The Budd Blog

We are delighted to announce this years Stop Doing Dumb Things Unconference!

At Budd, we feel customer and employee experiences are connected, so we invite you to join us at the Stop Doing Dumb

This unconference has been design to transform how your people treat these connections and what is great is that because we are an unconference you can leave and join discussions as you wish and tailor the day to fit your businesses needs.

Visit our SDDT Website for more information or dive right in and book your tickets here.

We look forward to welcoming you!

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Happy 2012 to one and all!!  We hope you have all had a good rest over the festive season.

We have had a busy start to the year already and with two newbies there is lots of change in Budd-land!

To those of you who received one of our lovely 2012 calendars we hope you are enjoying it! If you haven’t got one yet drop Katie an email katie.player@budd.uk.com and she’ll pop one in the post!

We thought that you’d like a little intro to our “Budd-ing” newbies so you can get to know them a little:

• Becca’s experience is very customer focused. She previously worked at a large concierge service looking after their most high net worth clients and as a result has a very good understanding of just how demanding a customer’s needs can be. Her role at Budd will be mostly based in Marketing and spreading the word of ‘Budd’ (as well as those cartoons) in order to reach more people.

• Katie was also working with Rebecca at the concierge service however, she traditionally comes from a more administrative background. Having worked with MP’s and in event organisation for a national children’s charity.  She will be focusing on supporting the Budd team, the marketing and anything else in between.

And with the above information we bid you a farewell for now and look forward to working with all our clients both existing and future ones!

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I was lucky enough to have to attend this year’s CCA event as Peter was in France and we had to have someone to give the Budd sponsored award of ‘Best Customer Experience Centre’

This task fell to me do, with the winner of the award this year being MBNA

Ian Morton presents MBNA with award for Best Customer Experience Centre 2011

However, it wasn’t just the Gala event and awards that made the two day session one to remember (although seeing a lookalike Lady Gaga sing live at the awards ceremony did make being in a rainy Glasgow seem not too bad!) but the quality of the presentations in the preceding 1 ½ days and some of the key messages that came out really made me think.

The challenges that face customer service are getting more complicated as each year go by, but they are also making it a far more exciting place to be, with increasing opportunities to get it right for the customer and the business.

Problem is it also seems that we are still not getting some of the basics right.

Social media is now a force to be recognised, but very few companies (and I am talking single figure % here) have a clear and aligned strategy as to how to maximise learning and deliver effective service.  Some of the speakers seemed to think that Social was the only way of capturing the Voice of the customer (VoC), but I think that’s a bit too simplistic.

We did hear from Dave Carroll, the chap whose guitar was so kindly damaged by United Airways (look at his YouTube videos, United Broke My guitar). His was a classic case of being not listened to, and then fobbed off as not having followed their rules in reporting the incident in time.

From a silly mistake it escalated into a costly PR problem.

What United, and probably many other companies do not expect, is the sheer volume of view responses to YouTube videos.

In a week Dave had in excess of 1,000,000 hits.

Another case of social driving embarrassing messages was Lily Allen complaining about her BT Internet. In this case BT reacted quickly, maybe a lesson for United? (although as a BT customer I felt a little frustrated at not receiving the same response when my internet went down, but I accept I cannot sing)
It shows how powerful one voice can be if it uses the existing social channels to best effect. Albeit, these are professional entertainers and have more of the public ear, but still salutatory messages.

We also need to consider how we use both web and social media when targeting or creating service channels.

Ipsos – Mori advised us that 40% of females over 65 do  not have access to the internet, they then went on to say that in the majority of cases women are the main decision maker when buying certain high value goods, such as cars. So balancing your marketing and servicing channels becomes even more complex    

Emails have been around for a while, but apparently we are still not recognising that we need to respond quickly or analyses content to help understand VoC in more detail.

On a more positive note research carried out by the CCA has found that the majority (60% plus)of customer still want to talk to someone rather than use self-serve.

So Call Centres are here to stay for a while and the skills to deliver service and capture VoC are still high on most peoples agenda.

