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Promises,
promises. Usability doesn't mean squat if you can't back it up.
These
days, almost everyone is talking about usability. They say, "A site
has to be user-friendly or you'll lose your users." I hear this
all the time because I'm a writer in a web design firm where we
call ourselves usability experts. I swear, the market is saturated
with "usability experts." Until now, I was tired of hearing the
same thing over and over again because I thought it was all talk.
But after an unfortunate experience with usability, I'm a true believer.
A few
weeks ago I registered on a web site for a popular airline. After
entering my information, I entered a password. It was taken. So
I put in another one. Taken again. Another one. Taken. Finally,
five tries and 10 minutes later, I was registered. Now I thought
accessing my account information would be easy, right? Wrong.
Recently,
I went back to the web site to purchase a ticket. I put in my member
number and password to access my account, but the prompt said it
didn't recognize my password. I tried again, thinking I may have
misspelled it or something. Nope, no such luck. I tried a different
one. Still nothing. I tried five more times. I was starting to think
I was the one with the problem, but then I saw the ever helpful
'forgot your password?' button. I thought this would save me from
taking my monitor and chucking it out the window. Wrong again.
I re-entered
my member number only to be prompted to call customer service to
get my password, sorry for the inconvenience. Sorry for the inconvenience?
I spent more than 20 minutes trying to access my account and you're
sorry? I was about to give up. Then I saw the 'contact us' button
and called customer service.
I was
told my call was very important to them and someone would be with
me shortly. Must've been really important. I waited for nearly 15
minutes. Frustrated and angry, I hung up/slammed the receiver down,
went back to the web site, clicked the 'contact us' button, and
emailed them:
To
Whom It May Concern:
I
can't remember my password. I called for customer service support
and was on hold for 15 minutes. I need my password so that I may
login to your system without having to re-enter all of my information.
I would appreciate it if you would email me back with my password
as soon as possible.
Thank
you.
About
a minute later, I got this response:
Thank
you for contacting web support. We have received your message and
the case number assigned to this inquiry is 162843. We will reply
as soon as possible.
Thank
you,
Customer
Service
So did
that mean they had 162,843 questions to answer before they got to
mine?
DAY
5: Apparently so. It's been five days, my trip's come and gone and
I still haven't heard from them.
DAY
6: Wellll....whatdaya know? They wrote me back:
Dear
Value Customer,
Due
to the high volume of emails we received in the past week, we were
not able to respond in a timely manner. If you are still having
problems or need any more assistance please feel free to email us
or call our Technical Web Support. We apologize for any inconvenience
this may have caused. If we may be of further assistance, please
feel free to contact us. Regards,
Web
Support
Um...hello?!
They didn't even answer my question. What about my password?
User-friendly
experience my a**! I think I'll have to pay a little phone call
to my friends over at Web Support. They've got a lot of explaining
to do. And so do the "usability experts" who put their lame site
together.
After
this crappy experience, I can now say I'm a firm believer in usability.
It's not all just talk. But you'd better be prepared to back it
up. Otherwise, as they say, you'll lose your users. Duh.
Copyright
© 2000 Jenni Simpson. All Rights Reserved.
Jenni is a writer in Seattle.
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