I was trying to register for a service at ICICI Bank and after entering the information and clicking Submit, I was taken to an orphan page (no links to anything) which displayed the following:
APPLICATION SETUP ERROR !!
This error has occured due to a problem in the application setup
Please contact the Administrator of your Bank.
Now the question is, Who is the administrator of my bank? Is it the bank’s website administrator? (Probably) Is it the administrator of the branch where my account is? (Unlikely) Is it someone else? (No clue)
Errors will occur. What distinguishes the good applications from the also-rans is the way in which they handle errors. In this case, for instance, the message could’ve been changed to:
Oops. If you’re seeing this, it means that we goofed up.
Please click here to notify us and we’ll contact you when the problem’s rectified. Thanks.
I don’t think setting up something like this would be too tough. Sure, it’s an extra bit of work, but it saves your customer from being frustrated. Frustrated customers tell other people about their frustrations, which is not good for your business. Ask Dell.
Then again, I’m no Jeff Jarvis.
