Archive for July, 2009

Posted by: Peter Massey | 29.07.2009

Being back with O2 on my own phone after leaving Vodafone, it’s interesting to see what’s the same and what’s different. Professionally it’s reputed that 02 is pulling ahead on Netpromoter scores .

I have no inside knowledge on this but the stories suggest they may even be as high as +30, whereas others are between 0 and +10. Can anyone correct me there?

However as a customer I can see great attempts but no real difference. In the first month:

• Apple Store set it up well
• Internet tethering to use my iPhone as a dongle, paid for but not working – in fact the option has “impossibly” disappeared from my iphone
• Complete voice outage last Monday, caused missed work
• Signal outage again this weekend
• First ebill reminder came through – but my user name and password didn’t work, although I knew what they were. The fallback process failed as it had the wrong answer to my reminder question.
• So I had to call. Well done, I got through very quickly on a Sunday afternoon. The agent reset very quickly and told me how to reset back to my desired names. Obviously does this a lot….
• Tried to reset to what I can remember easily, but the choice was restricted. Tried again and it wants me to use my email address – too weak for me and it wouldn’t let me choose the name/password I associate with all my Apple stuff. I gave up so I’ll ring next time.
• Next time will be soon as my first bill is twice what I was expecting.

During all this, for professional interest I tried the website for everything. I couldn’t use the iphone as there was no signal…. Nothing to help in the c2c forum (presented oldest first – why?) and search was very sales orientated. The “announcements” just take you back to the support page with no announcements.

Come on O2, I reckon you can live your brand better. Share whatever your known pain points are with us customers. An open and honest set of announcements about known network problems. Maybe even a proactive text when it’s been fixed. Take part in the c2c forum, keep it up to date. Help make the topics relevant to the top reasons for contact. See, we’d be better connected to each other then.

Send me your views on the best customer forums and on 02

O2, customer forums | No Comments

Posted by: admin | 29.07.2009

My heart sank as I entered the check-in hall at Luton airport – a massive queue for the Dortmund flight desks. Not sure why I was surprised as I have had this experience before, but I was. Also a bit angry at the anticipated waste of time. And waste of time it almost was.

Standing in the queue, brain in neutral, I was idly thinking that I hadn’t looked at Twitter for several days, and I pulled out my phone to check the latest messages. Somehow, the trivial nature of Twitter content seemed a soothing prospect.

Naturally, my frustration with standing in the queue led to a tweet: “easyJet check-in queue not moving at all”. To be completely truthful, it took two tweets as the predictive text on my phone managed to put ‘doping’ instead of ‘moving’ the first time. I later discovered that the input language was set to German – I guess we will never know if it was my mistake, or over-eagerness by a super-intelligent phone, as I stood queuing for a flight to Germany!

I felt no better having sent the message and so resorted to talking to those around me, who were equally unhappy at the mystifying delay. I finally checked in after a one hour wait and the rest of the journey was completed perfectly satisfactorily.

At some point, it occurred to me that I had heard someone from easyJet was active on Twitter and so the next morning, with a few minutes to spare before a meeting, I opened up my laptop and logged back in.

Sure enough, there was a reply from @easyJetCare: “easyJetCare @imptwo I will pass your feedback on to Liz our airport manager for Luton. Usually they move pretty quickly. Hope you had a good flight ^PH”.

A Wow! moment. Direct customer engagement from easyJet, I was genuinely impressed. I had to test how far this would go and so responded: “imptwo @easyJetCare thanks for replying – others around me were unhappy with the 1 hour wait too. It’s raining here – can u fix that too? ”.

Again a reply – in a couple of hours: “easyJetCare@imptwo I will follow up, it is essential that you are informed about your delays. I wish I could fix the rain but I’m not that good ^PH”. This exchange now had a real human feel about it, and, curiously, just getting a response did make me feel better.

Nothing had actually changed and I am pretty sure the experience will be repeated. And the defence that a low-prices means low standards only goes so far; there are minimum standards of treatment and respect to which everyone is entitled.

But, a simple human contact (albeit technology-mediated), tempered with a little humour and I am prepared to forgive – which I guess makes me the very epitome of a loyal easyJet customer. Do you think I should worry about myself?

