Customer Experience Spotlight: 1-800-Contacts

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I had an extremely pleasant interaction with a company today and it hit on a lot of areas that I try to execute personally in my own company interactions. The provider was 1-800-Contacts. About a week ago, I ordered a year’s supply of contact lenses from them, and paid (for the sake of display, I’ll keep the numbers round) about $500 total for 8 boxes. Sadly, after doing some more homework, I found the price to be substantially cheaper through another vendor (let’s say it would have been $300 total with them) whom I’ve also used previously (AC Lens). After a bit more research, I did notice that 1-800-Contacts has a Low Price Guarantee that appeared to be minimally-invasive enough on my time that I’d give it a shot (versus returning the lenses and doing a new order at AC Lens). After a few short minutes, I was on my way to a fairly healthy refund, and I couldn’t be happier about it all!

Here is what impressed me most about the experience:

  • The process was extremely simple, and required no hassle on my end; my rep (Ben – who I’ll share more about momentarily) looked up the price for 8 boxes on the competitor’s site, acknowledged the rate that is quoted there – and did some quick math to figure out exactly how much to refund me
  • The quoted refund amount actually includes the $100 mail-in-rebate that I would have had to execute on my own (a huge savings from the convenience standpoint – I usually only mail in these rebates about half the time because I just forget about it); this is a huge plus
  • Not only did I get a refund on the exact difference in lens prices, but they also (smartly) have a policy in place where they add 2% of the total price in as a special sweetener to the deal; showing that you’re not only willing to beat your competitor’s price, but that you’ll beat it by 2% is definitely putting your money where your mouth is
  • Upon conclusion of the refund (about 5 minutes in total), I asked to be put in touch with a Supervisor so I could offer feedback on Ben and inform them how outstanding of a job he did; and I was immediately transferred and only had to wait around 30 seconds
  • After voicing my feedback, the Supervisor informed me that he would take measures to ensure Ben was recognized amongst his peers in their next team meeting and that 1-800-Contacts has a program in place to ensure these types of feedback are celebrated (peer recognition plays a huge role in employee engagement and motivation for people who are not motivated financially)
  • Finally, I was informed that Ben would be receiving his next lunch paid for by 1-800-Contacts due to the great feedback (for those not as interested in the peer recognition, the “free lunch” certainly helps play to the financial incentives that also motivate and engage employees)

All in all, cheers to 1-800-Contacts for being a great vendor and having a lot of infrastructure to support not only the Customer Experience, but also the Employee Experience. I was truly impressed by their organizational maturity with which they account for ease of operations on both the external (customer) side as well as the internal (employee) side. Now if only more of our companies could be so advanced to have sound processes and programs in place to support this level of excellence!

Til Next Time,

Michael