Tale of a bad customer experience
Very often, when users encounter difficulties operating on digital systems, be it on a mobile or when browsing a website, they start to blame themselves for a lack of attention or carefulness. But when something goes really wrong, it can’t be anybody’s fault but the system designers.
Once upon a time…Well, on a business trip to Paris last week, I arrived late at the hotel and before retiring for the night, wanted to check e-mails and entertain my mind before switching off. The only available option to connect to the Internet was a local pay per use WiFi network (not controlled by the hotel). Just like in airports, you connect to the Wifi network, reach a portal page, buy your credits, go back to the portal with your given login details and eventually start surfing. Sounds straightforward…
So, off I went: I connected to that network, accessed the portal page, found the link to the credit purchase page, selected my deal, typed in my credit cards details and email address and reached the confirmation page. And it read that my login details had been sent to the email address I provided them with. This would have worked out assuming I was connected to the internet, but five seconds later, I got redirected from the page back to the portal: “Please enter your login details to connect to the Internet”… I may have sworn at this point.
This left me dismayed and seriously annoyed. So, on the verge of believing I was a complete idiot as I MUST have missed something, I went down to the reception asking for help. They explained that there were many others before me who’d encountered the same problem and they were kind enough to let me use their computer to check my emails. This slightly brightened up my overall experience but certainly did not solve the core of the problem.
How can such a conceptual flaw be? When there is a serious and consistently reported fault, why has not been fixed yet? Who is to be blamed: the hotel for not doing anything or the provider for delivering a bad user experience? What impact must this issue have on the customers’ perception of the hotel (they all surely don’t separate the Internet provider from the hotel)? So many questions that prevented me from “living happily ever after”…
This post was originally posted by Xavier Klingenfus