What it does demonstrate is the powerful principle that delivering a service of any kind is a person-to-person transaction, and don’t ever forget it when designing customer experiences. Now, if only easyJet were to send me a “you said, we did” message to let me know what has changed as a result of my feedback, that would be a great end to the story ….

Customer satisfaction, complaint, customer experience, customer experience design, fast+simple, feedback, humour, listening | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 24.07.2009

I recently had to take my car into London, it was a very expensive trip. Apart from the 40p per 5 minutes to park near the office and drop stuff off, I forgot to pay the congestion charge. I discovered the very interesting “data protection” notice on the website before paying:

Transport for London (TfL) and its agents will process your information for the operation of the Congestion Charging Scheme. Processing will include the use of cameras to record data. Your information may be disclosed to, or requested from, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), local authorities, law enforcement agencies and other organisations for the administration (including verification of discount entitlement) and enforcement of the scheme; the prevention and detection of crime and protection of public funds. TfL randomly selects and monitors vehicles subject to a discount to identify possible fraudulent use. If you persistently fail to pay congestion charges due or attempt to defraud the scheme, TfL may record your vehicle’s movements and may disclose relevant details to local authorities and/or law enforcement agencies, to assist in tracing persistent evaders and those committing fraud.

By pressing ‘Accept’ I confirm that I am aware of the data protection information above
2 things. You can’t pay without accepting (but you can if you use the phone). And its pretty much carte blanch to do what they want with your pictures.

Why is it called ‘data protection’ – surely they’re open to being sued under the trade descriptions act!

congestion charge, data protection, transport for london | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.07.2009

I’ve recently made the transition from the Microsoft world to the Apple world. A rich vein for blogging but luckily for you, dear reader, I fell out of the habit of blogging as I twittered succinctly instead. Well now to make up for it….

Not just Microsoft was to be left behind. I moved from the rest of the world, as I got rid of Nokia and Dell at the same time. No offence to the Nokia world, I loved my old Nokia engine that only did simple things simply – but a waiter in Kashmir is dining out on the proceeds of our cash, phones and ipods stolen from the hotel rooms on our “LimeBridge goes trekking” global get together in June.

Digressing for a moment….did I tell you about seeing a snow leopard! Here it is! I’ll come back to that later

Any offence to Dell? I don’t know, I never tried to get help for daily crashes or a battery on their machine that struggled to make the 1 hour  journey into London. Or a shoulder ache from the weight. Ok, when my last machine gave up the ghost in the middle of a seriously hot project in the Cabinet Office I had to rush out and buy the highest spec machine I could. So its my fault I bought a dog. It’s my fault I should have read the blogs in more detail, I only got as far as Dell delivery delays but found a high spec, very reasonably priced one in PC World in a hurry.

But I didnt try to contact Dell or read a Dell site. Interesting.

I did try to contact the PC World site abut the battery and the crashing but they didn’t return their nicely formatted emails. I could have gone to the store but I’d got better things to do.

I did try making sure I had the latest updates from MS and I tried their forums but crashes just seem to be an expectation with Vista. 2 or 3 times a day was becoming unbearable. Put that with slow performance on a high spec machine and the loss of an hour a day isnt tenable. Just opening the machine could take me two train stops in the morning. You could make the tea, whilst saving a 2003 compatible file. I blame MS – whether or not it’s their fault I don’t know.

The other reason MS get the blame is what they did to their standard office products in upgrading from 2003 to 2007, the other “upgrade” I experienced, alongside Vista. No new functionality, is just you cant find any of it !!! After 3 months, I’ve got used to it. But why did they do that?

When I looked at my daughter’s Mac, I realised. They were training me to think Mac!!

So back to Kashmir and the stolen phone and ipod. I’ll save the insurance story for another blog, but of course I asked my PA on the emergency call to get them to redirect voice mail (can’t do that..) and get a new phone, sim and dongle. Now call me old fashioned but every bit of customer experience work we did with telcos in the 90s said the key churn point was a lost phone.  So I kinda expected this to be a slick process.

