I recently spoke with a friend at a respected A/E consulting/publishing entity about the difficulties in buying books through their website. The problem, I thought, was three-fold:
- First -- when you get to the firm's website, it is so crowded with books and other items to sell, webinars to sign up for, blogs to read and other things, that it is near impossible to find anything unless you already know what it's called and where it's located before you come to the site;
- Second -- when you call someone at the firm to talk about the information you need and what book (or books) will best serve, nobody can answer you because, while their "bookstore staff" know how to ring up a sale, none of them seems to have any knowledge of the materials in the bookstore; and finally
- Third -- when you leave a voice mail for anyone with a question about a publication, they never call you back!
I told my friend I longed for the old days when you called the SMPS bookstore and got to speak with Sylvia. Sylvia was an amazing person (and personality). She seemed to know every book in the SMPS bookstore. If you just told her the kind of information you needed, she could tell you which books to look at that might be helpful.
These days, when you call any of these entities, you just get a clerk who knows how to process a sale but has no knowlege of the stock and no real interest in whether or not you find what you want.
I mentioned that SMPS should have required Sylvia to find and train an appropriate replacement before letting her retire, and my friend said, "Exactly - Sylvia 2.0!" He was absolutely right on.
I'm told that the original Sylvia ("Sylvia 1.0") is now in her 90's and still socially active. I miss her. I hope that the years have been (and continue to be) as kind to her as she was to me when I was a new A/E marketer and desperately needed someone with a sympathetic ear, a kind heart and a great attitude about service.