The buyer you have never met

The customer is a mother. She has ordered four times, she opens the email, she knows the range better than a new starter does.

Then a Saturday arrives when she is not the buyer.

On Mother's Day the person at the checkout is her husband, her eldest son, her sister, sometimes all three in the same afternoon, buying separately and not telling each other. None of them is on the list. None of them has an order history. A brand can spend a year learning its customer and have no idea who this is.

Look at what they need. Her size, which they do not know. What she already owns, which they cannot check. Whether it arrives by Saturday, which is the only question they actually have and the hardest one to answer on most sites. The size guide was written for a woman buying for herself. The delivery page says three to five working days, and that is not an answer when the day has a date on it.

I have watched brands spend the week before an occasion writing to the mother about how much she deserves this, to a list of people who are about to be given something rather than people about to buy something.

A brand that sells to mothers has years of practice talking to one person and none at all talking to a stranger who is nervous, in a hurry, and about to be judged on the choice in front of the family.

One day a year, the customer and the buyer are different people.

That is the day the account has nobody it knows how to sell to.