Closing the Cardigan Loop

You may remember that a while ago I wrote about a missing cardigan (it’s ok, I’m over it) and about the excellent service I received in a number of Oasis stores. At the time, I used the “help@” email address on their Website to say what a great experience I’d had. The email address was more for complaints/inquiries than for general feedback, but it was the best I could find.

Well, I heard back! I’ve received a very nice email from their Retail Director, which was copied to the Area Manager for the stores in question. He’s thanked me for my feedback, and assured me the comments I made are being passed on to their staff. I’m pleased to hear this, since that was my intention from the outset. And by telling me what he’s done, he’s closed the feedback loop and we can all go back to whatever it is we do with our lives.

Except there is one small snag. I received this email on August 13th. The date on which I submitted my feedback? May 10th. So that’s a shade over 3 months to get back to me. Now, before I appear to be thoroughly churlish about the situation, I’m delighted that my feedback got to the right people, and I’m glad to have heard back from someone, particularly someone pretty senior. That said, 3 whole months?

Positive feedback, unlike negative feedback, doesn’t require immediate responses, I’ll concede that. And I’m sure that if I’d been complaining, I’d have heard back much more quickly. But I’ve got to assume that there’s not really a process in place for handling the sort of feedback that I provided. My assumption is that someone in their contact center saw my email, forwarded it to someone, who forwarded it to someone else, until eventually it ended up with the Retail Director, who responded.

Now, I remember what happened but will the staff in question remember the short woman who came in, gibbered about knitwear, and then toddled off with the Garment Location Service phone number in her sweaty little hand? I doubt it. You could argue that the apparant lack of process suggests that they don’t get much feedback like mine. I’d argue that that’s because they don’t make it easy to provide feedback. Not everyone’s a feedback freak, like I am.

This is not a complaint. I like Oasis. I like their clothes (although I lose them sometimes), I like their staff and I like their brand. I just think that with a more systematic approach to feedback, they’d be even lovelier -that’s all.