My poor husband.

Last month he celebrated his 40th birthday. 

We’ve spent years planning the celebrations. We didn’t do too much for his 30th, thanks to the newborn baby we had in tow. 

So the plan had always been to make this one a big one. 

Then along came Corona. 

Our grand “crazy week in Vegas” plans went out the window. 

No helicopters over the Grand Canyon. No “put it all on red” at the roulette wheel. No dancing on the tables. 

No. Instead he got a “not quite locked down” birthday. 

I did my best. I contacted his best friends and asked them to send him a personalised video card through Say It. 

And I arranged a mini-birthday go-karting get together with 5 of his favourite people. 

He had a great time. 

Me, booking it? Not so much. 

First, they wanted me to create an account that required my full life history. Then, I had to go through their 74 step booking process. 

Ok, I may be exaggerating here – but that’s what it felt like! 

Next, I had to get everyone who was attending to create their own accounts and fill in their own forms. 

They dutifully did as I asked… only for me to then discover their system hadn’t added them to the event so I had to do the whole process myself once again. 

Finally, the day before the event I had to phone the kart track to check about changing a driver name – and lucky I did – because only on the phone did they tell me that they’d need to take the card we paid for the booking on with them on the day – or they would have to be charged again! 

Not a huge problem – but definitely an annoyance as it was my card that I’d paid on and I wasn’t going to be there. 

Overall, the entire booking experience sucked. And next time I want to book a karting day, I’ll probably go somewhere else. 

Now, I get why they do it. They want to make sure that they’ve got everyone’s details for “their records” (read… their marketing). 

And that’s hugely important. I’m 100% on board with building your list. 

But you’ve got to keep it balanced. Your top priority has to be making the customer experience friction-free. People don’t want to work hard to spend their money. They want to ENJOY buying from you.  

You’ve got to make it easy. 

Here at Strategic, it seriously couldn’t be any easier to work with us. Drop me an email and tell you what you want help with. We have a quick chat over Zoom (or on the phone if you prefer) and then me and my team get to work. 

That’s it. Simple and friction-free. 

So what about you? How easy do you make it for your customers to buy from you?

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