“Can I get your phone number, starting with the area code?”
No.
I can’t remember the amount of times I’ve given businesses fake information. Offline and especially online. And I am not alone — I recall a time sitting in my university library where two girls were trying to get an article off the Wall Street Journal and ran into a registration roadblock.
Overhearing a few expletives…I scurried over to WSJ.com to see what the fuss was about. And then there it was — 4 pages of registration information to fill out just to see content. So what did they do? They filled out useless, junk information so they could jump through 4 pages of hoops.
And wouldn’t you know it, while I was checking out the website and filling in my own fake information, I noticed that the options to subscribe to emails were pre-selected. I know they’re just trying to bump up their subscriber base, but most of those subscribers don’t want those emails and just click through to see the content they want.
Why was this such an unnecessarily painful experience? Both sides lose. I lose time filling out junk info, and you get junk info.
Generation Y is a horde of consumers who don’t care about you collecting CRM, especially if it just impedes the process of getting what they want. Don’t waste our time — you’ll end up wasting your own.