Ian Morton

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My heart sinks for Apple. I was that ultimate fan selling 3 machines per day to strangers on trains. Converting friends and people at work, buying them for family. Blogging and shouting to all who would listen. And now only a few weeks later I am turning. Why?

My expectations were different. Yes they were high – I expected things to plug in and just work as they were designed to do. I expected bigger spec to mean faster. Why wouldn’t I?

But alas its more stewed than rosy.

3 weeks in, my Macbook Pro is slower (and obviously heavier) than my 2 year old  Air, only replaced when the memory was full. I reboot Safari, Mail and iPhoto every few days where it used to be every quarter or so. My Time Machine isn’t working. I’m driven hourly to distraction by the lack of a “save as” function. I’ve been without bluetooth until another reload of the software yesterday has brought it back so I can finally work on the train again.

Yes I’ve had service. Lots of it.  I’m just too fed up to tell it all, suffice to say multiple service and advice issues, a swapped machine, multiple downloads. 2 days without a machine from which I’m still trying to recover. I’ve tried booking service appointments a week out and a visit a few days out, but haven’t been able to make them. I’m no further on and I’ve given up. I’ve accepted that, despite the lovely machine, I’ve paid at least as twice as much as I might have for a Microsoft style experience and 3 steps back in time.

As if to rub it in a window has just popped up with 100 problems (literally) in my third attempt at syncing my music.

A new iphone4S today caused me to back up to the old 3 which promptly jumped to iOS5 and lost all my music and half my apps. And then these things didn’t come across onto the new phone. Worse still the new phone wouldn’t accept my passwords despite resetting them several times. After reloading the software from scratch it finally worked.

I’m just manually loading music and apps back onto both phones. I don’t know what else is gone but no doubt I’ll notice over the next few days.

So why bother writing this sad list up. Because somewhere in Apple, I hope, are a bunch of passionate people stewing because stuff didn’t work at launch. You can imagine how they fought for quality over deadlines. How they fought to get back history to work with new stuff, to put reputation over analysts forecasts. How they pleaded that just more $$ spent wouldn’t solve the lack of testing.

I hope they are there and get to read this and use it as internal ammo. Root cause to reputation and revenues. Focus on it. Please.

It’s not too late – yet….

For example 2 car companies: 10 years ago someone picked up the phone to me and apologised. They couldn’t undo the issue they’d caused, but they could recognise their problem. As a result I forgave them and spent a lot of money with them subsequently. A competitor once wrote me a disclaimer letter in similar circumstances. I am still their terrorist – I stopped someone buying one again the other day.

So the message to Apple – get on the front foot fast. Start telling people what doesn’t work before they spend a lot of their and your time finding out what the geeks know first. Get back to making things work and testing the swap overs so that minimising customer effort is top of the agenda. And put “save as” back – don’t tell the world you’ve invented a better mousetrap.

Ah well, back to my new phone – the Mac can’t find the music anymore, maybe reloading it back to my old phone ate it…. another hour or two should fix it

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An outstanding dumb moment this morning from BMI, flight BD081

On Weds I flew out to Belfast from Heathrow in row 6. I was only allowed to check in on a middle seat even though there the plane was half empty. As it turned out the window seat next to me was empty and I moved into it once the door closed. I tweeted about why do I need to be made to feel third class, presumably for buying cheap tickets, when there are plenty of seats.

It also reminded me that I don’t like the arbitrary number of cheap seats vs full price economy they display on their website. I’m used to Easyjet and Flybe where its just once price. Yes the price moves up nearer the time, but the whole plane moves up together. The BMI booking shows you you can still book more expensive seats in economy – i.e. they just dont want to sell you the lower price. It riles. Nearly as much as how much money BA are wasting to advertise their USP – being older than anyone else… – do you get that ad? I don’t. Surely a case of an old badge on old clothes.

So now it’s v early Friday morning going back. Same thing at check in, only middle seats allowed. I get row 7. Plane still half full. There’s 3 of us in row 7, ABC and nobody in row 6.

