backchannel: Cabelas, Bazaarvoice, and customer-to-customer self help
At some point I bought a commercial box of PPU (Prvi Partizan) 8x57mm from Cabela’s. Today they sent me a question from another customer. Here’s the main part of the email:
Their setup made helping another customer (ie, offloading their own CS team) needlessly annoying. Below is the text of the email I sent to Cabela’s CS afterwards:
Three pieces of feedback about this feature to answer questions from other customers.
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it would be helpful if the email contained a link to the product rather than a picture of the product. I had to search on the site to see exactly what product the asker was asking about in order to give an accurate answer. Don’t make volunteers do extra work. Amazon does a good job with this kind of thing if you want a benchmark.
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“Please disable any ad blockers, which can prevent successful review submission.” I don’t mind sharing knowledge, but I do mind device fingerprinting. From the Bazaarvoice KB: “Per the Bazaarvoice Authenticity Policy, you must send a device fingerprint attached to each submission”. I did submit the one to see what the limitation was, but will no longer help other customers if it requires sending device fingerprints to a 3rd party. I have unsubscribed.
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the bottom of the email says “Contact Customer Service with questions or concerns” but links to the main site. It would be helpful if the link actually went went to the CS part of the site, to wit: https://www.cabelas.com/b/cabelas-customer-service