Make it Easy – Stick to One Name

I bought a daybed from Hillsdale Furniture. It is a Dorchester bed. It comes in three big boxes.  Pieces, parts, hardware and two instruction pages; one for the frame and one for the daybed.

I am pretty handy, in fact, I don’t use the included allen wrench or open ended wrench – I have my own tools.  I love putting things together. In fact, look around my house; the desks, entertainments centers, bookshelves – you guessed – I have put them together. Never had a bit of trouble until today.  A daybed – how hard can it be?

I read both sets of instructions and concluded I needed to start with the wooden daybed.  Piece of cake until I got to Step Two:

Attach Link Spring (*not included) to daybed.

I look for a corresponding “*” and I found one in a diagram that showed a metal bracket – no spring visible.  Not included struck a moment of horror in my mind. E-gads.

So I looked at the instructions for the mattress frame. I reviewed the hardware list, the parts list, the instructions and the diagrams.  No Link Spring.

I went on the website and searched for Link Spring and just found a picture of the bed frame.  Went to WIKI – no definition, not even when I put quote marks around the phrase.

Curious.

So I skip Step 2 and go to the mattress frame. I complete the frame and when it comes time to attach the frame to the wooden daybed I find that the Frame Plates look just like the Link Spring.  hmmm. No spring. Nothing to link.

Using the hardware from the daybed, I attach the frame to the bed with the frame plates – perfect fit.

How much time and confusion was caused because the Frame Plate was really a link spring? How many customers call customer service for clarification?

I just finished reading a post at Idea-Sellers that talks about a frustrating experience the writer is having with a company website that forces the potential customer to jump through hoops before finally calling the company and leaving a message that, at the time of his post, had still not been returned.

Do companies really want to do business with their prospects?

Do companies care if their customers can use their product with little confusion?

My daybed is lovely. But I sure didn’t like the fact that the instructions made it far more difficult than it needed to be simply because they weren’t consistent in the name of the parts.

Do you make it easy for your customers? Do you have different names for the same product and service that could cause confusion?