Whoops not at Vodafone. Call centre says you need a letters in writing to take to the shop. Shop says you didn’t need that letter for the phone. Whilst I’m there, can they replace my stolen dongle. Not without a written letter. But its £2 of plastic memory stick. No. I’m thinking of moving all our business account away. No. Very well then.

Off I go to the Apple store to replace my ipod. And that’s where it got expensive. Greeted as I entered by enthusiastic Apple fans, shown the tempting wares, I walked out with a ipod touch, the thing I came for. And a MacBook Air with no moving hard drive, endless  battery life and the sexiest touch this side of …….well anyway. And no Microsoft stuff to crash. To date a month in, it hasn’t crashed.

The only reason I didnt walk out with an iPhone was that they can’t sell a business account, only to individuals. So off I trot to the O2 store.

Then I meet the very ordinary environment and endless queue and the business prevention officers again. Everything in writing in triplicate bla bla. I give up.

And walk back to the Apple store and buy an iphone privately there. A very chatty lady from Oklahoma configured it and set it up and showed me all about it. In fairness to O2, I bought another iphone for daughter no.3 who was out of contract this weekend in Maidstone and they’re trying very hard to copy the Apple model. Much better, but no emotion.

So you get I’m an Apple fan now? Thoroughly

You get I’m a Vodafone, O2, PC World, Dell ‘neutral’. You get I’m a Microsoft ‘detractor’ -  or rather a Windows detractor. in fact I like Microsoft – they have great people, great ethos – just a lousy product that doesn’t work and they forgot the user interface was a key asset.

You can probably guess my 1-10 Netpromoter scores. Yes, a 9 for Apple and 3 or 4 for the others, I bet I can guess the companies’ Netpromoter scores, without knowing them.

But wait, it’s not that simple. I bet you can’t guess how many problems Ive had with the Mac and the iphone. Just as many as I had with the Dell and more than with my old phone. In fact the Mac wont sync with the mail server so I can’t use it fully. I can only get my old email history across if I give them both my machines for 48 hours. It turns out the solution is a mod to the operating system in September called, wait for it….. snow leopard! The bluetooth worked but now it doesn’t and the internet link option to the Mac has, impossibly, disappeared from the iphone. The gurus in store don’t know everything so refer to the c2c site (which is good) and although the call centre answers the phone, it’s very average.

Yet I’m still a raving fan – why? As a consumer, I haven’t worked it out.  But as a professional what I know is it’s crucial to understand the calibration of the drivers of netpromoter scores. Brand, price, product, service relative to segment. These are all elements of the ‘customer experience’ that are being scored. And what drives each element in detail is relevant if one wants to change the promotional activity by customers on customers. And this is a really interesting example.

An example, other companies cannot simply copy parts of, without understanding the whole. The Apple experience design.

So combining my consumer and professional hats, here are a few thoughts on why I’m an actual promoter despite what has happened

1. Brand
I was pretty neutral about the brand. Loved how my classic ipod made my music accessible, loved the New York store where I bought it ( blogged Aug 07). Loved the London store on the odd occasion I’d been in professionally examining. But really, was I a geek or a media person or a designer…..not as cool as that I’m afraid.

2. Price
Had looked before and decided it was very expensive compared to laptops, despite what fans said. Would have to buy more MS software on top because at work we only have licences for PCS.

