Zazzle vs. Wacky Buttons, OR, how you prepare for, inform, and get ready to receive business from your online customers will determine the fate of your order.
SCENARIO: I need buttons for my upcoming Social BOOM! book launch. I want 1,000 buttons with the word BOOM! on them for people attending the launch party.
Buttons will be an easy way of identifying who has registered and who has not. The buttons will also be a souvenir from the event.
I Googled “boom button” and hit return. Number one and two on the list were Wackybuttons.com and Zazzle.com. I clicked on Zazzle because they had 163 reviews and a 4.5 star rating. I found a couple of buttons that were kind of cool and began searching for a phone number.
Searchingsearchingsearchingsearchingsearching. Finally, in frustration, I hit the word “HELP” and came to find that Zazzle does not want to receive my phone call. They want me to establish an account and log in using the Zazzle app.
And when I click “Can I order by phone?” they state there is no phone number. Zazzle “does not currently accept phone orders.”
Evidently business must be amazingly successful at Zazzle.com. So amazing that the pinheads at Zazzle (no pun intended) have decided to be unavailable to customers, and difficult to do business with. If you want to contact them you can only do it by email, by filling out the mandatory boxes in the form, selecting a product, and selecting a category – you know the drill.
So I went back to mother Google and clicked on WackyButtons.com with no ratings and no reviews. The phone number for Wacky Buttons was easily located on their website. They answered the phone on the third ring with a live human being.
Wacky Buttons has no artwork charge, there is no minimum order, there is rush shipping available, and they ship worldwide (which I assume includes North Carolina). Yahoo!
They have one-inch buttons, and the person who answered the phone, Jason, is the number two wacky. Life is good.
Jason is impressive, friendly, willing, smart, knowledgeable about buttons, and able to answer my two most imperative questions: Can I get them by Friday? and How much are they?
YES! I can get a thousand buttons for $180 plus freight by Friday. (I didn’t even ask the price for 500.) On the call, Jason instructed me to send an email — which I did while I was still on the phone — and told me they would create the art, email it to me, get approval, and print the buttons in two days.
At the moment I’m not satisfied, I’m ecstatic!
NOTE WELL: I’m writing this column for two reasons:
1. If you’re going to be online, make it easy for your customer to connect with you. In my opinion, having no listed phone is not only rude; it’s also ignorant. Granted, it’s only a $200 order, but I guarantee that at least a thousand people have gone to Zazzle.com, then clicked off and found WackyButtons.com to be both friendly and willing to accept business in a manner that the customer wants to give it, not simply how they want to receive it. Let’s see, $200 times 1,000. Wow, before you know it, it’s real money.
2. If you’re ever in need of buttons, I give my highest recommendation to WackyButtons.com. They are easy to do business with, accommodating, priced right, and have done all that my way. (For the record, the phone number of Wacky Buttons is 585-267-7670. Zazzle’s phone number is as yet unknown. They’re waiting for an email while Wacky Buttons already has my money.)
THINK ABOUT IT: Go to your website right now and try to place a $1000 order. Can you do it? If I need to talk to you, how easy is it to access a phone number or email address that goes directly to a person? Is your phone answered by a live human being? Or are you, “trying to serve me better by selecting from the following nine options, which have recently changed”?
Your business is dependent on the Internet. Your customers need you. They’re counting on you and looking for you online. How available are you? How ready are you? How easy is it to access you? And how willing are you to accept their money?
Or is their business going to go to your competitor? Mine did.
EPILOG: Wacky Buttons sent me BOOM! artwork in four hours. I approved it and paid five minutes later. My buttons arrived in two days.
Hopefully someone will get this message to the CEO of Zazzle.com. You might want to mail a copy to your CEO while you’re at it. CC me when you do — salesman@gitomer.com.
