MARY: Thank you for calling Enterprise, the company that picks you up.
ME: Hi Mary. Can you pick me up? I’m at the DoubleTree.
MARY: Ummm, we don’t have anyone available to do that right now.
ME: But you said you could pick me up when you answered the phone.
MARY: Ummm, yeah. We ummm, hold on one moment, sir.
HOLD MESSAGE: (Music) Thank you for your patience. A representative will be with you shortly. (Music) At Enterprise, we pick you up.

The CJU 2006 conference was winding down, and I decided to take advatage of a lunchtime lull before the final CJ Performer event to organize for a rental car to drive us back to LAX. You’d think that at a minimum, the person on the other end of the line would have adapted her greeting to the situation. There’s no easier way to lose (captive) customers than to fail to meet expectations you yourself have set.

While the above real-world example may be the extreme, the web is full of marketing campaigns where everything from the ad copy and creative, to landing pages, to the checkout process have been carefully thought out — but where time-sensitive variables are thrown out the window. Does your site sell a product or service whose quantity is limited? Do you use the pay per click engines’ API’s to pause your campaigns when you run out of the product, or are you spending money to acquire disatisfied customers?

As for the car rental, the Hertz counter in the conference hotel lobby took care of us.