Sunday night, Tracie and I wanted a good hamburger. We didn’t want to go out…and we didn’t have any hamburger meat at home.
So…being the clever person I am, I decided I needed to 1) drive out and pick something up or 2) figure out how to make hamburgers appear from nothingness.
I haven’t got my sorcery badge complete yet, so I chose option #1.
I remembered that our favorite local burger joint Mooyah offered online ordering. Brilliant! I can sit on my tookus and order my burgers…then drive down (again…on said tookus) and pick them up via curbside pickup.
I fired up the browser and landed on Mooyah’s website and easily found the ‘order online’ option and started placing my order. I entered my zip code, then selected my local store.
Then…I was presented with an ‘order setup’ option that looked like the screenshot below – notice the content inside the red box:
So….I could either pick up my order or I could do something else…but I’m not sure what. Clicking in the box, I realized it was for a phone number, so i entered my phone number.
Then went ahead and clicked through to the next screen…and got an error message (below).
So…I tried again and this time I got through to an ordering screen.
I entered order #1. Then Order #2. Easy Peasy.
Then, I was asked to sign in or sign up for an account. After many attempts, I finally got my profile filled out.
Now…it was time to checkout…10 minutes after I started the checkout process.
And had my credit card declined. Tried again. Same thing. Weird. So..I tried another card. and another. All declined.
After the last credit card was declined, I think i said something that wasn’t appropriate for polite company.
After 15 minutes of trying to order, I was frustrated and hungry. I had wasted 15 minutes of my life trying to order a couple of stupid hamburgers.
I decided to get into my car and go down to the Mooyah and place an order to go…but half-way there, I decided to not give them a dime of my money and went to a Sonic instead.
The next day – an email was sent and a phone call made to the company….with no response.
More than a rant
This is more than a rant. This is learning opportunity for all of us.
If you are going to offer a service like this, make sure it works. In all my searching, I couldn’t find another burger joint close to my house that offered the option to order online…that’s a differentiator for Mooyah that they used against themselves.
Here was a burger joint using technology to allow a customer to order in the way that made that customer most comfortable….and that ordering system doesn’t work. Not only did it not work, it took way too long to setup an order and place it.
I would have been perfectly fine placing an order over the phone and going to pick it up – but they offered me an online ordering system….so I used it.
Mooyah’s intentions were good…they just don’t have the system(s) in place to deliver.
The moral of this story – Don’t use technology just to use technology. If you do…you may end up loosing a customer or customers over it. Mooyah went from being our favorite burger joint to being a place that I’m ranting about.
Oh…and those Sonic burgers…much better than Mooyah’s. By far.
Image Credit: RANT, this way By Nesster on flickr
10 responses to “Destroying Customer Goodwill – with Technology”
We have a local pizza joint that allows you to do online ordering. Right down to special comments on the order. Right down to including a tip for delivery on the credit card. Right down to saving what you select as a “favorite” that gets listed for you the next time we order from them.
We never order from them. Nah. Too difficult. Too hard.
Not.
That’s a great example of a company using technology the right way…they’ve thought the technology and solution through and delivered something that their customers find useful. Mooyah didn’t do that 🙂
That’s amazing…that the Sonic burger was somehow better! I tried out Outback’s online ordering a few weeks back (with some reluctance). But, I followed all the steps and everything ended up working out OK. I figured it’d be a lot easier to punch in my specific requests than to relay it over the phone and risk either A) me not telling them what I want correctly (or intelligibly) or B) them not writing down exactly what I told them. So Kudos to Outback and anti-Kudos to Mooyah!
Hey…sometimes Sonic gets it right 🙂
The Outlook system works pretty well. Its not pretty nor fancy but does what it needs to do…take your order. AND…it works. 🙂
Firehouse Subs online ordering works well. I love the pizza example above where they save your favorite. Agree that technology can really kill you if it isn’t working.
Published: Destroying Customer Goodwill – with technology http://ericb.co/j42Prx
Destroying Customer Goodwill – with Technology http://restwrx.com/kwV6Zb via @EricDBrown
Destroying Customer Goodwill – with Technology http://restwrx.com/kwV6Zb via @EricDBrown
Great post Eric. This also includes social media platforms right? = )
Nod – same experience here.
Pizza 73 in our area has what I would consider probably one of the best models of an online ordering system. And it works as far as getting my business (I consider their pizza very average, but the rest of my family likes it and I can tolerate it, so they get most of our business just based on the easy ordering).
I will add a few other things that make the site a model:
1) The site is rarely down and has some very nice features (sometimes online-only specials, sometimes random coupons and draws on the site).
2) The site includes the ability to order “split” pizzas (half pepperoni, half hawaiian, for example).
3) Most importantly – they get our order right *EVERY* time, and they get it to us hot and fast.
Swiss Chalet in our area also has a good ordering site, and the bonus with them, they are *FAST*. It’s not unheard of to get delivery within 10 minutes of ordering!