Archive for September, 2008

Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.09.2008

Got a classic call from NOP on behalf of Autoglass last night. Would I mind answering a few questions about my recently replaced windscreen? Sure. On a scale of one to ten, would you rate you r experience as excellent, good…. STOP!!!  I’m willing to give you my feedback but I’m not willing to answer bland questions – is there a free form comments box so you can write them in? No. If I just tell you can you record it? No, we just ask the questions we’re given. But how can I tell you what I thought of your service then? You cant, we can only ask you the questions. If I give you feedback about your process can you give it someone. No. Your supervisor? Well…

You get the jist. A dumb process that damages NOP and Autoglass’ brands and the experience of doing business with them, avoids learning anything useful and costs loads of money. If you recognise this process in your business and want to do something about it – get in touch

For the record my feedback would have been:

Replacement process was great, guy was friendly, paperwork all pre done – fab

Booking process interesting. Must have involved maybe a dozen calls as the call centre, Ashford and Tonbridge sorted out who did what, I cancelled one visit, they cancelled one. I could go into detail and give you the fixes if anyone at Autoglass is interested in my feedback?

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.09.2008

David’s been out judging the European Awards this summer culminating in the 10th Awards dinner at Expo last week. He said he didn’t drink, but I don’t believe him….. The same night I was at a dinner in Birmingham hosted by former colleague Fran Fish, md of SOH who get the brand voice and experience right in IVRs. I met her new boss who asked me a few questions, but wasn’t aware of her role in the growth of the contact centre market. In fact there are a few people like that who were very formative and should be recognised. CCF’s request for a quick quote for the 10th anniversary of the Awards prompted the memory and Graham Hill’s CRM Olympian Gold Medalists table (oh, did I tell you I’m in it…but don’t let that put you off, there are some great links in his piece) told me I should do something about recognising these people.

CCF was originally formed by Janette Menday and Francis Brookes (now Fish) when they realised there was a big education gap as res centres became call centres and more industries started to adopt them. They were passionate about this and left their ops jobs in American Airlines to set up Call Centre Focus. I remember meeting Janette and Fran at the very first Call Centre Conference I spoke at (that’ll be about 400 ago…) and was taken by their passion and knowledge for the subject and the people in the industry. Anyway the rest as they say is history. When they started the Awards, Janette and I poured over endless presentations to find that Halifax Direct was a clear winner – where is Mike Riley and his guitar now? We quickly realised we needed to see the sites, so to speak, and a great crew of judges was co-opted by Janette to take part, some of whom are still involved today. Then after Fran left, Louise Chuter and Emma Brown took up the challenge to develop the awards dinner, and brilliant bashes they were and are. Janette sold on to CMP and retired down to Devon to run holiday cottages, Fran is running SOH and Louise is running Contact Centre Link

So a little bit of recognition to those who set those events in motion. Well done, the industry grew up, but the parties are still great fun!

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Posted by: Ian Morton | 1.09.2008

How many of us now rely on being able to use the Internet to pay bills, book holidays or raise questions to a whole range of different service providers, from the gas company to travel services. I do most of my payments and booking fairly late at night, normally around 10 pm as this is for me, like many of us, the only time when I have time during the week from the routine of working  / travelling / feeding / sleeping. It’s been a very pleasant surprise for me to experience over the last few years how easy and customer focused so many of these sites have become, but there are always exceptions. I tried to book a flight for four adults to the South of France in mid November. After a bit of research I found the best flight was Easy Jet out of Gatwick to Nice.

Booking was simple, apart from the fact that you had to say ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’ to additional services and if you were not careful they were automatically added on to the final cost. The web design leads you to sign up for services you probably don’t require unless you book really carefully. 

But that was not the main problem; it was when I came to pay. I entered all my details using my maestro card, (paying a £1.75 charge!) to be routed to a secure payment process asking me to re-enter details from my card and home postcode, which I duly did, only to be rejected.

Tried again, waited, rejected. Went back to beginning of whole booking process, entered everything again, rejected. Telephone number given in case of difficulties, tried to call, message tells me office hours are 8 am to 9 pm – what use is that to me at, by now, 11.30 at night! Overall an extremely frustrating experience but from which some simple messages are clear for Easy Jet to take on board (no pun intended) 

• Web sites should show charges for services clearly and simply. Design that can confuse gives a low value experience and create cynical customers with low loyalty
• Present the true cost of booking. Show charges simply and clearly. Being told that by paying in a certain method it’s going to cost more is annoying. From my perspective if the cost had been bundled into the overall flight charge I would not have noticed        
• Think of your customer experience when using your site. Offering help, then not being able to get it, e.g. no 24 hour cover, is extremely frustrating. It’s great having total security but not when it drives customers away to an easier to access competitor

I finally managed to sort the payment out the following day, but not without a lot of hassle.  Is it me? or have others experienced the same problems?  I’d be interested in anyone who has experienced similar frustrations on airline web sites, not just Easy Jet. As the travel market gets tougher what makes you, as a customer, really frustrated about how the service providers are reacting? What do you think as customers should be happening? If you have the time, please blog our web site with details of your experiences and I’ll collate these for publication.  You never know it just might make the airlines interested enough to listen.

 

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