3. Product
Yes they looked sexy, but once I’d played with the iTouch, the iPhone Mac Air I was wowed. This is what did it in conjunction with parts of the other factors. The swish of your fingers to do things….. Dont ask me why. Let me try harder to look:
a.  It’s very thin and very light – practicality. And the power lead is very light with light cable too so the total effect is a bag you don’t have to hump around.
b. Because there’s no moving hard drive, there’s v little heat to cool, so no fans, less power consumption and so endless battery – 7 hours showing at the moment.
c. Switching it on and off. It takes less than 2 secs to sleep and 1 second to be available when you open the lid. I just timed it mid sentence! This changes stuff. You can look up stuff on internet whenever you want. You can work on a tube. You can do the little things when you think of them, rather than putting them on a bit of paper.
d. The design is fab. The finish and surfaces are so great, the tiny magnetic power connector, the closing lid to the ports. The way the mouse pad feels
e. The touch functionaility. If I tap once, twice, three times, different things happen. I f I tap or swipe with two fingers. If I swipe up or down or across with four fingers, everything on screen whoooshes around so I can see them. If I press f8, I can see my 4 spaces – I have four screens to put different projects in so my desktop is huge. And the most basic thing, the keys are lovely.
f. The applications stay open when you ‘close’ them so they’re back in a jiff if you need them
g. The compatibility so far has been very high for files brought across or sent- the key thing I checked with other ‘promoters’ – Mac users. In fact, all bar one, all users were promoters.
h. The functionality of the core programmes is great and actually only took a few hours of playing with every function to learn. Having been in ‘confused’ mode with MS2007 must have helped. I would certainly have found it harder had I still been using the 2003 formats I know so well. Its certainly not perfect with about 3 controls needed to switch a bullet point off and on. I struggle to control the presentations full screen. Even when I use my iPhone as a remote control – so cool! But I bet there’s a control somewhere I haven’t learned yet.
i. Most of all, it just doesn’t stall, crash, or need a reboot. I have managed  to fox the USB port a couple of times by extracting without ejecting!
So yes the product itself is a big bit of my promoter score.

4. The service – design first and then experience
The key element of design has been putting the face to face retail experience at the heart of things. And recognising that face to face retail experience is drab to non existent in most places, or posh and snotty in others. Either way it puts you off. Retail seems to be at the heart of getting the brand passion across. It starts in the store design and completes by having  more than enough people all the time. All the stores I’ve visited are fully staffed with enthusiasts. People who really love Apple products and love working for Apple. You get approached for help in most stores, and even when its busy you can get help. The genius bar is available to book on line and get lessons or support as you wish. Just going back to the store, or different stores, a few times, you start to feel part of it.  When geniuses consult each other for help you feel part of the conversation. You learn how to get the most out of the Mac and iPhone and as a result you engage emotionally with it. The c2c site seems to be at the heart of what geniuses and the web support is about – again its being part of something. Less said about the call centres in comparison, it feels like a.n.other company.

The service experience is challenging. I’ve always seen that resolution is the the top driver of satisfaction, followed by helpful, knowledgeable staff. In this case I still lack a lot of resolution for certain things but haven’t (yet) become dissatisfied. I can’t yet give away my Dell until I see if Snow leopard stops my exchange sync. Check back in Septemeber and see….

Meanwhile, I’ll start to plot more scientifically the drivers tree for netpromotion.

Get in touch, if you want to share your thoughts on how Apple’s netpromotion works and how you’re calibrating spend against netpromotion, emotional engagement and the design of the experience.

Apple, Dell, O2, customer experience, netpromoter, vodafone | 2 Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 22.07.2009

I found this whilst clearing rubbish and thought it worth sharing !

• Don’t – unless you need to
• Never negotiate with yourself
• Never accept the first offer
• Never make the first offer
• Listen more and talk less
• No free gifts
• Watch the salami and the jelly fish
• Don’t fall for rookies regret
• Always avoid the quick deal
• Never reveal what your bottom line is or was

The 4 rules locked in my head from way back when are:

• Don’t negotiate until the selling is finished
• Always bear the whole package in mind (don’t negotiate bit by bit)
• Trade on all the variables
• Both sides need to win; you can’t win if it’s not clear what you want

Anyone any tips to share?

negotiation | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 21.07.2009

Ever had to get a taxi from Heathrow, but not into London? Then you’ll know this story. Its happened to me twice recently. Fixed fares. What that means is the taxi driver gets £40 i.e. the fare back into central London, Regardless of a short local journey e.g. 5 miles.

Is this the way to represent the UK at its foremost border post?

When asking taxi driver, taxi wallah, taxi desk, BAA desk, the answers are the both the same and different.

Where they are the same is that it’s not their fault, they don’t know who you take it up with and sorry but nothing you can do about it. Where they differ is who made them do it.

So  maybe I should send an open letter to all those who were cited as causing the poor taxi driver to have to charge £40. Dear Lord Mayor of London, CEO of BAA ( hola!) and Chief Constable of Surrey Constabulary. Of and all taxi drivers.

