Delight me!

I have been looking for new office space. I am pretty happy with my existing solution, but I fancy a change.

I spoke to a serviced office company who offered me a trial for the day at one of their locations. Wow what a nice piece of customer service I thought, and started to develop a warm fuzzy feeling towards the sales guy – who had slightly irritated me by calling me the wrong name and being rather over familiar for a Monday. But just as I was about to agree to the trial, having decided a date, location etc I was told I would have to pay for the trial day!

Now, given that I am already paying for office space and I am not an idiot (at least the last time I looked) why would I pay to trial an office, when I can actually look at a space, assess the service provision, imagine myself in it, and save for unseen issues such as internet not working, electrics going out, chairs breaking etc, can make a fairly educated guess as to whether a space would be suitable or not.

The initial trial offer (which granted I had added “Free” to in my head) had now been turned into a trick, soured me to the company, and created a sense of distrust. On the other hand, if this company had actually offered me a free trial for the day I would have been pretty bowled over and importantly more disposed to using their services even if they were more expensive!

A missed opportunity, and an expensive one at that.