your email address from your account. Please call Customer Care at xxx.xxx.xxxx and provide the agent with your first and last name and 7-digit telephone number. This will enable you to continue earning and redeeming rewards with or without your card at the time of purchase.
I canceled the membership.
I like shopping at Borders, and if they change the way they run this program, I’d probably reapply. But failing to separate their email subscription list from their account management system — and blithely ignoring the inherent problems in doing so — is just poor CRM.
But it is a nice day.
Update 4/20/06: Just received my latest Borders Rewards email.