I just had a poor user experience that I wanted to share. I was on the website of a college which has a technical writing program, including several courses online. There were two courses I was interested in – both introductory level and prerequisites for all other courses. Course X had a listed fee of $310 and session dates of June 24th to August 4th. Course Y listed “past cut-off” under fee, and session dates of May 8th to June 18th.
I would guess X and Y are probably the same fee and that Y will run again June 24th to August 4th, but wanted confirmation. I emailed the address listed on the page.
The response I got, all of one paragraph, said “click this link and click on the course codes for details including descriptions, pricing, etc.” and then mentioned the next calendar is out at the end of June for the fall session.
What we have here is someone who immediately assumed I was the lowest common denominator in terms of user, and I’m sure this is why many suggest we should stop using the loaded term “user” altogether. To put it another way, the person who responded assumed I knew nothing, and gave the quickest, most canned response whatsoever. No doubt this person is over-worked and ultra-busy, and just wanted to get the email out of her inbox.
While I understand her desire to do that, I don’t agree with it. Here’s what I would’ve done
- pre-write a response to all incoming messages to that address, advising the user that I had received their message, would respond to them within X hours or days, and thanking them for their interest
- ensure that response included the easiest way to access the information about the courses – this is where I would put the URL and enthusiastically let the user know if you click the course codes you can get more information
- take an extra moment to investigate the question – if this person had even checked her own site by following her own directions to me, she would’ve seen the info wasn’t there
- respond to the user personally, apologizing that it wasn’t clear
- make a note to ask the web designer/tech/IT department why the information is provided the way it is – how and why fee could be listed as “past cutoff”, and how to fix it to prevent such problems in the future
When in real life would you expect to offer a customer such a short, silly response that comes off as if they are a moron?
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