It’s important that companies be consistent in their practices. This includes in the products they offer, the procedures that apply to customers and their marketing programs. If I, as a customer, don’t know what to expect – which is exactly what happens if a company keeps changing things – then I’m likely to go somewhere where I know what I’m getting.
Let me explain through some examples of inconsistencies that have been apparent to me.
Starbucks
At Starbucks, they have a lot they consistently do right. But this hasn’t been the case with their loyalty program.
In April of 2008, Starbucks introduced Starbucks Card Rewards, a free program that offered benefits to those using a Starbucks Card. These included complimentary syrup for beverages, free refills on brewed coffee and two hours of free Internet access in its cafés. In November, it added Starbucks Gold, a $25 per year program offering members additional benefits, including a free birthday beverage and a 10% discount on purchases.
Not too long ago, Starbucks began to offer all cardholders a free beverage on their birthday, thereby negating one of the benefits of buying up to the Gold program. More recently, they announced another change: both programs are being replaced with a new one, called My Starbucks Rewards.
The new program has no fee, and benefits increase based on how many annual purchases a customer makes. This major change, less than two years after Starbucks offered any kind of rewards program, confuses customers. Worse yet, it may make them wonder when the program will change again and the impact of these future changes.
Facebook has gone through many issues, including several homepage redesigns. These changes keep users wondering where they should go to find their favorite feature. While birthdays used to be easy to find, they have been relegated in a harder to find area on the right sidebar. When looking at a friend’s page, their information used to be easy to find. Now, you have to click on a tab called “info” to find this – the wall is initially shown.
In a particularly annoying change in the last few weeks, the live feed, always the default page, has been replaced by the news feed. So if I haven’t been to Facebook in a couple of days, and log in, the first thing I see is what was new when I was there last time. This doesn’t help me. I have to click to find out what is new now.
Again, the inconsistency means users have to spend time figuring out how to navigate to places they used to know how to get to easily. In reality, it means there are many likely visitors who have stopped coming to the site, or at least stopped using some of the features that are now hard to find.
Target and The Gap
Target has some great products under house brands such as Archer Farms. They’ve got great packaging and are high quality. The problem is, many of their products don’t stick around long.
Case in point, I once bought Archer Farms Cookies – a chocolate mint kind that I got addicted to. Problem is, when I went back to buy more, I couldn’t find them. I eventually learned they were discontinued, disappointing me. Ditto for their tomato basil flavored chips.
Now granted, Target isn’t the only company to have this problem. Recently, I went online to The Gap’s Web site to buy my favorite jeans – Relaxed Fit. They used to be available in The Gap’s retail stores and I quickly found they fit me perfectly and were the style I liked. They then became an online only item. This meant they became harder to purchase, as I had to either pay more to have them shipped or I had to wait until I needed more stuff, so that I bought enough to earn free shipping. Last week, I was looking to buy a new pair – only to find they don’t exist anymore. They have now lost me as a customer for jeans – I found a very similar fit at the Levi’s Store, and bought those instead.
Consistency, whether in product selection, marketing, Web page design, messaging…or wherever, can have a large influence on which organization a customer will choose to buy from. The lack of trust and a gamble on what a customer might actually receive will be one less reason to choose your brand over someone else’s. And no company needs to give a customer one less reason to buy their product.