It takes a while to board as the lady on the aisle has to get up for me and then we both have to get up for the guy in the window seat. Why have none of the traditional airlines read the paper that says boarding by letter rather than number is way faster. A & F first, B & E second, C&D last. Families can board together. No one has adopted it.

Now to the dumb stuff. There’s 3 of us stuffed in 7ABC and I need to work. After take off I move forward to an empty row 6. I am approached by the stewardess to tell me I shouldn’t have moved.

“But it’s empty and that one’s full”. Ah but I have crossed an invisible barrier into the front of the plane…..

“The seats are the same, there’s no curtain and, I sat here on the way out”.

“Yes but you’re now in premium economy”.

“Let common sense apply – surely?”

“Well I’ll have to check” …as the steward comes forward. He doesn’t look at me or talk to me, only to his stewardess.

She relays to me that “he’s not happy” as it could be that a passenger in the back could be a premium customer and could see me go forward and could be offended. Presumably premium customers are trained to see the invisible curtain and invisible difference in the seats and know that it moves from Wednesday to Friday!!

Generously, after admonishment, I am allowed to sit and work.

No wonder the Flybe flights are full and the BMI ones half empty.

A classic dumb thing. I wonder if I’ll get told off if I ask to take their photo? OK back to work…

airlines, customer experience, dumb things | 1 Comment

“Unfortunately, there are still [water] companies that are letting customers down when it comes to service. We are pressing these companies to make further improvements to reduce complaints from their customers.” – Consumer Council for Water, 2011

Confusing bills, charging disputes, metering issues – it could be any of the utilities, it just so happens that the recent  Consumer Council for Water report on complaint handling identifies these as the most common source of customer complaints in the water industry.  Why?  The results could have been predicted long before the report was published and I wouldn’t mind betting it’ll be the same issues that top the league table next year and the year after that.  Whilst some companies are reducing the overall number of complaints, others are going backwards.  Add to the mix that there is a general mistrust of utilities and the typical “flooding in winter followed by a hosepipe ban in the summer” scenario, and it’s not hard to see why the water industry has a lot to do to improve customer perceptions.  But, why would they bother?  Are they really serious about improving the customer experience and reducing customer effort when they operate in a monopoly?  Sure, the regulator will ensure that they meet some basic, minimum standards through the service incentive mechanism (SIM) but that’s a world away from a competitive environment where the option to churn is the ultimate sanction.

Well, perhaps one way of getting a better deal for customers is to focus on reducing operating costs.  Groan…that must mean an even worse deal for customers.  Not so, because eliminating unnecessary contact and reducing operating costs by a benchmark 20% comes with the handy benefit of reducing customer effort and improving the customer experience.  After all, most of us don’t want to be spending our time contacting our water company.  You know the stuff.  If you really had the time you’d call them and give them “what for” about the injustice of leaky taps, water meters and the millions of gallons of water lost due to poor water mains,  not to mention the traffic jam caused by them digging up the road on the school run.  But…can I really be bothered…and anyway, it shouldn’t be happening in the first place!

So how is that achieved?  At Budd, our passion is to help companies to stop doing dumb things to their customers and employees.  We work with our clients to implement our proven The Best Service Is No Service processes, decision flows and toolset to eliminate unnecessary and avoidable contact. 

If you’d like more information on The Best Service Is No Service, take a look at the web site or contact Peter Massey on 07802 793515.

the best service is no service | 1 Comment

I just noticed that I hadn’t blogged for 47 days – OMG. Still those of you who follow me on Twitter will not have gone hungry at least.

Great service, useless service – the difference grows bigger all the time. Having travelled in the US and Europe over the summer, it focuses the mind on the state of UK plc and its relationship to customer and people experience. So let’s take a quick romp through high and low lights…. The message: the best are getting better and the rest just don’t notice.

Food – the high points: Service at the Hinds Head at Bray, one of Heston Blumenthal’s haunts. Whatever you think of him, his food is to die for. Triple cooked roast potatoes…. The best thing is you can just go in for a pint – but if you do have a scotch egg with it – you will not regret it! Service on the brilliant side, not surprising as it is Michelin’s pub of the year 2011. And, what a plus, my daughters paid what was a very reasonable bill considering the quality.

