This is not Peggy, but if it were, I would buy a couch from her too.
This weekend I did some shopping at Mr. Big Box furniture store. First I looked at their site, decided what I wanted to look at in the store and then went to the store to look at it. Reasonable, rite? After all, it is furniture and I’m not going to buy it online without sitting in it first.
A lovely, elderly sales woman helped us sort through the mess of “models” we wanted to look at - I think her name was Peggy. Peggy was awesome.
And then it happened. I decided not to pull the trigger, but to go back home and make sure I would not have buyers remorse on which model I settled on. I would use their web site again to help with this. I didn’t want to subject Peggy to my indecisiveness more than I already had. Strangely she kept “pushing” us to take some action before we left. She even made “special” arrangements for us to make a down payment to guarantee delivery on time. Then it hit me - Peggy works off of commission and she was afraid of loosing the deal.
What a terrible situation for both myself and Peggy. I feel pressure to buy from her and she is in fear of losing a commission - all because I want to utilize their web site more. Shame on you Mr. Big Box.
I’ll forgo the obvious route of saying that you are doing it wrong, very very wrong and give you a suggestion. Implement this and I guarantee happier customers and more productive employees. Give Peggy the ability to enter my order into the system (which she did already in anticipation of my purchase) and then give me an order number, or perhaps a short URL. Peggy will then inform me that I can go online to do more research for the models I choose and even purchase it there, if it’s convenient for me. If I purchase, she still gets her commission because the online order was associated with her. On the flip side, you know I have intent to by. When I visit that url Peggy gave me, and my order is magically in my shopping cart, you should be doing everything in the book to get me to close that deal. Up sell, cross sell and more importantly - give me advice. Goodness, you know that I’m buying a couch - tell me some useful couch-kung-fu knowledge and impress me so much I come back to you for all my couch needs.
Not everyone has a physical presence like you do. Don’t make the employees in them work against your web site. Make your website work for them.