Does your supply chain know what promises your brand is making?

A friend who knows me well gifted me a new service experience this holiday season.

He’d been telling me for some time about Bonobos, his favorite online men’s apparel retailer. While he was always pleased with the pants he’d ordered, it was their service that had won him as a long-term loyal customer. Early in his relationship with them, he’d had to return a pair, and was pleased at the ease and absence of cost of the return transaction.

Excited, I hit the site, ready for my service experience.

The first thing I noticed was their product line: few SKUs, simply arranged with mostly terrific classic styles, but a with some that offer much more flair than I’m used to wearing. As to the return process my friend had employed, Bonobos uses it directly as a positive experience tool, stating on the home page, “Any pant, any time, any reason. We'll pay for standard shipping both ways.” An acknowledgment that a certain amount of returns are expected in order to provide satisfaction on final delivery. Here they also set the expectation that the pants will be long and will likely need to be hemmed, and explain that it is more important

The next thing I found: They’re stocked out. Of almost everything. The site offered me the opportunity for one of their employees, (presumably customer service, though they go by the expectation-creating title of “Ninja”), to contact me when the product(s) I’m looking for come in.

I also noticed that their marketing is designed to be completely permission-based, and they structurally reward customers with savings opportunities for positive word-of-mouth. High marks for both activities.

I emailed the ninjas about their out-of-stock situation, and almost immediately I got a response from one of the ninja managers, essentially apologizing for their popularity and offering to inform me when what I want arrives in stock.

An exceptional service experience?

They're anticipatory in setting up-front expectations, make the experience simple for the user and are quick with an empathetic, personalized response. Those are core aspects of a tremendous service experience. So is day-to-day reliability. I’m also looking for fulfillment of the promise, and understanding and using your service supply chain is critical to creating consistency in the experience that creates a lasting brand impression. Even though I got what I was looking for, and will likely be a happy first-time and repeat customer, with so much out of stock, my experience had overtones of having had to settle.

Not likely what Bonobos intends as a business otherwise thoughtful about their experience and attuned to service and their customers.