This was only outdone by an experience at Pebble Beach golf club near Carmel where they play the US Open. Imagine doing this at Wentworth or the like…. We were cycling past, shorts, helmet, red faces – you get the picture. We decide to nip in the back gate on our bikes and take a look. Feeling very naughty as we bike through the main courtyard in front of the club house, the door man in plus 4s shouts at us! “Come in and have lunch, I’ll get rid of the bikes for you!” Five minutes later we’re on the terrace in front of the 18th green eating slap up nosh.

Low points – Utilities: I’ve tweeted recently about the utilties’ lowly position in the different industries and experience league tables. What a shame because there are so many good people doing good work on service there now. But this is a typical sequence:

I’m switched to online billing without noticing

I receive email alert for my bill and attempt to go in and look at it. Cant pass the security so give up – its not one of my regualar passwords, and being an infrequent user I have no memory of what it might be. Must be a non standard ( to me)  structure. I give up and get on with my life

A month later I see a 90% increase in my direct debit on my bank account

I go back to last email alert and try to log on. I cant. I try the password reset. It asks me to answer a key question before it will reset. I fail the question – pardon me. but I do know my mothers maiden name.

I go to the contact page, which pushes me through useless FAQs – FAQs dont help when ” I can’t access my online bill/failed security” is the need. I email them and its says 10 days to respond. So obviously I phone them.

No IVR routing just an everyone’s busy message interrupting silence. After 10 minutes, music on hold steps in. My cue to give up the queue.

I expect all their operators are busy answering questions about how to access their accounts.

Root causes:

1) Non standard password formats

2) Over zealous security on resets

3) A policy of raiding bank accounts to improve cashflow

Is it any wonder that utilities get a bad press.

Video – a highlight: On a brighter note here’s something to sharpen your wits and make you realise what you could be doing with your data at work. It’s awesome but skip the middle of the Johnny Cash art if thats not your bag: Aaron Koblin on data visualisation

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Customer effort, brilliant basics, customer experience, feedback | No Comments

Do you go in and test your own website, every page and link, every day?

Is that ridiculous or an obvious thing to do?

I just tried comparing Eurostar with P&O Ferries for a booking later this week. Eurostar went straight through in a very few clicks and gave me the answer. P&O’s pop up for cars over a certain height stopped me in a my tracks and wouldn’t go away – neither cancel or ok being effective. I tried again and got past it by not being over a certain height and then amending it later. I got through the process only to get the message the site was down

Guess who gets the business?

So maybe worth testing all those links everyday for usability and functionality isn’t an expensive overhead.

And …ouch – I ‘m sure we have a few glitches on our site

PS end of day – so far first direct’s iphone app and British Airways sites have both failed today

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This isn’t a complaint ( it will be if Avis take money from my credit card). It’s feedback to help Avis improve

It relates to this Tuesday 12th July Belfast City Airport

Buying
a) I tried to book a same day before I left for the airport ( a last minute flight to spend a short surprise evening for my better half’s birthday !!) – the website froze when getting to the car choice/before offering prices. You could click on the car but nothing would happen. Tried several ways and couldn’t get past it. It was either a technical problem or the agent later suggested it was because it was a same day booking which the website cant do – if so then please add that message rather than just “hanging” on me!

b) During this and other recent searches I was getting frequent webchat prompts – its really annoying. If you are doing this during “dwell” times – why not spend the time improving the layout and presentation of your website as a better avoidance of the need for service, rather than adding an additional customer effort and cost to you. If you are going to offer webchat why not put a clear button on the pages so I can choose when to use it ( and a clear phone offer button too)

c) When I did use the webchat the agent told me I’d have to phone as he couldn’t book – surely if the chat is there to improve conversion you need to give them that function? He (“James”)  gave me the number and then “hung up” on me – ie he closed the conversation before I could ask anything else. I suggest you improve your training on conversation etiquette

d) I phoned on the way to the airport and got straight through. The agent had trouble hearing me – mobiles aren’t ideal – but considerably hindered by the background noise in the call centre. It didn’t sound like Manchester or Barcelona – have you outsourced?

