Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Apparently the plan worked out as well as the "Chinese Democracy" was reviewed...not good at all.

Yesterday, the 23rd, was the day that consumers could visit Dr. Pepper's website to register for a free coupon. Dr. Pepper has 23 flavors -- what a catchy gimmick. (See Kevin Zimmerman's related blog post, "Stunts and Poses".) This coupon won't arrive for 4-6 weeks, and then consumers only have until Feb 28, 2009 to redeem it. So right off the bat, it's not the easiest of experiences. But, Dr. Pepper's servers couldn't handle the traffic, and pretty much shut down all day. That sent blogs and message boards all a flutter with activity about how Dr. Pepper screwed up. Think any publicity is good publicity? Think again.

For me, I attempted to get my coupon at about 9:30 p.m. last night. I heard the site was having problems, and I couldn't get www.drpepper.com to load. Then I did a search (which Dr. Pepper had 5 of the top 10 search terms on Google yesterday), and found an 800 number for customer service that was recommended as an alternate channel. Of course, the number was busy. So I found a deeper link, http://www.drpepper.com/freeDrPepper/?icamp=hp_dpfree_coupon, which supposedly would get you in because it's a more direct link.

I did get to the registration screen, which I was ecstatic about. But my hopes were dashed when I hit submit. I got a "service unavailable" screen. I went back, tried again, and got a "fatal error" message. Alas, no free Dr. Pepper for me.

Upon further review this morning, it looks like the company extended the offer until 6 p.m. today (Monday the 24th). I hope it got its IT act together. I'll try it out and see if it works.

This experience really highlights how critical it is for marketing and other departments to work together to create a good user experience. And how easily customers can turn on a brand. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. write in their book, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow that customer trust is built on two foundations: intent and competence. Dr. Pepper had good intentions by offering free soda. But its incompetence in delivering on that promise probably turned a number of people off.

I hope other companies learn from this experience -- that Americans love free stuff, that with the Internet age bad news spreads fast, that you must coordinate a user experience with cross-departmental customer strategy, and that Chinese Democracy is only good if you drink a caffeinated beverage while listening to it.