How many times has it happened to you, you get one answer from one person (say a salesperson) and a completely different answer from another (say a customer service agent)? This is a classic example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing (or in this case, saying).

This is bad, bad, bad. For both the consumer and the company. For the consumer, it creates a very frustrating experience, they feel like they are being mislead, they got sold a bill of goods, call it what you want, but at the end of the day they are upset, frustrated and most likely spouting all sorts of profanities at the company. Most likely they will walk away from the experience with a bad taste in their mouth and they will think twice before ever using that company again (the offending company could only hope that they would even consider them again).

For the company, it is equally as bad. First and foremost, it makes them look disorganized, not serious about what they do, etc. I do not know a company out there that wants that sort of stigma associated with their name, but this sort of thing happens all the time. I often wonder if companies even care, but I have to believe that they do, it just seems like the message is not getting down to the people on the front line, those that are truly representing the company on a day to day basis. If the bad reputation is not bad enough, every time this happens, they are potentially loosing another customer. Some companies may just turn the other cheek and say “Oh Well” we have millions of other customers, what is the big deal if we loose one or two along the way. That is all fine and good, but over time, those one or two customers add up, then and only then might they pay attention to the problem and try to fix it. By that time, it may be too late.

Bottom line, if you have multiple interfaces to your customers, make sure that they are all telling the same story, whatever that may be.