e) I made the booking including my wizard number and credit card – he handled it quickly and well ( it seemed…)

Pick up
f) First off the flight and straight through – only one guy in front of me at the desk but it must have been a complex one and there was only one member of staff. A couple of guys behind the screen behind the desk as I walked up were perhaps going off shift as it was 3.47 and a bank holiday in Belfast. I know the time as I texted as I walked up and checked it ten mins later when I saw the stop watches on the counter saying £20 voucher if you wait more than 3 minutes – I didn’t bother picking one up and I never got offered a £20 voucher

g) The lady ( Sandra) apologised for delay when she’d finished ( about 5 past 4) and said she’d not been able to have keys ready as my credit card had failed. I asked the digits and they weren’t recognisable. She said that was what was recorded with my wizard number when I first registered it online – I said it couldn’t be. (Mystery solved later). We used my credit card – all fine. Signed the bits and went to car.

h) Off to car park and found car. Doh – scratches not marked on the sheet. This happens a lot. Avis car park cabin isn’t occupied – drat. Wondering whether to bother going back to the terminal when I notice the paperwork is not in my name – ah that explains the credit card issue. It’s a booking for 5 days, not 14 hours, so I can start to imagine the future credit card bill I’ll no doubt get to sort out. I look for a phone number on the paperwork to ring the desk – not there, so off I trek back to the terminal

i) No queue and we sort out the credit card and another car in short order.  The car has 5 dings marked on the paperwork – this doesn’t bode well as I’m betting there’s more. Why is that car in service? I ask for a phone number and Sandra offers to ring me in 5 mins to check with me

j) I go back out to the cars and guess what – the car has some dings missing and some additional ones. Final straw is the tank isn’t on the full marker. I’m outta here. Sandra rings and I am not happy. I walk back and insist on her sorting out the credit card here and now as I’m going elsewhere. She can’t – I have to ring…… I ring and hand her my phone while I go the next desk and get a car “with no dings in it please”. It takes 2 mins, is bigger for the same price and has no dings. I retrieve my phone and take the desk phone number and Sandra’s name in case the bill becomes a problem. She’s “not allowed” to give out her surname – what’s that about !  Maybe the sign for disgruntled customers on an Avis call centre door in Oklahoma gives a clue  

Its now an hour after I came to the desk first time. That’s one hour out of an evening and a mood that isn’t fit to take to a birthday surprise visit!!  I take my time on the 30 min drive and wonder why I didn’t just phone a cab

Post event
k) At 5.30 next morning I drop the car back and tweeted a question using #avis . I’ve seen no response

l) Today I’m booking again – shall I use Avis? There isn’t anywhere to give suggestions on your website.  The “we try harder” site now looks corporate rather than a forum to give feedback – I couldn’t find anywhere obvious to post. I can only find the complaints email address.

m) I write this journey down in an email – but haven’t sent it yet. Why go to the effort? Avis used to be a really nice client 10 years ago and I’ve used them ever since. I love Angie Court’s passion – is she being missed in Avis UK?

This example shows a typical multichannel customer journey and I can use it as an example. It’s a useful lesson on how the different channels don’t hang together and how some upstream decisions affect the experience eg car condition policy before fixing them, eg resourcing for staff in car park and at desk to do the job fully eg better sound deadening/ microphones in call centre. In isolation some are minor issues, some major – but the real issue is how they add up. This is typical of what causes complaints – no one thing.

More importantly it shows how customer effort can creep into every step. Avis is normally a great example of “The Best Service Is No Service” with very little customer effort – go online, book, pick up key, drop car.

n) The good news ( so far …) is that Avis haven’t taken anything off my credit card

The bottom line
Avis just lost my two bookings for Italy in August – one cost £700+ and the other cost £300.

Have they lost me forever? It depends what happens next. I wont send by email yet, I’ll tweet this and see what happens.

Customer effort, brilliant basics, broken websites, complaint, customer experience, europcar, feedback, listening | No Comments