Snr CEO – Why do BAA charge taxi drivers £5.50 to pick up customers. Surely your airport would be rubbish without taxis.

If local runs are not what taxi drivers want because they’ve sat 2 hours waiting to get to the head of the queue, why not have 2 taxi ranks – London cabs and local taxis rather than a monopoly on cabs?

Mr Lord Mayor, why should you allow tourists and business men who aren’t going to central London to have their first rip off experience of London in their first hour in UK?

Taxi drivers – if your time is so valuable, why not just drive straight back to London rather than sit in a queue for 2 hours? And do a local fare on your way out please

Mr Chief Constable – I think you’re forgiven as the taxi driver just made that up….

BA, Customer satisfaction, taxis | No Comments

Posted by: admin | 16.07.2009

The insurance industry is a perennial favourite for generating stories about bad customer experiences. Particularly car insurance, and especially policy renewal.My wife’s car insurance is currently up for renewal. For many years we, like lots of others, had used and trusted a broker to secure us a ‘good deal’. This despite the fact that we moved 100 miles away from them more than 20 years ago!Again like lots of others, the Internet has now replaced the broker for our research, or at least to find confirmation that the renewal quotation we have received from the current provider is competitive. As a I work within customer experience, I naturally offered to do the work, and surf the web. As a marketer, I am also observant of smart advertising – and went straight to a price comparison website. On this occasion, comparethemarket.com.The process of entering all our details into the many pages was straightforward and I quickly got lots of quotes! A number of them were significantly cheaper than our current provider and I chose one that seemed particularly appropriate for our needs – by no means the cheapest but offering the better overall value.Satisfied with the experience, I was surprised to receive a phone call a few minutes later resulting from my visit to the website. The agent calling offered me the possibility of an even better deal, as a result of one insurer wanting to speak directly with me.My reaction to the opening part of the call was a mixture of shock and anger. Shock that what I understood to be the source of the best deals (the website) might not be – completely undermining the comparethemarket.com proposition. At that moment, the first reputation died.The anger resulted from feeling hoodwinked. I realised that somewhere along the way I would have agreed to being contacted – but it had not been obvious. And the speed at which it had happened so soon after visiting the website only compounded the sense of somehow being betrayed. The information is actually on the home page, only in very small font at the very bottom.Back to our story. The agent checked some details that I had entered in the web forms and then offered to put me through to this particular company that was so keen to have my business that it wanted to speak to me immediately. I declined when the name of the company was mentioned, as they have a poor reputation in my mind.Incredibly, and by an amazing coincidence, there was a second firm also ready and waiting to talk to me – Allen and Allen (I presume The A&A Group Ltd). By now, professional curiosity had kicked in and I was keen to see how the whole process would be concluded, and so I agreed. It was explained that there was no ‘cheesy’ or irritating hold music, but there was a long silence before a new voice came on the line.The silence was broken and news was not good. What the agent actually said was that no-one was available and  could they call back later? But what I heard was the death rattle of a second reputation. Incredible! Here I was, a living, breathing prospect on the point of purchase (a perfect opportunity you would have thought) and no-one was available? Except of course the guy who spoke to me no-one was available … only he couldn’t sell me insurance!Our passion is to help clients stop doing ‘dumb’ things to their customers – and believe me I was, by now, very very passionate … just not in a good way.When reflecting on the call, I realised that the original agent had not identified the company that they were calling from – I had assumed it was comparethemarket.com but a little more digging on the Internet suggests that it was probably LeadX Ltd (a comparethemarket.com trusted partner). Frankly, based on my experience, I wouldn’t trust them. Others seem to view them in the same negative light – a third reputation bites the dust.I realise that I am only a single customer and it is very unlikely that any of the companies are interested in my feedback,  but if anyone from comparethemarket.com wants to talk to me about this, then please get in touch. I know you know my phone number.  Killing three reputations in single phone call really is quite an achievement.17/7/09 update – just received a follow-up call from LeadX, so they obviously have not read this blog!

WOCAS, complaint, customer experience, dumb things, insurance | No Comments