In 1-800-Flowers' situation, they never should have de-coupled the customer service operation from the ordering operation. Information on orders should be available on a real-time basis to both customers and the customer service people. This idea of downloading orders and transmitting them in bulk once or twice a day to their customer service operation is ludicrous in our modern, networked world. There is no question that Notes and Domino can solve this.

I have no idea what went going through the Audio Book Club people's heads. The person who answered the phone was nice. But she was so far removed from Web-based ordering that I had absolutely no one to talk to about the order. The Web ordering system and the customer service system should not have been completely different camps.

This is one club I know I don't want to be a member of.

Presumably, as a Notes or Domino administrator, you may be setting up an e-commerce site. You may be setting up online ordering (using something like Domino.Merchant). Learn from the above mistakes, and follow these suggestions:

• Never de-couple customer service from order processing. Make sure that customer service has complete access to what's been ordered.

• Never set up different customer service operations for Web-based ordering. You can have a special Web problem-solving team, but don't tell the customer you can't help him or her.

• Never, ever refuse to help a customer who's ordered from you. I'm an audio book addict. I'd probably buy tons of books from Audio Book Club. But, instead, my money's going to Amazon and a growing chain of little bookstores near Princeton called Bookmarks. Why? Good customer service.

It's really quite simple. You may screw up technically. But never, ever screw up your customer service. You can paper over a whole lot of programming errors with a really good customer service operation and pro-customer policies. The customer may not always be right. But the customer is the one making the decision to buy from you or from your competitor.